The ban follows a long-running battle between Brazil’s supreme court and Elon Musk. It shows the country will no longer tolerate tech giants ignoring the rule of law.
The part of the law that talks about content removal (Section 3, articles 18 to 21) does not say that only content can be removed nor that accounts can’t be touched. Before Moraes, judges have ordered people to be locked out of certain social media, so there is precedent.
It’s also important to note that freedom of speech ends the moment it becomes a crime. Whether said xitter accounts have been committing crimes, and which crimes, is a different discussion
Fighting crime is desirable, but within the limits of the law:
Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework
Art. 19. In order to ensure freedom of expression and prevent censorship, the internet application provider may only be held civilly liable for damages resulting from content generated by third parties if, after a specific court order, it fails to take steps to, within the scope and technical limits of its service and within the specified timeframe, make the content identified as infringing unavailable, except for legal provisions to the contrary.
§ 1º The court order referred to in the caput must contain, under penalty of nullity, clear and specific identification of the content identified as infringing, which allows the unequivocal location of the material.
Note that the legislator took the trouble to say right at the beginning that the intention is to prevent censorship. Few laws are written in such detail as to reinforce their guiding principles in the middle of the provisions. If the legislator went to this trouble, it is because the intention of avoiding censorship is fundamental to this law. If judges are ignoring the law, they’re ignoring the will of the people.
The part of the law that talks about content removal (Section 3, articles 18 to 21) does not say that only content can be removed nor that accounts can’t be touched. Before Moraes, judges have ordered people to be locked out of certain social media, so there is precedent.
It’s also important to note that freedom of speech ends the moment it becomes a crime. Whether said xitter accounts have been committing crimes, and which crimes, is a different discussion
Fighting crime is desirable, but within the limits of the law:
Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework
Art. 19. In order to ensure freedom of expression and prevent censorship, the internet application provider may only be held civilly liable for damages resulting from content generated by third parties if, after a specific court order, it fails to take steps to, within the scope and technical limits of its service and within the specified timeframe, make the content identified as infringing unavailable, except for legal provisions to the contrary.
§ 1º The court order referred to in the caput must contain, under penalty of nullity, clear and specific identification of the content identified as infringing, which allows the unequivocal location of the material.
Note that the legislator took the trouble to say right at the beginning that the intention is to prevent censorship. Few laws are written in such detail as to reinforce their guiding principles in the middle of the provisions. If the legislator went to this trouble, it is because the intention of avoiding censorship is fundamental to this law. If judges are ignoring the law, they’re ignoring the will of the people.