The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said he hopes the crisis surrounding the social network X in Brazil might teach the world that “it isn’t obliged to put up with [Elon] Musk’s far-right free-for-all just because he is rich”.
Lula’s comments to the network CNN Brasil came after the supreme court voted unanimously on Monday to uphold the ban on X, which is now largely inaccessible in one of its biggest global markets.
The suspension was first ordered on Friday as a result of the company’s refusal to obey court orders requiring the removal of profiles accused of spreading disinformation and for the social network to name a local legal representative.
Over the past year Musk has removed all masks and clearly believes he can operate beyond the law. His motives are clearly to watch the world burn. He is an extremely dangerous, unpredictable and powerful man, threatening democracy across the globe.
Our governments need to protect us from him. Brazil’s being brave here, I hope they’re just the first.
No. You’re giving him too much credit and actually making it seem like mr. Musk is in any sense of the word capable of self-reflection. He is a burned out, incompetent tech-junkie and nothing but a hypeman for expensive toys someone else develops. He might be allegedly blackmailed by Russian kompromat or just plainly stupid enough to believe the propagandistic image of strong Putin/Russia. The only scary thing about him is, he never takes a fall for his numerous blunders. Yet, before first-worlders become the ones paying for his mistakes he will rest comfortably upon his dollar throne.
Be that as it may, the man has influence and it would be incredibly foolish to discount this because he’s a fucking moron. Sadly, the world is full of extremely incompetent billionaires, and they hold a shocking amount of influence over the world, whether it’s through collusion on layoffs, enforcing RTO in tandem, cutting green initiatives within a month of each other, etc.
He is a discount Tony Stark. Where he wishes he was as cool as Tony and comes up with things Tony did. But is no where even close to being that.
Some call him Phony Stark, or Lex Loser.
Money is basically a vehicle for power and this a ketamine junkie in a garbage truck speeding through every intersection in the world and daring anyone to try and stop him. At least Brazil is trying.
His motives are money and power. He is indifferent to if the world burns in the process.
He’s already got all the money and most of the power. Now his hobby is far right extremism and anarchy.
At some point accumulating more money is no longer about added utility and more like a kind of cynical game score. And musky boy is clearly chasing that high score.
That’s been said, and perhaps it has been true. But when you’re the richest man in the world by a significant margin, you have literally won at money and to remain competitive you need to move onto other things. Like the power of politics, and working to destabilise multiple countries at once.
He doesn’t have all the money. I have some money, Brazilians have money. It’s not enough to have most of the money and power if there’s more he can get.
He has more than anyone else in the history of the world. By any scale, he’s won at money.
And yet he still wants more. It’s not enough to have most of the money, he needs to have all the money.
I’m an anarchist, and Musk’s behaviour is the farthest possible thing from anarchy. Anarchism is all about working together to build a better world where everyone has all of their needs met, not being a selfish, caustic, aggressive asshole. Elon would have no chance of getting consensus to join any commune anywhere in the world. Unless there’s some insane libertarian commune somewhere.
Hmm, I was working with the classic disctionary definition which is “a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.”
But you’re right, anarchism does have that other meaning, so perhaps a better word would be “chaos”.
His actions in supporting Trump in the US, promoting hate and extermist views on X globally, and encouraging civil war in the UK do all fit a chaos agenda. That’s not about money - at least, not that I can see.
He is one of the world’s most dangerous people, however, and I don’t say that lightly. Not least because of his history of being unpredictable.
More governments should follow Brazil’s example and push back.
In fairness, it isn’t like banning one social media website (and a purveyor of misinformation and disinformation at that) will have either national security concern or threatening fundamental freedoms in Brazil. It could be why Brazil had been so bold.