The Starlink Internet Service Provider is not the same as the Internet: When the Superior Electoral Court Judge de Moraes took down the X ban
Reports indicate many Brazilian ISPs that have implemented the ban are using the technique known as “DNS filtering” to block access to X. The phone book for the internet is the domain name system. DNS queries are sent to a DNS “resolver” that does the IP address lookups, and ISPs can configure their resolvers to filter or block requests for particular websites.
If people use a tool like a VPNs they could be fined tens of thousands of reais for doing so, since the court order ban says someone could be charged up to $8,900 a day for circumvention tools.
It’s not enough to just block connections to a web platform in mobile apps, as those aren’t reliant on DNS. In Brazil, some Internet Service Providers are redirecting online traffic to a different server than the users wanted to visit, called “sinkholing.”
Brazil’s Federal Police obtained a court order for ISPs to block Telegram because it wouldn’t fully give information about users involved in Nazi group chats, as reported by the Open Observatory of Network Interference. Some large ISPs began blocking Telegram immediately. The group wrote that the block wasn’t implemented in the same way as all other ISPs in Brazil. “This suggests lack of coordination between providers, and that each ISP implemented the block autonomously.”
The Brazilian decision to block X came after a conflict between the Superior Electoral Court and Musk that resulted in the Supreme Court Justice de Moraes issuing take down orders on certain content. The ban was triggered because Musk and X refused to comply, allowing accounts that were accused of spreading hate speech to remain on the platform.
Starlink was caught in the crosshairs too: The court froze the assets of Musk’s other company, saying that it was part of the same “economic group” as X given its ownership, for possible use to pay off fines owed by X. When the block came into effect Monday, Starlink allowed its customers—over 250,000 people, according to the company— to circumvent the X ban by using its satellite internet connection. After initial resistance, Starlink backed down and said it would comply. Experts who spoke to WIRED say that increasingly, it seems that Musk has overplayed his hand.
WIRED reported how employees scrambled to avoid a legal crisis when Musk took over Twitter in 2022, just days before Brazil’s presidential runoffs. The company was served a consent decree from the judiciary, warning it that if it didn’t keep its promises to keep safeguards around the elections in place, it risked being blocked. The President of the country at that time, Jair Bolsonro, and his supporters allegedly spread misinformation about the security of the elections to cast doubt on the results. Musk had promised a rollback of the company’s existing content moderation policies, and promised a sort of “free speech absolutism” that, in practice, has let hate speech and mis- and disinformation flow freely on the platform.
Meanwhile, Musk has continued to antagonize the court. He posted an image of Moraes behind bars with an accompanying message that said, “One day, Alfonso, this picture of you in prison will be real,” and compared him to the villain of the Harry Potter books.
He has been trying to change the image of Moraes, the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, since April according to an activist with thecoalizo Direitos na Rede. “He was fully aware and he knew what the consequences would be.”
Suddenly, Musk isn’t the last of his online bravado to win a million dollars, but he has backed himself into a corner
Less than two years after he bought the company, Musk lost access to the third largest market and more than 40 million users. And despite his bravado online, he seems to have backed himself into a corner.