Musk is willing to censor for Turkey but not for Brazil. It’s a massive double standard. His company has major shareholders who are part of the Saudi monarchy. Twitter under Musk isn’t a company that can make any honest claim to care about democratic free speech.
He’s already suspended left-wing and Musk-critical journalists and activists without a specific TOS violation or explanation while not doing the same for anyone that aligns with his ideology.
He doesn’t have kind of the moral high ground that other companies do on these matters, e.g., the kind that Google had when they exited China.
I also think that using china’s style of censorship as an analogy to other styles of censorship is also potentially a flawed exercise. I would argue that things like Germany’s censorship of Nazi ideology is a positive for human rights and democracy. Even the USA’s prohibition of the government’s speech on the topic of religion and political speech is technically a form of censorship - self-censorship, essentially.
I could imagine a hypothetical democratic government where speech is generally free but anti-democratic ideology is not tolerated, since that speech oversteps the boundaries of free speech and crosses into a territory of speech that harms others.
In other words, a society that overcomes the paradox of tolerance.
For example, Trump has spoken of elimination of term limits, becoming a dictator for a day, and has generally advocated for political violence. Because of his rhetoric there are a large percentage of people in the USA who would end democracy entirely if it meant that their dear leader Trump was president for life rather than a member of the opposition party. In the USA the first amendment protects him, but I would argue that it should not - that a democracy that intends to survive the constant onslaught of opportunistic authoritarians should criminalize anti-democratic activity and speech.
(I am not specifically commenting on Brazil’s orders to censor people on the Twitter platform because I am not equipped with that context. I don’t know specifically who those people are, what those people said, said and whether that court order was sensible. I merely speak in philosophical hypotheticals here - and at the end of the day whether my hypotheticals are “right” or “wrong” is irrelevant in the context of Elon’s asymmetrical application of “free speech”)
Now, part of the order makes it illegal to use VPN to access Twitter, which is an actual free speech issue, if you'd care to argue on those grounds.
All the websites China bans are also ostensibly for "failing to comply with the law". Would you say those bans are also "not a free speech issue"?
This part was later struck down by the court.
The goal is absolute harmony. Especially at the expense of rights.
For me, freedom of speech is part of what brings societies forward, and that includes deep changes which obviously means unstable societies at some point.
Humans would be stuck in Stone Age if we would have had only stable societies.
I agree with you and mistyped. I really need to proof my comments better.
I think the goal is not harmony but value and beauty.
Interoperability should cover this. If the platform is barred from doing business in a given country, users should be able to download all their data and move it to another platform of their choice. People must not be made hostages of the platforms.
What about the rights of people who want to use twitter? Would you use the same characterization for Chinese censorship (ie. "The New York Times is not an fundamental right, as access to users isn't a right to [The New York Times Company]")?