He said the thing that Canada, Greenland, Cuba, and various other countries are worried about, but is either publicly ignored in the US or dismissed as "trolling" by the president.
Isn’t Brazil the country where the gov’t told X to censor their opposition a week ago?
Also, isn’t Facebook the same place that people said “when it’s a private company it’s not censorship” when it came to Covid and other contentious issues that were censored at the request of Biden “embeds” in Twitter, FB and other social media?
Facebook election interference has been going on for a long time in Europe. It's a two-tier system where parties outside the establishment have a far lower ban-threshold.
During Covid I was told that when Meta censors speech it’s not censorship because it’s a private company -despite much of the contentious censorship at that time being precipitated by Biden admin “embeds”?
the pay-to-play claim is wrong, the issue is the ban threshold itself, post certain topics from the "wrong" political side and you get banned almost instantly, the same ideas posted repeatedly from the other prefered side of the us gov face no consequences on especially meta and twitter
In this case, the unelected leadership of Facebook is apparently censoring the free speech of a political candidate.
I don't really know anything about Lula (I wouldn't have known this was Brazil if it wasn't explicitly mentioned, I only know from the Wikipedia page 30 seconds ago that their full name is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and "Lula" is a nickname), so I can't say if they're "fine" or "evil", but one does not simply get to disregard the implications of censorship (of anyone, let alone a political party) when it happens to be done by a private corporation.
Especially when it's a foreign private corporation that's already deeply suspicious for political interference in multiple nations, as Meta is.
It feels like your treat the facebook as some common good, and censorship made by it thus preposterous, something which should be punished
But it's a multimillion dollar corporation in a foreign country, to me the idea they owe you something is strange
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Governments are still more powerful than corporations, this is why I am more afraid of the censorship of the internet by governments than of it by corporations
"Governments are still more powerful than corporations" at this point i would not be so sure anymore. especially when some of corporations have full weight of us goverment behind them.
> In this case, the unelected leadership of Facebook is apparently censoring the free speech of a political candidate.
Free speech only applies to the government. A private corporation has the right to restrict speech on their own platform at their discretion.
Or at least that's what I was told every time an online platform censored the right in the past. Is it suddenly different now that the shoe's on the other foot?
You’re conflating the first amendment with free speech generally. They are different (related) concepts. The person you’re replying to did not appeal to the first amendment.
You don't need to censor access to the platform itself. Just declare the group for what it is: a criminal cartel. Then just make it illegal to do business with criminal organizations: no Brazilian ads on Facebook anymore.
And their size puts them in a different class. If a foreign entity has effective powers that make it similar in some ways to a foreign state, it makes sense to treat it as such.
Not supporting the idea, but this feels like the traditional technical details vs practical real world solution.
Rather than banning individuals right to access a site, and then playing technical whackamole, you make that company's ability to operate in a country illegal. this puts the incentives and the technical onus where it belongs.
Again not saying they should or I support the notion of banning a site. Just that there are practical legislative solutions.
The platform want to be both just neutral platforms and police content. This is ridiculous. Either be liable for the rape threats or don’t interfere at all.
Didn't t Brazil also ban discord screen sharing and camera?
I often use Study Together which is a large discord server (50k users online) for folks to work and study in groups/body doubles, but someone told me a lot of Brazilians have to use VPN to circumvent the ban.
Private companies are censoring the internet right now to interfere with democracy.
This ideological fear of democratic structures ignores the very real threat of autocratic, privately owned structures consolidating more and more power.
The only viable counterweight to corporate power is public power.
Even less good comes out of corpos doing it, yet we accept it as the status quo. The ubiquity and totalitarian control exerted by the big platforms is something even the media moguls of the 90s couldn't even dream of.
Yes, this would be a better outcome. Or at least make it illegal for politicians to use facebook / TikTok
From where I am, one third of politicians in recent elections have tiktok. It's a shame, everyone knows about human rights violation in China but the european politicians have no issues with using tiktok.
But something good comes out of facebook being able to censor the internet?
Its like throwing a grenade into a goverment building and being surprised that the government now wants to prosecute you. It is a fair prosecution based on actions in that case.
Banning facebook might actually be a moral good for the internet but that's my personal opinion.
What you call "leaching" we call "comparative advantage" on good days, and "dear god just ban it all already" on bad days.
What you call "I mean seriously aside from Airbus and ASML wtf even goes on over there in terms of actual technological development", Trump calls "a trade deficit" and tries to stop.
(The "deficit" becomes almost, not perfectly but relatively, neutral if you include the digital stuff like FB).
That’s my point. The Europeans heavily rely on America for all sorts of shit, but all the Europeans do is whine and complain about literally everything. I’m no trump or Facebook/zuckerberg fan, nor do I even live in America.
But it’s actually laughable how much the Europeans complain about the Americans/American big tech while at the same time inventing no alternatives themselves and in fact relying on America for a whole host of shit, notably their defence. AI is another great example where the Europeans won’t cease complaining but don’t have and apparently won’t have a single frontier model of their own. Mistral is the best they’ve got lol.
Europeans love to berate and criticise others for building something but won’t build it themselves (and they still use what’s being built in the end).
Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
> But it’s actually laughable how much the Europeans complain about the Americans/American big tech while at the same time inventing no alternatives themselves and in fact relying on America for a whole host of shit, notably their defence. AI is another great example where the Europeans won’t stfu with their whining but don’t have and apparently won’t have a single frontier model of their own. Mistral is the best they’ve got lol.
That's like criticising people for complaining about cigarettes when they don't even have their own cigarette companies.
> Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
No it’s not. There are several European efforts to develop AI, they just aren’t good at it and it isn’t anywhere near frontier level. The analogy is that the Europeans are trying to make their own cigarettes but can’t do it as well as the cigarette makers they are criticising and fining constantly.
Actually, elections in Brazil are highly regulated and rules are enforced in the name of fairness. If Meta/Facebook want to keep serving the Brazilian public, they need to abide by local laws.
Brazil is not a "little corporation with a fancy flag". Brazil is a democratic republic. The largest in Latin America, and one of the largest in the world.
You are conflating the (insignificant) entity that controls the Brazilian state with the 214 million people that live on the territory of Brazil, so yes, some degree of misunderstanding.
That entity is the democratic representation of those two hundred million people. What you are suggesting is nothing less than colonial disenfranchisement of Latin America. I guess it wouldn't be the first time?
A more accurate headline would be 'temporarily blocked' given the first line below the heading is 'The page is now back online' and it seems to have been brought back online the same day.
In the same way USA is realising “holy crap all our stuff is made in China”, every non-US company is realising “holy crap, all our news and information runs through a couple of American web sites”
Yes this looks like a overly enthusiastic attempt to block disinformation during an election (a good thing, and also LuLa will be sailing close to that line if not over it)
But Brazils most famous election candidate just booked his whole campaign on Facebook. I bet he prints the flyers in Brazil, I bet he speaks on Brazilian TV and radio, appears on Brazilian podcasts, but the globalisation race means he has to use American social media.
The only response is going to be Balkanisation or ending curation by algorithm.
There is no win here. In Europe they simply quit the political advertisement business and simply don't do political ads. Such clear rules work much better. No politics or any politics, free speech etc. Of course nobody really wants free speech. Only free speech for the "correct" side and silence the "dangerous" other side. It's always like that. So then it becomes a game of blaming social media either way. "They allow too much propaganda for Bad Party A! This is misinformation and election interference!" "They banned my preferred Good Party A (same party)! This is censorship and election interference!"
There are no easy answers here, and every side just wants social media to support their side and suppress the others.
I guess the challenge comes in even defining "political" ads. Is an ad about expensive gas prices or egg prices political? Unless you put such a huge ring fence around any topics of economy, immigration, law, crime, etc; I can think of a number of effective messages that aren't inherently political, but would activate an audience aligned with a political affiliation.
Yes, but it puts friction on it. Perfect vs good etc.
For example, you can't advertise overtly for political candidates or parties. You can't advertise if you are a political party or an org that has candidates for election. Of course they will then use supposedly independent orgs who are totally not affiliated with the party, but again it's some friction.
In Hungary, since Fb banned political ads in the EU, the previous governing party had a much harder time in advertising themselves, they tried but didn't manage to go around the rules at scale.
> defining "political" ads
Yes, and people will also complain that you now suppress serious conversations about people's lives and want them to live in some rose tinted walled garden where they can only post wholesome sanitized corporate friendly content etc.
And anyway in the last decade or more, there was a big push to say that "everything is political", you must always speak up for your ideas even in unrelated venues and spaces, etc., so yes it becomes very hard to delineate this because again, realistically, the problem is not political vs not political but my side vs their side.
And also you can masquerade political ads as ads for a newspaper article, for example: "Governor A opens a new school" or "Party A declares amazing plans for next 5 years" (actually done here by ruling party, to work around election ad laws and limitations).
Remember when Facebook was a nice place to talk to your friends,and not an arm of the American state whipping up hatred, spreading misinformation, and interfering with elections?
To those who work there, I'd be fascinated to hear an explanation that isn't about dollars.
- Meta didn't block their page, they blocked their Ad account.
- The account has been reestablished already
This was probably because their campaign shipped complete misinformation about the opposing candidate (with several profiles boosting the same misinformation) but when they do it, that's cool, right?
I mean by all means ban Meta everywhere, but this is a Reddit post linking to a substack post that’s a republish of a heavily politicized new source, and fails to mention the page was restored the same day, and also fails the very basic journalist standard of approaching Meta for comment, so I think we can do a little better here?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/25/lula-says-trum...
Also, isn’t Facebook the same place that people said “when it’s a private company it’s not censorship” when it came to Covid and other contentious issues that were censored at the request of Biden “embeds” in Twitter, FB and other social media?
I don't really know anything about Lula (I wouldn't have known this was Brazil if it wasn't explicitly mentioned, I only know from the Wikipedia page 30 seconds ago that their full name is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and "Lula" is a nickname), so I can't say if they're "fine" or "evil", but one does not simply get to disregard the implications of censorship (of anyone, let alone a political party) when it happens to be done by a private corporation.
Especially when it's a foreign private corporation that's already deeply suspicious for political interference in multiple nations, as Meta is.
But it's a multimillion dollar corporation in a foreign country, to me the idea they owe you something is strange
---
Governments are still more powerful than corporations, this is why I am more afraid of the censorship of the internet by governments than of it by corporations
Free speech only applies to the government. A private corporation has the right to restrict speech on their own platform at their discretion.
Or at least that's what I was told every time an online platform censored the right in the past. Is it suddenly different now that the shoe's on the other foot?
First of all, nothing good has ever come out of meta.
Secondly, restricting election interference seems like an unalloyed positive.
Rather than banning individuals right to access a site, and then playing technical whackamole, you make that company's ability to operate in a country illegal. this puts the incentives and the technical onus where it belongs.
Again not saying they should or I support the notion of banning a site. Just that there are practical legislative solutions.
I often use Study Together which is a large discord server (50k users online) for folks to work and study in groups/body doubles, but someone told me a lot of Brazilians have to use VPN to circumvent the ban.
https://www.studytogether.com/discord
This ideological fear of democratic structures ignores the very real threat of autocratic, privately owned structures consolidating more and more power.
The only viable counterweight to corporate power is public power.
And it wasn't that long ago.
From where I am, one third of politicians in recent elections have tiktok. It's a shame, everyone knows about human rights violation in China but the european politicians have no issues with using tiktok.
Its like throwing a grenade into a goverment building and being surprised that the government now wants to prosecute you. It is a fair prosecution based on actions in that case.
Banning facebook might actually be a moral good for the internet but that's my personal opinion.
What you call "I mean seriously aside from Airbus and ASML wtf even goes on over there in terms of actual technological development", Trump calls "a trade deficit" and tries to stop.
(The "deficit" becomes almost, not perfectly but relatively, neutral if you include the digital stuff like FB).
If the social networks provide no value then ban them. And if they do but they are so harmful then create your own.
A tri polar world technologically would be great.
https://xkcd.com/793/
AKA everything looks easy when it isn't your field.
But it’s actually laughable how much the Europeans complain about the Americans/American big tech while at the same time inventing no alternatives themselves and in fact relying on America for a whole host of shit, notably their defence. AI is another great example where the Europeans won’t cease complaining but don’t have and apparently won’t have a single frontier model of their own. Mistral is the best they’ve got lol.
Europeans love to berate and criticise others for building something but won’t build it themselves (and they still use what’s being built in the end).
Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
That's like criticising people for complaining about cigarettes when they don't even have their own cigarette companies.
> Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
That would be stuff like this, in order to give the legal cover needed to resist counterclaims by the USA: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-se...
Brazil is not a "little corporation with a fancy flag". Brazil is a democratic republic. The largest in Latin America, and one of the largest in the world.
Do I misunderstand, or are you calling Brazil, the nation whose population is around 214 million, a "little corporation"?
Apologies for the crude joke, but 9 out of 10 people enjoy a gang rape.
"Democracy", whatever its shape, is just a consensus mechanism, not a representation of people. I don't see what this has to do with colonialism.
My advice is to look carefully at the brand of propaganda you consume, it might not benefit you personally.
If you become something like public infrastructure you have to act like one or reduce your importance
But this case is something else entirely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
Yes this looks like a overly enthusiastic attempt to block disinformation during an election (a good thing, and also LuLa will be sailing close to that line if not over it)
But Brazils most famous election candidate just booked his whole campaign on Facebook. I bet he prints the flyers in Brazil, I bet he speaks on Brazilian TV and radio, appears on Brazilian podcasts, but the globalisation race means he has to use American social media.
The only response is going to be Balkanisation or ending curation by algorithm.
Interesting
Evil always finds new acolytes.
There are no easy answers here, and every side just wants social media to support their side and suppress the others.
For example, you can't advertise overtly for political candidates or parties. You can't advertise if you are a political party or an org that has candidates for election. Of course they will then use supposedly independent orgs who are totally not affiliated with the party, but again it's some friction.
In Hungary, since Fb banned political ads in the EU, the previous governing party had a much harder time in advertising themselves, they tried but didn't manage to go around the rules at scale.
> defining "political" ads
Yes, and people will also complain that you now suppress serious conversations about people's lives and want them to live in some rose tinted walled garden where they can only post wholesome sanitized corporate friendly content etc.
And anyway in the last decade or more, there was a big push to say that "everything is political", you must always speak up for your ideas even in unrelated venues and spaces, etc., so yes it becomes very hard to delineate this because again, realistically, the problem is not political vs not political but my side vs their side.
Anyone familiar, to comment?
Zuck famously said, of his users: "dumb fucks".
To those who work there, I'd be fascinated to hear an explanation that isn't about dollars.
- Meta didn't block their page, they blocked their Ad account.
- The account has been reestablished already
This was probably because their campaign shipped complete misinformation about the opposing candidate (with several profiles boosting the same misinformation) but when they do it, that's cool, right?
This would be better, but I guess less anger-tormenting and also you’ll need to translate it yourself: https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/politica/noticia/2026-09/me...
Lula is against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Zuck blocks his entire campaign page.
I wonder why?