Against Censorship and Its Academic Supporters
No one should prize the free exchange of ideas more than academics, whose entire purpose is to develop, challenge, and improve ideas. Endorsing state control of pub- lic discourse through the censorship of political opponents should be anathema to any defender of democracy. We are thus dismayed by the public letter “Against Big Tech’s Attack on Digital Sovereignties,” signed by many notable academics, including Daron Acemoglu and Thomas Piketty.
Although the letter mentions “Big Techs” in general, it singles out Elon Musk’s X as an “instance in a wider effort to restrict” Brazil’s (and other nations’) “digital developmental agenda”. We attempt to understand what this means, but first it is worth reviewing the facts.
Brazil’s law establishes that any judicial order to remove content from a social platform must specify what content is to be removed (Law 12.965, Art. 19, §1). The law also affirms the constitutional protection of free speech (Art. 5, IV, IX, and Art. 220
§2). Nevertheless, Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the suspension of the accounts of influencers, journalists and even members of Congress, all of whom were critics of the current president. X complied with these orders until April 2024, when Elon Musk stated this would violate laws in Brazil. Moraes’s threats of fines and the jailing of X’s legal representative lead X to close its office in Brazil. Moraes ordered the suspension of X for all Brazilians along with the seizure of Starlink’s assets to cover the fines he imposed. Note that Starlink is a separate company, with no connection to X besides the fact that Elon Musk is a shareholder in both. A report by the U.S. Congress found that “Moraes ordered the censorship of a Brazilian citizen for criticizing Moraes for censoring Brazilians” (p. 5).However, instead of siding with X, the law, and Brazilians’ freedom of expression, the academics’ letter condemns Elon Musk for providing the only digital platform in Brazil that refused to censor speech deemed undesirable by some public officials. It seems the signatories believe that governments should be able to decide what their citizens can and cannot hear, and use all their might to silence criticism — essentially endorsing
authoritarianism.