Brazilians are technologically savvy and good at communicating. They are also generally fiercely proud of their country, a superpower in the imperfect global south. As a dear friend I met on Twitter once told me, it’s the poorest of the richest countries and the richest of the poorest countries.
During the golden age from 2012 to 2022, relatively stubborn adult functional illiteracy rates ensured that Twitter would fall short of Facebook, Instagram, and even TikTok; In its golden age until 2022, Twitter was a veritable forum for discussion.
Twitter in Brazil is full of soccer players, journalists, YouTubers, and politicians, and it’s a place to watch the country’s politics unfold. Bolsonaro became the most popular politician.
Most national personality traits are double-edged.
The UK loves self-deprecating humor (mostly light-hearted), but it can get a little tiresome online. Brazil’s generalized approach to celebration, like the country itself, has a kind of online joie de vivre that has an enchanting charm.
Perhaps it’s the fact that many Brazilians have incredibly difficult lives outside of the internet. Among the G20 economies, only South Africa and Mexico match it in terms of inequality and murder.
Brazil’s access to the online world far exceeds its citizens’ rights in the real world. Poor Brazilians post selfies with new smartphones bought on credit, but too often they are forced to live in crime-ridden areas with no access to basic sanitation.
Of course, like Twitter elsewhere, this too can become a cesspool in its own uniquely Brazilian way. Violent images of murder, vicious gossip, boring monomania, and fake news were also part of the Brazilian Twitter experience.
After Musk finally took over in late 2022, the situation visibly changed for the worst. Until then, my follower count started to dwindle day by day, I stopped seeing the posts I wanted to see, and the linked tweets with more photos of Brazilian beaches and fried snacks got demoted, so I spent months researching them. It received more attention than the article I wrote.
“We don’t see each other[on Twitter]anymore,” a friend and fellow correspondent told me over coffee at a bakery earlier this year.
In the end, I was only able to post once a day. Like our relationships with people, our relationships with things often break down due to external factors beyond our control.
On September 7, Brazil’s Independence Day, about 45,000 pro-mask and pro-Bolsonaro supporters gathered on Calle Paulista, Sao Paulo’s main street. President Bolsonaro, wearing a gold and green Brazilian football shirt over the soundtrack, called for an “amnesty” for the Jan. 8, 2023 attack in Brazil’s capital Brasilia and called Judge Moraes a “dictator.” I called it.
Some of my friends and colleagues are using VPNs to use Twitter as a way to overcome the ban. Judge Moraes initially said VPN users would be subject to hefty fines, but quickly backtracked. Most observers agreed that it would be difficult to enforce.
Personally, I didn’t care for a VPN. Like many others in Brazil, I switched to Bluesky, a Twitter alternative with around 10 million users. I’m slowly trying to get my followers back, even if they’re not very enthusiastic.
Then, towards the end of September, there were rumors that the ban might not be in effect. While on a plane trip to the UK, I read that at my parents’ home in suburban Essex, where I had tweeted a bit as a traveller, I had been temporarily returned to Brazil, but was back in the news.
Mr. Musk had appointed a legal representative, which appeared to be coming back. But perhaps the damage has already been done. Many Brazilians I spoke to say they are now enthusiastic about BlueSky.
Back in Brazil, Twitter remains off as of this writing. It looks like it’s coming back. But who cares?
I can’t say I’m lonely now. But I think I’ll eventually start posting more elsewhere to fill the void. If it comes back, I’d be especially happy to share this article there.
Instagram is good enough for scrolling through headlines in the morning, but it’s less useful and time-consuming for communicating ideas, while Bluesky and Threads (Meta’s text-based social network) still fall short of Twitter.
My work has been published in Brazil’s top newspapers and websites, but generally a large part of my work involves explaining Brazil to foreigners. Since I don’t have access to Twitter (at least without a VPN) and there are a lot of Brazilians on BlueSky who know more about Brazil than I do, where do I stand?
If this ban continues, and indeed, as seems more likely than not, so does the decline of Twitter, it is inevitable that Brazilian journalism will suffer, and that culture and communication in general will suffer, at least in the short term. In general, it’s going to hurt until we reinvent it or find something better.
The ban was frustrating, especially for the scientific community at a time of climate crisis, in which Brazil is one of the world’s most important actors. Without the platform, Brazilian scientists would not be able to post about their research or communicate with collaborators, according to a report in Nature magazine.
Ultimately, the lesson of this ban is not the technology itself, but how humans use it. In the 2010s, a period of decentralized mass protests and failed revolutions, including in Brazil, Twitter was perhaps the most appropriate technology of the moment.
For me, the ban on Twitter in Brazil is not a free speech issue. As mentioned above, Musk has responded to requests from various countries in the past, although there was some initial resistance. Judge Moraes could certainly be accused of overreach, but in at least some cases the Twitter ban follows a familiar pattern in Brazil and the broader issue of big tech versus state sovereignty. There is. It’s just that Mr. Musk was more theatrical about it.
If this episode taught me anything, it’s that we journalists, and humans in general, are adaptable creatures who can break out of our technological habits and quickly move on. That’s it. CEOs of major technology companies would do well to remember this.