They didn't ban recommendations because they thought it was a "good idea".

They banned it to have reality comply with Brazilian electoral law which is written so that every candidate has the same amount of airtime.

It is not the job of the judiciary to determine whether a law should or shouldn't exist, but to make sure all laws are correctly enforced. Remembering this fact isn't optional.

Said differently, arguments about such decisions should revolve around whether the law says what the courts say it does or whether it was applied correctly—not whether the law should exist.

> But if I were Brazillian, I'd be immediately following all ~700 accounts (and probably unfollowing all 700 after the election).

I would certainly not, as it is most likely propagandists; these aren't interesting.

But either way, the purpose of this is to protect democracy, and by mentioning the very accounts, this could have a Streisand effect. That by itself is influencing the election, and Musk knows this. That is the purpose of his action. Musk does the same with regards to other democracies, such as AfD in Germany.

These are specifically the accounts of every registered candidate in the election (regardless of party affiliation).

if anything, I would completely unsubscribe from US-controlled social platform before the election anywhere outside US

> But if I were Brazillian, I'd be immediately following all ~700 accounts (and probably unfollowing all 700 after the election).

I wonder how many normal people actually follow political accounts like this. I follow my local government because they sometimes tweet emergency info but I don’t follow candidates at all. I don’t follow political influencers either. It’s far too noisy.

Transparency for something that was well known, reported on and legally documented?

https://nitter.net/XBR/status/2088341967864320507?s=20

DeepL:

>Starting August 16, Brazilian election law requires providers that use recommendation systems to exclude from their recommendations the official accounts of candidates registered with the Electoral Court and the posts from those accounts.

>On X, these accounts and their posts will no longer be recommended in the “For You” tab during the election period unless the user explicitly follows the account. Official candidates are not suspended, and their content will remain available on their profiles. This measure is expected to affect the visibility and reach of these profiles and their content.

>We are implementing this measure to strictly comply with TSE Resolution No. 23,610/2019. This is neither a penalty nor a change to X’s rules. We are committed to setting a new standard of transparency regarding our algorithms. Follow our work here: https://github.com/xai-org/x-algorithm

Does Bluesky have an opaque algorithm based filter?

I think it's a fair limit. Preventing social media companies from invisibly favoring any candidate seems sensible to me.

Censorship is deletion of the candidate's social media presence.

This is not censorship, and traditional media have always been forbidden from picking a candidate and promoting them in Brazil.

There are various laws in many countries that ban traditional media from straight up recommending specific candidates.

It's still called censorship when it's against a social media company.

What interests me more is that Elon has completely reversed his anti-censorship stance. He was always censoring while opining against censorship and getting sued for millions of dollars for ignoring a Brazilian censorship law. Now he's just quietly complying with Brazilian censorship law.

The posts are not being forbidden or excluded. Candidates are still free to post. It just can't be recommended in algorithmic feeds.

And those platforms are absolutely agents of American imperialism. Latin American countries in particular should be very wary of these.

Anyone sensible doesn't call this censorship. It might sound complicated if you live in a country where elections are won by who spends most money for airtime, but granting candidates equal airtime on traditional media is how it works if you want to hold normal elections. Since that can't work on algorithmic platforms where everyone sees different content, you just block their reach to avoid anyone gaming it.

Normal countries also have media silence for the day or two before the votes.

Restricting the reach of politicians is an absolute good.