On the First Day without X, Many Brazilians Say They Feel Disconnected from the World

The blocking of social media platform X in Brazil divided users and politicians over the legitimacy of the ban, and many Brazilians on Saturday had difficulty and doubts over navigating other social media in its absence.

The shutdown of Elon Musk’s platform started early Saturday, making it largely inaccessible on both the web and through mobile apps after the billionaire refused to name a legal representative to the country, missing a deadline imposed by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The blockade marks an escalation in a monthslong feud between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.

Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, with tens of millions of users.

“I've got the feeling that I have no idea what’s happening in the world right now. Bizarre,” entertainment writer and heavy X user Chico Barney wrote on Threads. Threads is a text-based app developed by Instagram that Barney was using as an alternative. “This Threads algorithm is like an all-you-can-eat restaurant where the waiter keeps serving things I would never order.”

Bluesky, a social media platform that was launched last year as an alternative to X and other more established sites, has seen a large influx of Brazilians in the past couple of days. The company said Friday it has seen about 200,000 new users from Brazil sign up during that time, and the number “continues to grow by the minute.” Brazilian users are also setting records for activities such as follows and likes, Bluesky said.

Previous users of other platforms welcomed Brazilians to their ranks. “Hello literally everyone in Brazil,” a user wrote on Threads. “We're a lot nicer than Twitter here,” said another.

Platform migration isn't new for Brazilians. They were huge adopters of Orkut and, when Orkut went kaput, they very gladly moved to other platforms.

X is not as popular in Brazil as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. However, it remains an important platform on which Brazilians engage in political debates and is highly influential among politicians, journalists and other opinion makers.

It's also where they share their sense of humor. Many of the country’s most famous memes originate from posts on X before spreading to other social networks. Last week, for instance, Brazilians collaboratively crafted an absurd storyline for a fictional telenovela, complete with a theme song created using artificial intelligence tools.

Pop stars and their fanbases were also hit by Brazilians being left off the platform.

“Wait a lot of my fan pages are Brazilian!!! Come back hold up!!,” Cardi B said Friday on X. A fan page dedicated to Timothée Chalamet, known by the handle TimotheeUpdates, said it would temporarily cease updating as all of its administrators are Brazilian.

De Moraes said X will stay suspended until it complies with his orders, and he also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access it. Some legal experts questioned the grounds for that decision and how it would be enforced. Others suggested the move was authoritarian.

The Brazilian Bar Association said Friday in a statement that it would request the Supreme Court review the fines imposed on all citizens using VPNs or other means to access X without due process. Brazil's bar association argued that sanctions should never be imposed summarily before ensuring an adversarial process and the right to full defense.

“I’ve used VPNs a lot in authoritarian countries to continue accessing news sites and social networks,” Maurício Santoro, a political science professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said on the platform before its shutdown. “It never occurred to me that this type of tool would be banned in Brazil. It’s dystopian.”

A search Friday on X showed hundreds of Brazilian users inquiring about VPNs that could potentially enable them to continue using the platform by making it appear they are logging on from outside the country.

“Tyrants want to turn Brazil into another commie dictatorship but we won’t back down. I repeat: do not vote on those who don’t respect free speech. Orwell was right,” right-wing congressman Nikolas Ferreira, one of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s closest allies, published before X went off. Musk replied with an emoji suggesting agreement: “100”.

Ferreira is a 28-year-old YouTuber who received the most votes of the 513 elected federal lawmakers in the 2022 election. De Moraes ordered the block of his social media accounts after a mob of Bolsonaro supporters attacked Brazil’s Congress, presidential palace and Supreme Court in January 2023 seeking to overturn the election.

Lawmaker Bia Kicis said “the consequences of Alexandre de Moraes’ attacks to Elon Musk, X and Starlink will be regrettable for Brazilians.” She also urged Rodrigo Pacheco, the president of the country’s Senate, to act. Kicis has repeatedly urged Pacheco to open impeachment proceedings against the Supreme Court justice.

“We need to leave this state of apathy and stop the worst from happening,” the pro-Bolsonaro lawmaker, whose profiles were temporarily blocked by de Moraes in 2022, also said.

The former president said Saturday on Instagram that X's departure from Brazil was “another blow to our freedom and legal security.”

“It not only affects our freedom of expression, but also undermines the confidence of international companies in operating on Brazilian soil, with impacts ranging from national security to the quality of the information that reaches our citizens,” Bolsonaro said.

On Friday, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva backed de Moraes’ decision and took aim at Musk for positioning himself as though he was above the law during an interview with Radio MaisPB.

“Any citizen, from anywhere in the world, who has investments in Brazil, is subject to the Brazilian Constitution and Brazilian laws. Therefore, if the Supreme Court has made a decision for citizens to comply with certain things, they either have to comply or take another course of action,” Lula said. “It’s not because the guy has a lot of money that he can disrespect it.”

Ana Júlia Alves de Oliveira, an 18-year-old student, shared that many young people like her no longer watch newscasts or read newspapers, relying solely on social media platforms like X for their news. Without this platform, she felt disconnected.

“I kind of lost touch with what’s going on around the world,” she said. “I saw a lot of entertainment there too, so this is a new reality for me.”

Generative AI tools will save companies lots of time and money, promises Vik Singh, a Microsoft vice president, even if the models must learn to admit when they just don't know what to do.
"Just to be really frank, the thing that's really missing today is that a model doesn't raise its hands and say 'Hey, I'm not sure, I need help,'" Singh told AFP in an interview.
Since last year, Microsoft, Google and their competitors have been rapidly deploying generative AI applications like ChatGPT, which produce all kinds of content on demand and give users the illusion of omniscience.
But despite progress, they still "hallucinate," or invent answers.
This is an important problem for the Copilot executive to solve: Singh's corporate customers can't afford for their AI systems to go off the rails, even occasionally.
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, this week said he saw many of his customers increasingly frustrated with the meanderings of Microsoft's Copilot.
Singh insisted that "really smart people" were trying to find ways for a chatbot to admit "when it doesn't know the right answer and to ask for help."
'Real savings'
A more humble model would be no less useful, in Singh's opinion. Even if the model has to turn to a human in 50 percent of cases, that still saves "tons of money."
At one Microsoft client, "every time a new request comes in, they spend $8 to have a customer service rep answer it, so there are real savings to be had, and it's also a better experience for the customer because they get a faster response."
Singh arrived at Microsoft in January and this summer took over as head of the teams developing "Copilot," Microsoft's AI assistant that specializes in sales, accounting and online services.
These applications have the gargantuan task of bringing in revenue and justifying the massive investments in generative AI.
At the height of the AI frenzy, start-ups driving the technology were promising systems so advanced that they would "uplift humanity," in the words of Sam Altman, head of OpenAI, which is mainly funded by Microsoft.
But for the time being, the new technology is mainly used to boost productivity, and hopefully profits.
According to Microsoft, Copilot can do research for salespeople, freeing up time to call customers. Lumen, a telecom company, "saves around $50 million a year" doing this, said Singh.
Singh's teams are working on integrating Copilot directly into the tech giant's software and making it more autonomous.
"Let's say I'm a sales rep and I have a customer call," suggested the executive. Two weeks later, the model can "nudge the rep to go follow up, or better, just go and automatically send the email on the rep's behalf because it's been approved to do so."
'First inning'
In other words, before finding a solution to global warming, AI is expected to rid humanity of boring, repetitive chores.
"We're in the first inning," Singh said. "A lot of these things are productivity based, but they obviously have huge benefits."
Will all these productivity gains translate into job losses?
Leaders of large firms, such as K Krithivasan, boss of Indian IT giant TCS, have declared that generative AI will all but wipe out call centers.
But Singh, like many Silicon Valley executives, is counting on technology to make humans more creative and even create new jobs.
He pointed to his experience at Yahoo in 2008, when a dozen editors chose the articles for the home page.
"We came up with the idea of using AI to optimize this process, and some people asked 'Oh my God, what's going to happen to the employees?'" said Singh.
The automated system made it possible to renew content more quickly, thereby increasing the number of clicks on links but also the need for new articles.
"In the end," said the executive, "we had to recruit more editors."

On the First Day without X, Many Brazilians Say They Feel Disconnected from the World