The IT Nerd

Well this didn’t take long.

After I posted a story that detailed the fact that Elon Musk owned Starlink wasn’t blocking Twitter which is also owned by Elon Musk in Brazil as per the Brazilian courts, they have flipped flopped and are now blocking Twitter in Brazil:

“Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing of our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil,” Starlink, which has more than 200,000 customers in the Latin American nation, said in a post on X.

This is one of these times where I will default to being skeptical. Starlink is blocking Twitter for now, but at some point Elon’s going to get ticked off and demand that they undo that because of his rather perverse version of free speech that he is a fanboy of. Then it’s all going to kick off with the Brazilians. And I strongly suspect that Elon will come out on the losing end when that happens.

I’ll go get the popcorn ready.

So the last time I checked in the fight between Elon Musk and Brazil, the latter had banned Brazil in the country. As part of that, every telco operating in the country had to block access to Twitter. But one telco hasn’t. And surprise, surprise it’s Starlink which is owned by Elon Musk:

Internet providers and app stores servicing Brazil have until Wednesday to comply with the ban, The Verge reports. But over the weekend, Musk’s Starlinkinternet service reportedly told Anatel, Brazil’s telecom agency, that it won’t block X on its network. Starlink has about 250,000 users in Brazil, though not all of those customers necessarily use X. Brazilian legal news outlet JOTA reports that most Brazilians are not currently able to access X, but not all Brazilian internet providers have blocked the platform as of Monday.

We’re going to get to Wednesday and Elon is likely to find out that something really bad is going to happen to Starlink. The Brazilian government has already seized their assets. So it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to imagine that they’d go further. And what then? Does Elon escalate this further? Is he really willing to die on this hill? Perhaps he will because he’s afraid of other nations blocking Twitter. Tune in tomorrow to see if that’s the case.

This is perhaps some good news for Elon Musk in regards to his antics resulting in Twitter getting banned in Brazil. The VPN Mentor research team conducted an analysis of user demand data in Brazil after X’s ban in the country, and they detected a surge of 1600% in VPN demand. This got the attention of Elon:

You can read more about this surge here: https://www.vpnmentor.com/news/vpn-surge-brazil/

However, I should point out that as I mentioned here, people or businesses using means such as VPNs to access Twitter could be fined $12,000 CAD for doing so. Thus this may be short lived.

Elon has been playing games with Brazil for a while now. Now he may be reconsidering his life choices as Twitter is now officially banned in Brazil:

Brazil’s supreme court just declared that social media site X will be banned and shut down within 24 hours. 

Minister Alexandre de Moraes of Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court (STF) made the decision and the announcement. The National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) still has to carry out the measure. They were given 24 hours to remove access to the website.

Phone stores and platforms were given just five days to remove the app. 

I haven’t seen anything on Elon’s Twitter feed reacting to this. But it’s a safe bet he will flip out in some way that is not appropriate and will only make the situation worse for him.

I for one am happy that Brazil is standing up to Elon. He to be frank is finding out what happens when he behaves badly.

Well, this should be interesting. You might recall that I posted a story about Brazil threatening to ban Twitter in the country after Elon Musk defied a court order by reinstating accounts that were previously banned. Well, fast forward to today and we get this via Reuters:

A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Wednesday ordered billionaire Elon Musk to name a legal representative for his messaging platform X in Brazil within 24 hours or face the site’s suspension in the country.

That brings me to the other part of this story. Elon decided to pull Twitter staff out of the country in retaliation for what the court ordered him to do. But the service was still available to Brazilians. Though it appears that by later tonight, that won’t be the case.

Here’s how Elon Musk responded to this development:

And this was spotted by a Twitter user:

Elon really don’t get it does he.

This sort of juvenile BS really does little if anything to help his cause. I can easily see a scenario where Brazil not only follow through on their threat to ban Twitter in the country, but they also decide to go after Elon himself. Sooner or later his antics will catch up to him, and he will find out what accountability looks like.

Elon Musk has been sued again. I guess he likes being sued or something. In any case he’s being sued for stiffing a company named Wiwynn for stiffing them for $120 million in server parts:

Taiwanese tech firm Wiwynn is suing the social media giant formerly known as Twitter for $61 million over claims it refused to pay for around $120 million in server parts after Musk took over in 2022.

It adds to the avalanche of lawsuits Musk is still facing over his takeover of X, with numerous former executives also suing the billionaire over millions in unpaid severance.

According to the complaint, filed in the Northern District Court of California last week, Wiwynn claims the company violated a 2014 purchasing agreement to provide Twitter with custom IT products.

The Taiwanese firm says that in November 2022, shortly after Musk dramatically took over the social media giant, Twitter “abruptly stopped” making any payments to Wiwynn and failed to respond to Wiwynn’s request for payment for completed products.

The complaint also says that Wiwynn, which makes servers and storage systems for data centers and cloud providers, had amassed $120 million worth of parts to fulfill Twitter’s existing orders, under the assumption that Twitter had taken liability for them.

You have to wonder why Elon thinks that being continuously sued is a great business strategy. The legal bills alone must be insanely expensive. And factoring in the fact that Twitter is bleeding cash and Elon is likely going to sell Tesla stock to finance Twitter, this seems like a #fail from a strategy perspective. But Elon isn’t known for being smart. Thus I guess that he’s okay with this.

A Reuters story lays out the pain and suffering that banks who were dumb enough to lend Elon Musk money to buy Twitter are going through. Here’s the reason why they are suffering:

Banks typically sell such loans to investors at the time of the deal. But Twitter’s lenders, led by Morgan Stanley, could face billions of dollars in losses if they tried to do so now, as investors shy away from buying risky debt during a period of economic uncertainty, market participants said. In addition, Twitter has seen advertisers flee amid worries about Musk’s approach to policing tweets, hitting revenues and its ability to pay the interest on the debt.

The biggest chunk of the debt — $10 billion worth of loans secured by Twitter’s assets — might have to be written down by as much as 20%, one of the sources said. The hit on the loan, distributed among seven banks, could probably be managed by most of the firms without creating a significant hit to profits, the source added.

Another one of the three sources with direct knowledge of the matter estimated that some banks might only take a 5% to 10% writedown on the secured portion of the loan.

The deliberations of how some of these banks are thinking about accounting for these losses have not been previously reported. They come as Wall Street banks are bracing for lower fourth-quarter earnings due to a slump in investment banking revenue and a rise in loan-loss reserves amid a weakening global economy.

Three banking industry sources said the remaining $3 billion, which is unsecured, could lead to steeper losses for the seven Twitter banks. Reuters could not determine how much the banks were planning to write down the unsecured portion of the debt.

The thing is that banks don’t like to lose money. So if it hasn’t happened already, the banks will want Elon to restructure this debt so that the banks lose less money. That ties into the fact that he might have to sell more Tesla stock to keep the banks happy. It will be interesting for those who watch the dumpster fire that is Twitter and the dumpster fire that is Tesla to see what happens next.

VPN Mentor just published a research concerning an increase of VPN demand in Brazil, which is directly tied to Elon Musk doing Elon Musk things. Specifically closing Twitter’s operations in Brazil rather than obey a court order.

What’s interesting about this is two things. First is this:

Earlier this year, Moraes opened a criminal inquiry into Elon Musk after X’s owner said he would defy a court order by lifting restrictions on designated accounts. Then the company seemed to reverse course and said it would block the accounts after all.

But of course, Elon being anything but an honest broker has decided to flip Moraes off instead and stop operating in the country instead of obeying this order. That’s brings us to VPN Mentor’s observations. Despite Twitter still being still available in the country, VPN Mentor conducted an analysis of user demand data in Brazil after Musk announced closing Twitter’s operations in the country, and they observed a surge of 151% in VPN demand. Which is I guess based on people’s fears that either Elon will keep Twitter from being available in Brazil, or the government might block it.

You will find all the details to VPN Mentor’s findings here: https://www.vpnmentor.com/news/vpn-demand-surge-brazil/