why do X and SpaceX comingle assets and feuds like this? if I were a SpaceX shareholder, I'd be concerned about my CEO's misadventures with a separate company negatively impacting SpaceX's future plans for the South American spacefaring market (whether or not it currently exists).
FYI SpaceX and Starlink were not involved in this feud at all until the judge froze Starlink's bank account just for the connection to Elon. In reality the one that decided to involve SpaceX was the judge.
My understanding was SpaceX were operating as an ISP in the country of Brazil, and refusing to comply with the ruling to block X.com within the country of Brazil.
Ideological grounds are a great reason to risk exposure to multiple assets. Musk should use any power at his disposal to resist government censorship. (This is not a statement about Musk's general attitude towards censorship, which is extremely circumstantial)
Musk needs to set expectations around Starlink now regarding censorship and unwarranted, broad-scope data requests. If he doesn't, then one of the most important wins of non-terrestrial, NGO-provided internet will be taken away. The war for a fair and free internet rages on, shareholders be damned.
Overgeneralization does no good here; I specifically shaped the conversation around censorship resistance, which is a net win for humanity. This isn't a conversation about allowing supranational companies free reign to do anything they want.
I am all for both individuals and organizations resisting governmental attempts to restrict freedom beyond what is absolutely necessary for a relatively safe and functioning society. If suddenly that individual or organization acts in an authoritarian or antisocial manner, I no longer support it.
This is the eternal battle. How much should a government control? How much control should people have over their government? What are the limits of collectivized resistance? Etc, etc. Obviously, Starlink has profit motives, but to say the company isn't built on ideology wouldn't paint the full picture; I absolutely want ISPs fighting for net neutrality and censorship resistance.
See, ultimately, it should be such that if the government allows something, it's because the people have allowed it. So in an ideal society, all anti-government behavior would be antisocial behavior as well. Unfortunately, that's not the reality we face. Collectivized resistance against overreaching governments is crucial in order to secure our free future.
That's a rather libertarian point of view. That's fine, I have no issue with that, but it's far from mainstream.
Any business or organization absolutely must work in the confines of a legal system. It's there to protect me and a lawful, ordered society. This whole "censorship is the worst thing ever" view is to me fatally flawed. Human rights are clearly somewhat hierarchical. The right to be protected from genocidal propaganda, for example, sits above absolute freedom of speech, in my books.
Besides, as many people point out, Musk has no issue censoring people himself on his platform. He only takes an issue when it's someone else.
I'm not libertarian, nor is advocating for the balancing of individual and collective rights a libertarian point of view.
> Any business or organization absolutely must work in the confines of a legal system.
Strict adherence to this policy effectively bans any meaningful collectivized resistance to the authoritarian ratchet. It traps large groups of people into adhering to autocratic policy in order to protect their livelihood.
You can see this as international businessmen refusing to call Taiwan a country, or individual workers being unable to enact effective resistance due to corporate policy that only exists a matter of governmental policy; for example, programming backdoors into websites.
> censorship is the worst thing ever
I know you're arguing in good faith, but I want to point out that this is a straw man; I specifically mentioned the importance of balance.
I totally agree that the ability for an organization to blast propaganda into another territory is quite the double-edged sword. I love the idea of sparking revolt among the most locked down authoritarian regimes, but I also don't want authoritarian regimes mind-controlling those around me into making decisions which harm everyone in the long run. What a hard problem to solve.
I think we can agree however that an individual should be able to access whatever information they please, provided it is available somewhere else and does not lead to harm. You can make a case for restricting access to CSAM, snuff, restricted nuclear technology specifications, etc. but it's pretty clear-cut that access to a social media platform is an individual right. It's a net good that Starlink initially attempted to resist this judge, even if there are implied edge cases which need to be considered carefully.
> No less, beaming unstoppable propaganda from space.
That's not a capability of the service, and implementing it in the first place would require interfering in DNS requests, which in practice doesn't work because of the inability to get a CA to sign the certificates of the spoofed sites.
Don't fear monger when there is no risk of something happening.
> Ideological grounds are a great reason to risk exposure to multiple assets. Musk should use any power at his disposal to resist government censorship.
Did you completely gloss over the very next statement wherein I admonished Musk's circumstantial and inconsistent ideology/attitude towards censorship?
The judge froze Starlink's bank account because Elon refused to comply with a legal order given to SpaceX by the Brazilian government to block X. Agree with it or not, it's something that is legally required of ISPs operating inside of Brazil. Elon Musk refused on "free speech" grounds, and they retaliated.
He's now complying and blocking X to Starlink customers in Brazil.
> if I were a SpaceX shareholder, I'd be concerned about my CEO's misadventures
I think the actual answer is that if you invest into Musk companies you do it because of Musk. So you will do and okay whatever makes Musk happy because him being there is what makes the stock do the things the stock does (or anticipation of future stock/IPO performance).
I invest in Tesla because I think it's a great product with a positive vision of the future. I do wish Musk was more measured but my opinion of him doesn't affect my opinion that electric cars are good, Tesla makes the best and has proven their ability to scale.
Leading up to the votes for the move out of Delaware it became pretty clear how significant parts of the non institutional investors are rallying behind Musk. I don't think I have ever seen such a frenzy getting people to go for a proxy vote. That is not happening because Tesla is great, that's happening because there was a real worry about what Musk would do.
I don't know for sure, but if I were to guess I would say a not insignificant part of Tesla's market prices is Musk himself.
I actually think Musk could go away and if you had a similarly driven CEO, with the same vision as him but without any public political opinions, the stock would actually go up.
Alternatively, nobody competent would take the job because the valuation is so far out of line that anyone who does not have a cult following who seem to believe FSD will work by the end of this year, for sure, and that the robot is not a joke, will end up being blamed for TSLA being valued in line with similar sized car companies instead of having a P/E ratio 10X that of Toyota. It's not exactly Enron but it rhymes.
Honestly, agreed. The most interesting and valuable parts of Tesla are the parts that Musk is uninvolved and uninterested in. Take the supercharger network for example. That could have been a gateway to complete market domination by Tesla, and Musk threw the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity away because it wasn’t shiny and chrome enough for him.
> why do X and SpaceX comingle assets and feuds like this?
My understanding of the case, from reading the original orders from the judge, is not that their assets are comingled, but rather that both are under direct control of Elon Musk (him being the majority owner of both SpaceX and Twitter), and therefore form a single "economic group". AFAIK, there are some situations in which the law allows going for assets of other companies in the same economic group, and that seems to be what happened here: Twitter did not have enough assets to pay the fines, so assets from the rest of the economic group have been frozen to ensure the fines will be paid.
"O grupo econômico de fato liderado por ELON MUSK, com atuação em território nacional, engloba entre outras empresas a X BRASIL INTERNET LTDA, a STARLINK BRAZIL SERVIÇOS DE INTERNET e a STARLINK BRAZIL HOLDING LTDA, diretamente ligadas à SPACE EXPLORATION HOLDINGS, LLC, cujo controle acionário é de ELON MUSK, que detém 50,5% de suas ações, sendo que 78,7% das ações com direito a voto lhe pertencem, conforme demonstrado no comunicado da Federals Comunications Comission, obtido no endereço eletrônico [...]"
Though it's possible that the judge and you are looking at different companies; you might be looking at the USA company, while the judge might be looking at a separate holding company which is the parent of the Brazilian companies.
> Elon Musk's satellite broadband firm, Starlink, on Tuesday said that it is complying with Brazil's top court order to block access to social media platform X in the country, a day after informing the country's regulator it would not obey the order.
TFA is paywalled so I can't read it, but from what I understand SpaceX got pulled in because they wouldn't block X for Starlink customers in Brazil, not because of commingling of assets. The judge then penalized SpaceX and the snowball rolled from there.
