Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024. I'm Brian McCulloch today. We missed a pretty big story this weekend. X, getting banned in Brazil. I'll try to catch you up on all the contours of that. Canvas raising prices and it's pissing people off because I mean they're really raising prices. And the two pretty big success stories in crypto this year that we haven't spoken about yet. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.
Hey, so the big story we missed over the weekend was that the country of Brazil blocked X, formerly known as Twitter, following an order from Brazilian Supreme Court Justice, Alexander Demoreus after Elon Musk refused to name a legal representative in that country. Originally, the order from the judge required Apple and Google to prevent downloads of VPN apps in Brazil in order to make sure no one could access X in Brazil.
The part of that order has been amended so that now VPNs are still allowed. But what has not changed is that anyone using a VPN to access X faces the equivalent of $9,000 a day in fines. Blue Sky has reported a record spike in usage as many X users in Brazil move to Blue Sky and Threads as an alternative. Brazil, by the way, is X's fifth largest international market with more than 20 million users.
Starlink, which has 250,000 customers in Brazil, told Brazil's telecom agency that it would not comply with orders to block X on that service, which I'm noting because quoting the times that smooth illustrates the sheer power of Mr. Musque and his business empire having built or bought leading companies with increasing control over how people connect and communicate Mr. Musque is trying to leverage that influence to confront authorities and challenge laws he does not like.
The judge had frozen Starlink assets in Brazil in an attempt to collect on $3 million in fines that he had imposed on X since Elon owns Starlink he was trying to get the money that way, I guess, via Starlink. The thing is satellite internet is kind of difficult to shut off or block because well, you know, calculate the angles there. So that's the summary, but since we're late to all of this, I'm going to cut straight to the framing of both sides of this controversy.
On the one hand, you have well companies usually try to comply with the legal jurisdictions of the countries they do business in. If the law of the land says you have to do things to certain accounts like block them, you have to or you risk running a foul of the law.
If you don't name a legal representative in a country, you risk them banning you, but you know, free speech, except I think there are other countries where X has complied with court orders to ban accounts when the governments in those countries ask them to. The difference here potentially is that those other countries which X did a seed to banning requests had what people consider to be right leaning governments while Brazil currently has what people consider to be a left leaning government.
At the same time though, the other side is you have this one judge in Brazil, a Xander Day Morayas making these rulings almost unilaterally. And even some supporters of this judge's past rulings wonder if he's maybe gotten too powerful gone too far by banning X. This is quoting a venue called America's quarterly quote.
Xander Day Morayas might be the second most powerful person in Brazil. He does not quite have the reach of the president, but as a judge on the Supreme Court until recently the president of the electoral court, and especially as head of two sprawling investigations against groups spreading disinformation, Morayas has wielded a rare combination of judicial powers.
He has unilaterally handed out fines ordered arrests, social media bans and other sanctions, and even acted as an investigator and judge at once. Morayas 55 has used those powers prolifically, including against several members of the right wing opposition to Louise and acio Lula, desilvas government. Brazilian conservatives have long contended he is abusing his power, but Zandeo, big Alex as he is semi jokingly called by supporters and detractors alike.
Earn the gratitude of many members of Brazil's political establishment who believed his actions were fundamental to defending democracy during and after former president Bolsonaro's tumultuous 2018 through 2022 presidency.
Now that goodwill is being put to the test. It's clear he's pushing the limits said, Conrado Hubener, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sao Paulo and columnist at Fulha, there's no precedent nothing remotely similar to having a minister leading investigations that almost become permanent institutions he said and quote.
Now a majority of Brazilian judges on the Supreme Court or at least a Supreme Court panel in Brazil have subsequently voted to confirm the order to ban X and Brazil and find those who don't comply with it by using a VPN so that maybe give some cover to the idea that this isn't just one road judge.
This is maybe sort of the force of law because all five judges on the panel voted for this. It was unanimous. However, the New York Times took a deeper look at the judge and how this experiment in fighting fake news led to where we are now.
As Brazil grappled with a flood of online disinformation around its 2022 presidential election, the nation's Supreme Court made an unusual unfaithful decision. It gave one justice sweeping powers to order social networks to take down content he believed threatened democracy.
That justice, Alexandra de Morayas, has since carried out an aggressive campaign to clean up his country's internet, forcing social networks to pull down thousands of posts, often giving them a deadline of just hours to comply.
It was in one of the most comprehensive and in some ways most effective efforts to combat the scourge of internet falsehoods. When his online crackdown helped stifle far right efforts to overturn Brazil's election, academics and commentators wondered whether the nation had found a possible solution to one of the most vexing problems of modern democracy.
Then on Friday, Justice Morayas blocked the social network X across Brazil because its owner Elon Musk had ignored his court orders to remove accounts and then closed X's office in Brazil. It was the judge's boldest measure yet and it left even many of his defenders worried that Brazil's experiment had gone too far.
I was someone who was very on his side said David Nimmer, a Brazilian-born media professor who has studied his nation's approach to disinformation at the Berkman Client Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, Jumeel Jafferr, an executive director of the Night First Amendment Institute at Columbia University called the move quote absurd and dangerous.
The thing that is really disturbing is that increasingly undemocratic governments can point to democratic wants to justify their actions, he said, where there are narrower ways of addressing privacy concerns or misinformation concerns governments should use those narrower means. Carlos Sofanzo, a Brazilian internet law professor called the order quote the most extreme judicial decision out of a Brazilian court in 30 years of internet law.
Yet he added that Brazil had to take some action after Mr. Musk so publicly and explicitly flattered multiple court orders. It's not up to a company to decide if a judicial decision is adequate or not Mr. Soosah said, the company must file a complaint in a lawsuit not just decide not to comply.
Justice Maria's support in Brazil has faded is the nation has moved past the acute tension of the 2022 election at the time then President Bolsonaro was using social media to sow doubts about the integrity of Brazil's voting systems despite a lack of evidence and Justice Maria's was ordering social networks to remove some of his posts.
After Mr. Bolsonaro lost the election thousands of his supporters blocked highways, camped outside army bases and eventually stormed Brazil's Congress and Supreme Court in a bid to provoke a military takeover. Justice Maria's responded by ordering social networks to block dozens of prominent accounts that question the vote or sympathize with the attempted insurrection, including some belonging to federal lawmakers.
But since then as the political temperature has cooled, Justice Maria's has kept issuing court orders to social networks to remove accounts. The orders are both secret and lack explanations on how a certain account had broken the law according to leaked copies of orders. Justice Maria's has continued to use the threat to democracy as a justification for his actions.
In his order on Friday, he said Mr. Musk refused to comply with orders to suspend accounts, quote, represents an extremely serious risk to the municipal elections in October in Brazil. Justice Maria's has quote, set up a state of exception, Mr. Niemher said, but it's a permanent state of exception and that's not good for any sort of democracy, end quote.
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The internet are up in arms this morning mad at canva which just emailed users about a price increase of as much as 300% for some users you heard that right 300% now canva is justifying this by basically saying you know all those new generative a i features we gave you recently that makes this price increase justified.
But in the background you know they do plan on an IPO soon so maybe the time was right to try to juice some revenue numbers quoting the verge in the US some canva teams users are reporting subscription increases from $120 per year for up to five users to an i watering $500 per year a 40% discount will be applied to bring that down to $300 for the first 12 months.
Some of those accounts had been locked into lower prices that canva no longer offers in April the company silently changed its offering for new team subscribers to $10 per month for each user and set a minimum requirement for three users. Now canva's communications lead Luis a green says existing users are also being moved over to the structure in September quote to reflect the current price of the plan and the value of our expanded product experience.
Canva has released a deluge of generative a i features over the last few years such as its magic media text to image generator and magic expand background extension tool the additions have transformed the platform from something for design and marketing professionals into a broader workspace offering.
While canva has publicly announced similar pricing changes in the past these latest increases were seemingly communicated exclusively via customer emails other subscription tiers for pro and enterprise users don't appear to be impacted.
The premium pricing is a stark pivot for canva which was once considered to be a simple and affordable alternative to more expensive graphic design software provided by Adobe canva users online have condemned the increases with some announcing they'll be canceling their subscriptions and moving to Adobe applications.
These huge price increases also follow canva purchasing the company behind affinities creative software suite for a reported several hundred million British pounds and ahead of a potential public listing in the US in 2026 and quote lots of people as I said online saying they don't use or want the gen ai features that canva has rolled out quoting Jen creamer on Twitter canva's value is in two areas quick basic editing of images and their vast template library for a
little bit of a simple template library for everything else it's the software everyone wanted from Adobe basic plus starter templates AI doesn't add value to what was already there and quote.
But also I wonder if this might actually do the opposite of what canva intended note that this was targeting largely those in the teams product well quoting Adam provolski on Twitter who else got the canva price increase email notice today and immediately check to see how many extra people are on your account.
Don't get me wrong I love canva but emails like that are great reminders to check your account we had five people who never use it at a hundred dollars per person that's a lot of pumpkin spice lattes and quote. There's a weird a dendum to that whole story of Mike Lynch the tech executive who died on his yacht in the Mediterranean recently quoting Bloomberg he'll it Packard enterprise said it intends to pursue the four billion dollar damages claim in London against the
state of the recently deceased British tech tycoon Mike Lynch just over a week after the bodies of Lynch and his 18 year old daughter Hannah were recovered from the wreck of his sunken yacht the US company said it planned to collect any damages that are awarded by a London court HPE one the British civil case over the collapse of Lynch's autonomy and is waiting for a judge to decide how much it is owed it is HPE's intention to follow the proceedings through to their conclusion the company said in a statement Monday the decision to move forward puts HPE
on a reputation tightrope while a UK civil claim automatically ensures that the case passes to the estate of a defendant in the event of a death the prospect of pursuing the money from Lynch's family is likely to be deeply unpopular after the tragedy it was likely that they were going to face criticism going ahead with a claim against his grieving widow said Robin Henry a partner at law firm Collier Bristol who is involved in the case I think they are trying to mitigate the reputation of damage by saying they are under an obligation to protect the interest of HPE shareholders and critical
a spokesperson for Lynch's family declined a comment the times of London reported on the case earlier one of the long term claim that the case was not a legal claim one of the longest and most expensive trials in British history judge Robert Hillyard ruled in 2022 that Lynch had fraudulently boosted the value of the company one of the tragedies of the case is clear
and innovative and groundbreaking product its architect and the company will probably always be associated with fraud the judge said in the ruling in total HPE was seeking $4 billion from Lynch and his finance chief but the judge had cautioned that it was likely to get substantially less than that end quote
finally today we don't talk that much about crypto these days but I did want to hit you to two startups that have been a roaring success in crypto as the sector has made a cautious comeback over the last year one site has generated over $100 million in cumulative revenue by allowing users to mint more than a million meme coins created on the platform just its launch in January of this year
the second one well if you're in the politics you might have heard of it quoting the block the crypto industry has always generated its fair share of speculators for better or worse it's no wonder then why two of the hottest platforms in crypto meme coin launch pad pump dot fun
and decentralized prediction marketplace polymarket are built on speculation though curiously the platforms can be seen as inverses of one another on pump dot fun user speculate on meme coins that aside from their branding and community value
have no intrinsic value proposition meaning it should be hard to predict which coins are going to break through the noise and attract fans on polymarket users are encouraged to use every bit of information at their disposal when training positions on the market predicting everything from political elections to how many times Elon Musk will tweet this week
both platforms have seen a meteoric rise launched in January 2024 pump dot fun recently passed a hundred million dollars in total cumulative revenue generated for its developers according to a Dune analytics dashboard pump dot funs developers take a 1% fee on all transactions on its platform pump dot fun even recently eliminated the cost for deploying a token making it easier than ever for users to spin up new meme coins
however pump dot funs daily revenue on Friday was the second lowest single day some since May 24th whether or not the launch pad can continue to incentivize users to create and trade meme coins will be critical to its future growth less the project comes to resemble friend dot tech a once hot web
three social platform that is essentially stopped making money over the past three months according to the blocks data not to be out done polymarket also netted a notable achievement this month doing more volume then all NFTs across all chains combined according to the
blocks data and crypto slam while NFTs only logged about three hundred and seventy seven million dollars in volume over the past 30 days polymarket has seen 463 million in value traded on its platform polymarket's population of active traders has steadily increase since May as the 2024 presidential election draws closer according to the blocks data though US users are not officially permitted to use the site the prediction marketplace currently shows former president Donald Trump with a slight lead over vice president
comola Harris to win the 2024 presidential election nearly three quarters of one billion dollars has been bet on that outcome and quote that last bit is what really got my attention I knew polymarket because it gets mentioned all the time in political circles Nate silver is on their board or is it advisor something like that
nearing a billion dollars in betting though on just the presidential election that's those are like stock market numbers prediction markets have been predicted to be a thing for years now I guess we're there talk to you tomorrow