Citizen Musk: Will Brazil's ban on X mark turning point for tech giants?
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00:00First, the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov.
00:04Now the ban on Twitter in Brazil.
00:07After years of making outrage and tribalism their business model, are tech titans getting
00:13their comeuppance?
00:14We'll ask about the almighty showdown between the billionaire owner of the social medium
00:19now known as X and the Chief Justice of Brazil's Supreme Court, who's extended that ban to
00:25VPN systems that try to flout the ruling.
00:30Alexander Moritz just notched an important win, what with Musk's Starlink satellite system
00:35relenting on initial plans to defy the Twitter ban in Brazil.
00:40There's the broader question of how to make a digital public square that extends beyond
00:45just echo chambers without peddling hate and disinformation.
00:51Musk's own timelines become the bullhorn of a billionaire tycoon who these days targets
00:57taxes and immigrants.
00:58Donald Trump's now promised him a role auditing the U.S. government if the Republicans win
01:04in November.
01:05In an age where so much wealth is concentrated in the hands of so few, what are the limits
01:11to one man's powers?
01:13Today in the France 24 debate, Brazil taking on Elon Musk and joining us from Rio de Janeiro,
01:19is Laura Martins, editor of IT Forum.
01:23Thank you for being with us.
01:25Hi, guys.
01:27Tech entrepreneur Tariq Krim, the founder of fintech company Cybernetica is with us.
01:32Guys, I'm so sorry to interrupt you, but I'm not hearing you.
01:35You're not hearing us.
01:36OK, we'll try to reconnect then to make sure that that is fixed ASAP.
01:43JĂ©rĂ´me Barbier is advisor to tech consultants Convergence.
01:48Thank you for being with us.
01:49And from Erqui on the northwest Brittany coast of France, a member of several blue ribbon
01:54panels on tech regulation here in France, Valérie Lord-Bénabou, law professor at the
01:59University of Versailles.
02:01Welcome to the show.
02:05If you're on the go, by the way, you can listen, like, and subscribe to the France 24 debate
02:10wherever podcasts are streamed.
02:14With Starlink's assets in Brazil, frozen Elon Musk reversing course in the last 24 hours,
02:20taking X, formerly Twitter, off his satellite service there.
02:25But if he's lost one battle, he's still fighting the war, calling on Brazilians, for instance,
02:29to march this coming Saturday in Independence Day protests.
02:33Charlotte Hughes has more on this showdown.
02:39With more than 20 million users, it's X's sixth biggest market globally, according to
02:44Statista.
02:45But in Brazil, the platform formerly known as Twitter has not been available for several
02:50days after a ban ordered by Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a move strongly denounced by billionaire
02:56Elon Musk, the owner of the social network.
03:00Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying
03:05it for political purposes.
03:08Moraes, whose supporters view him as a leading figure in the defence of democracy, described
03:14Musk as an outlaw who enabled the quote, massive spread of disinformation.
03:19This platform allows the mass dissemination of fake news, hate speech and attacks on the
03:24rule of law.
03:25This violates voters' freedom of choice by distancing them from credible information.
03:31Brazil's President Lula voiced support for the judge's decision, saying it may have sent
03:35a quote, signal that the world is not obliged to put up with Musk's far-right ideology just
03:40because he is rich.
03:42In the wake of the January 8th, 2023 riots, which saw tens of thousands of Bolsonaro supporters
03:48storm institutions including Congress, Moraes began ordering platforms to take down posts
03:53by those he accused of spreading disinformation and posing a threat to democracy.
03:59Measures that Elon Musk refused to take, resulting in court fines that X has yet to pay.
04:05Moraes later gave X a cut-off date for appointing a new legal representative in Brazil, ordering
04:10the ban when the platform missed the deadline.
04:13A ban upheld by a Supreme Court panel on Monday.
04:17It's to remain in place until the platform names a new legal representative and pays
04:21outstanding fines.
04:24Tariq Krim, are you surprised by this ban?
04:28You mean the Twitter in Brazil?
04:31Not really.
04:32I mean, historically, Brazil has been very protective.
04:37For example, when you're bound to sell computers in Brazil, most of the part have to be done
04:42in-house.
04:43So what we're looking at right now is very interesting.
04:46You know, we, you know, the theory of the splinternet, the idea that we have, and part
04:50of the internet that is U.S. controlled, and the other part that is Chinese controlled
04:55with TikTok.
04:56But now you can see there's a new race of unaligned countries.
05:01Look at what happened in India, who decided to block TikTok.
05:05And if you look at Brazil right now as well, trying to emerge and say, well, you know what?
05:09We will have our own rules and you will follow our rules.
05:12So you can see that in some ways what we see in India and in Brazil is what the Europe
05:17is not able to do for the moment.
05:19It's being tough on the rules.
05:21If you want to operate in our country, these are the rules and you have to follow them.
05:26These are the rules.
05:27Are these rules, rules of regulation, or is it, as Elon Musk says, a political vendetta?
05:34I think what's funny is when he's very selective.
05:37Some countries, you know, Elon Musk has a lot of ties with China because of the Tesla.
05:42So some countries ask him for favors.
05:45He's quite obedient.
05:46And some countries are not seen as, you know, real countries for him.
05:51So what we're seeing here is a lesson that basically the internet is, it's not a global
05:57thing anymore.
05:58It's been fragmented and we're going to see different regions.
06:01Like if you look at the EU right now, you have to follow the EU rules, like the GDPR,
06:06the AI Act.
06:07In Brazil, you have to follow whatever the constitution is.
06:10In the US, it's more free, you know, you have section 230 and a bunch of things that allows
06:16you to be, you know, have a certain freedom of speech.
06:19And in China, basically none of these applications work.
06:23So we have a multilateral, very fragmented world at the moment.
06:29JĂ©rĂ´me Barbier, you just heard Tariq say that Brazil's doing what the EU can't.
06:35I agree, actually.
06:36I would say that Brazil is taking the shots for all of us, basically, because it's a democratic
06:39country.
06:40Maybe a flawed democracy, but it's not a decision by a political government or a government
06:44at all.
06:45Like it's not the case.
06:46In India, it was the case.
06:47Like it was the government which blocked TikTok through politically appointed regulators.
06:52Here is the Supreme Court.
06:53So I see the surprise, because the Brazilian Supreme Court has very important powers compared
06:57to other democracies.
06:58But the point is that they are just saying, we have a regulation nationally, and you need
07:02to obey by it.
07:03And usually the way the debate is shaped around that is quite interesting.
07:08Moderation and content moderation has been a tough question for democracy internationally.
07:13Historically speaking, the US and the EU didn't want to discuss about that at the UN or in
07:18any initial debate, precisely because there is a very thin balance between freedom of
07:22speech and protecting citizens' rights.
07:25The decision made by Brazil here is first and foremost made because Elon Musk refused
07:29to comply with some court orders when it came to shutting down some accounts that were proven
07:34to spread disinformation.
07:36And we only have this ban because Twitter refuses to comply with the law, which supposedly
07:40should be the thing that everyone focuses upon.
07:42Like you have a company who says, I can decide on myself and I will not obey a democratically
07:47elected government and its regulation.
07:51We can now cross to Laura Martins, who's in Rio.
07:54Laura, can you hear us OK?
07:56Yeah, now it's fine.
07:58Sorry, Guy.
07:59OK.
08:00So first off, let me ask you, when you when you try to type in x.com today, what are you
08:05getting where you are right now?
08:08Almost nothing.
08:09But I really use X on my cell phone.
08:11It's really bad because I just have like the same post for the last five days and it's
08:16a meme.
08:17So I'm trying like five days and two thousand times to use this application and it's kind
08:22of impossible.
08:23So we are in Brazil kind of like drug addicts without our drugs.
08:28But yeah.
08:29Yeah.
08:30It's one of the biggest markets for for the social medium formerly known as Twitter.
08:38Let me ask you.
08:39There was also the Supreme Court didn't just put a ban on on Twitter.
08:43It also put a ban on using VPNs to to get around the law.
08:50How's that working?
08:51Oh, so, yeah, this is one of the points that most of the lawyers are talking about, because
08:57it's kind of like the basic for all lawyers that, yeah, the ban would need to be questioned
09:04because we try it before other things on on elements and Twitter.
09:09But the VPN thing is worse.
09:13It is impossible to talk with all Brazilians and to subpoena all Brazilians.
09:17So in theory, they are not allowed to put this tax for them.
09:23And also, all VPN traffic is encrypted.
09:25So it's kind of impossible to really know who is using or not VPNs.
09:30I personally don't know any person, but for small companies, they are still using X.
09:39Like we have these far big telecom companies and it's blocked.
09:44We had a kind of problem with Starlink.
09:46They say they wouldn't be blocking X.
09:49Now they did.
09:50Last night they did.
09:52But some Brazilians who use like a small telecom company say that it's still available.
09:57I don't know how much this is true, but it's just like Brazilians saying things on the
10:03Internet with other things.
10:07If they don't have Twitter, where are they saying it?
10:10Instagram and Blue Sky.
10:12Blue Sky is getting really huge in Brazil after Twitter is gone, which is kind of interesting
10:18because Blue Sky doesn't have a Jewish representative in Brazil.
10:24So it's like, OK, YX cannot be in Brazil without that, but Blue Sky can do it.
10:30But in Brazil, it's just because Blue Sky is very small and they don't have any problems
10:36with the law in Brazil.
10:38So probably the Supreme Court in the next months, if this is really being a really big
10:45platform in Brazil, they would ask the same for Blue Sky or any other platform that try
10:50to come after Twitter.
10:52And one final question on this, Laura.
10:54What are people saying about Elon Musk calling on people to come out and demonstrate Saturday
11:00on Independence Day?
11:02Oh, yeah.
11:05I guess our work now is the same political issues about the right wing and the left.
11:14So people who are from the right wing are really supporting Elon Musk.
11:19Actually, I was talking to a lot of researchers in Brazil and they are talking about Elon
11:24Musk being an activist for right wingers in Brazil and all over the world.
11:29So, yeah, for people who really support this political, it's like one moment to say that
11:37we are in a dictatorship or this is something that we did alone.
11:43But for the other half, it's just like, yeah, this is the law.
11:46We tried to talk with Elon Musk before.
11:49He didn't want to do what Brazil needs to do.
11:52So, yeah, we need to ban them.
11:54So it's kind of half and half.
11:56Kind of half and half, according to what your political leaning is.
12:00We have Valérie-Laure Benabou with us as well.
12:05First of all, your reaction to what's happening in Brazil, and in particular, this also this
12:10ban on VPNs.
12:12OK, do you hear me loud and clear?
12:18OK, fine.
12:19Yeah.
12:20Well, it's a huge shock at first sight that a country like Brazil stands for banning social
12:32media.
12:33But there has been, as it has been said, a lot of warning before this decision.
12:40And Elon Musk decided not to consider that the network was infringing the law.
12:49So I'm not so surprised that at the end of the day, the Supreme Court decided to say
12:58you have to respect the law because you have several means of complying to our requirements
13:07and you decided to ignore each of them.
13:10Sure.
13:11It's something that may be spectacular, but at the end of the day, it's a country that
13:22tried to respect its own sovereignty and rules that should be applicable on its territory.
13:32The problem is that with Elon Musk and the so-called libertarian way of thinking, freedom
13:42of speech has no limits, but also the incomes of X has no limit.
13:49So we clearly know that the freedom of expression argument is being used again and again by
13:58tech giants to foster their business.
14:02So we shall not be too naive about that, which is it's not only defending the freedom of
14:10speech, it's almost it's defending its own business.
14:17Let me bring in Tariq Krim on this.
14:20When you think back to the early days of the Internet, this, this, you know, making profits
14:27in the name of absolutist freedom of speech, was that the original?
14:32Did you see that, that that's what would come down the pipeline?
14:36I don't think so.
14:37I think the, the Internet has changed a lot.
14:40I think it's more about, first of all, there's a difference between, between the freedom
14:45of speech, being able to say something and the freedom of reach.
14:49The fact that someone with some toxic content would be exposed to millions of people sometime,
14:56the toxic person being Elon Musk himself, with like, I don't know how many hundreds
15:01of millions of followers.
15:03But what I think is interesting is in the very early days of the Internet, these platform,
15:09communication platform used to be open, they were open protocols, they were not even sold.
15:13You could use IRC and things like that.
15:16And suddenly, after decades, we started having privatized, I mean, I think it started with
15:22ICQ and AOL and then Microsoft and then Facebook, and now these are privatized personal communication.
15:30It means that your personal communication are privatized.
15:32And I think when you look at what happened with the Telegram story, it's fascinating
15:37at many levels, but it, it summarized exactly the problem we have today.
15:41There's kind of three type of layers.
15:44The first one is the geopolitical one, you know, access to the information, that intelligence
15:49from every country wants to know what the Russian or the Ukrainian, et cetera.
15:53So that's one layer.
15:55The second one is, of course, every government is trying to seduce every players.
16:00Every time Elon Musk comes here, it's like a dignitary is received with all the honors
16:04of trying to make, to have them as, as much as they were like state personalities.
16:12And the last one is very interesting, is the question of moderation.
16:17It's less as free speech question than a moderation question.
16:21When you look at Telegram, imagine if each of us, 40 people, we bring our friends, we're
16:2640 people in this room and we want, we will manage 900 million people.
16:31It's impossible.
16:33And what Elon Musk did just after buying Twitter, he said, oh, you know what, moderation costs
16:38too much.
16:39Let's get rid of the people.
16:40I think Twitter was not perfect, but had an incredibly strong team and found the right
16:45balance.
16:47And the problem is you cannot operate a country, I would say continent size, you know, a number
16:53of people with very limited resources.
16:56And that's the problem, I think.
16:58And you mentioned earlier, JĂ©rĂ´me Barbier, how Twitter's founder, Jack Dorsey, he's now
17:02got his own social media app called Blue Sky.
17:06He claims that there's been half a million new users in Brazil in the first 48 hours
17:12since the ban.
17:13And I've heard Laura say how they don't even have a legal presence in Brazil.
17:17So is it just the same problem, whatever the social media platform is?
17:23I mean, for sure.
17:25Every single social media that actually have a moderation problem with the different governments,
17:29the question is how they do implement it.
17:31And you also have a very huge difference according to the size of the number of users per platform.
17:36So the priority for Brazil at the moment is to regulate Twitter, it's the same for the
17:40other platforms.
17:41So what we could say about Blue Sky is that when Jack Dorsey founded and handled Twitter,
17:45which was still Twitter at the time, Twitter was actually the best student when it comes
17:49to content moderation.
17:50They had a very careful approach to content moderation.
17:54They put a lot of regulations and procedures internally.
17:58They actually themselves acknowledged the problems they had, especially the fact that
18:01for content moderation, you need to have moderator in every single languages.
18:07But the reality is that Twitter and X, even more now that they fired a lot of the people
18:11in the moderation team, mostly moderated content in English, which presents significant risk
18:16for a lot of non-English languages, especially, for instance, in territories where there were
18:21high intensity conflict.
18:23So this is a problem for every single platform.
18:25The question is, how do they react?
18:26And to my best knowledge, the difference you have with the different platforms, with X
18:31that is led at the moment by Elon Musk, that you can actually see because they're also
18:34working on outer space with the companies that Musk lead, is that he has a very conflicting
18:39behavior towards government and government authorities and the idea that government is
18:44illegitimate.
18:45So we have, for instance, breaking news out of California.
18:51Twitter X has won an appeal to partially block a law in California that requires social media
18:57companies to publish their policies for combating disinformation.
19:02Well, I didn't read the decision, so I can't comment on it further, but this is a good
19:06point that was mentioned also by Tariq.
19:08Internet is global and the inspiration of the founders of the internet was to have a
19:13free space that connects everyone worldwide without government intervention and without
19:18borders.
19:19The reality is that each government is legitimate to regulate its own sphere and the problems
19:23you have, and you have a lot of these issues at the UN, is how do you ensure that you have
19:27a minimum understanding between governments for the actual space that is basically global
19:33in which it's very difficult to have a border, but you actually need to have that.
19:36So in the U.S., this decision may be not surprising considering the very large conception of free
19:41speech that the United States have.
19:43There is the First Amendment.
19:44It's very difficult to regulate it.
19:47Brazil has a different approach that also comes from a more like, I would say, Latin
19:50traditions when it comes to regulation that you also have in France.
19:53And Laura Martins, in Brazil, you have the same problem on that First Amendment issue
19:58that we have here in Europe, which is we don't have the same kind of view to what people
20:06can say or not say.
20:09And yet there's this sort of Americanization, you could say, of the way we look at public
20:15discourse ever since social media rose.
20:18Is it the same where you are?
20:21Yeah, exactly.
20:22We think more like you guys.
20:25We cannot freedom is not about just talking to whatever you want.
20:29You need to be responsible for something that you say or try to do with someone.
20:35But I guess Elon Musk's problem is not like that.
20:39Trying to go deeper.
20:40He couldn't go back with Twitter in Brazil, I don't know, one day.
20:45He just needed to pay it and put on a law, right?
20:49But he's not doing it.
20:51We are like five days without the platform.
20:54And what I think we should be thinking about is like, why?
20:58It's not so much money.
20:59It's not so hard to try a law in Brazil.
21:03So why is he trying to push so bad in the Brazilian democracy?
21:08He's trying to avoid Brazil government.
21:12He's trying to be like an influencer for the right wings.
21:16So right now, what I'm thinking is just like, why?
21:20And what he wants with that, you know, we have a Starlink in Brazil as well.
21:24So it's kind of like other business or he's just trying to put Twitter in front of all.
21:30I have no idea.
21:31But I guess it's more than just being about freedom or this banishment.
21:35Yes.
21:36The Starlink satellite system, which arguably, Ty, in terms of geopolitics, is much more
21:43important than Tesla or SpaceX, because, you know, for instance, we've seen it in the
21:48war between Russia and Ukraine.
21:51The U.S. Defense Department has had to sometimes tread cautiously when they dealt with Elon
21:58Musk.
21:59Yes.
22:00In the meantime, we don't really know, because obviously, Elon Musk is attached to contract
22:05with the defense and also the government, because he cannot launch a rocket without
22:11the government approval.
22:12So they need to be on very, you know, very specific ground.
22:16But what is interesting is that I believe that in some ways, the reason Europe is maybe
22:23weaker than, let's say, Brazil or other countries is that we need SpaceX right now for our space
22:28program.
22:29They are going to help us because we didn't invest in our vector of growth.
22:34This is because at the end of the day, you can look at this for different perspective.
22:39What we see in Europe is that we haven't...
22:42We used to be the leaders in communication.
22:44I mean, in the 90s, France was building one mobile phone out of three in the world.
22:49And now we build none.
22:51We decided to outsource these technologies.
22:54And these technologies now are core, are the way we create growth and value.
22:59So in some ways, we're a little bit of prisoner of that.
23:02We are renting other people's technology.
23:05So they have sometimes a say or a caprice, and we have to deal with it.
23:10I mean, I would just say the way Elon Musk responded to Thierry Breton on Twitter, something
23:16I wouldn't repeat.
23:17The internal markets commissioner of the EU.
23:19Yes, absolutely.
23:20I wouldn't repeat it here.
23:22It's unbelievable how disrespectful.
23:24But in the same way, they say, well, you need our tools.
23:28So I will do the way I want.
23:30JĂ©rĂ´me Barbier, is that true?
23:33I mean, I know that the next generation of Ariane rockets is now available.
23:37So how dependent is Europe on Elon Musk?
23:39Well, unfortunately, as a lot of actors in the space sector, we are quite dependent.
23:45SpaceX, of course, is a huge success for the United States.
23:47And I would also emphasize that we often say it's a Musk success story.
23:52So SpaceX is also the result of a policy by the United States, which is very important.
23:56We are dependent.
23:57Ariane 6A is now existing.
24:00But in terms of like number of launches, we will need to send a few of the satellites
24:03for the Iris Square constellation, which is the constellation that Europe wants to build
24:07on the same model as Starlink.
24:08We will need to use SpaceX to launch it.
24:12And there is another issue, which is also bringing us back to the idea of Twitter and
24:15X and how Europe can regulate companies that are headquartered abroad.
24:20There is a European space law in discussion.
24:23And the big question for Europe is, do we put market access measures, which would say
24:27we forbid to any company, even headquartered abroad, that would not respect our requirements
24:32to operate within the EU?
24:34Which would mean that if Starlink do not comply with, for instance, space debris mitigation
24:38rules that Europe set, they wouldn't be.
24:42OK, but then on Musk, I say, fine, you can't use our system.
24:45Yes.
24:46But the point is that he can do that because financially speaking for Starlink, it could
24:49work, actually, because they have a lot of defense contracts and there are a lot of other
24:52countries that uses it.
24:54But for a lot of companies, for instance, Twitter, Twitter is already not financially
24:59sustainable, actually.
25:01And if they couldn't operate in Europe anymore, I am not sure the company could last for a
25:06very long time, which is also the issue with Brazil.
25:08Musk is very good to shape the debate, saying that actually governments depend on them because
25:13they couldn't work with Twitter.
25:15Actually, if governments were like, OK, you want to leave us, leave us.
25:19The point is that governments will last.
25:22The company needs a market.
25:24Speaking of how much Elon Musk can influence the conversation, back in 2016, it was Musk's
25:31co-founder at PayPal, Peter Thiel, who helped Donald Trump win the White House.
25:36And while Thiel is yet to commit this time directly to Trump, Musk's pledge to pour $45
25:42million into the Republican nominee's campaign for U.S. president, Trump who's lavished praise
25:48on Musk, even tipped him to be part of a panel to audit the federal government.
25:54The latter tweeting in the last day that, I can't wait.
25:59There's a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go.
26:05Valérie Lord-Bernabéu, simple question.
26:12How powerful is Elon Musk?
26:15Well, I don't know.
26:19Actually, I think the guy has a feeling of power which is unlimited.
26:30But there is also the reality of the market.
26:33I mean, when he bought Twitter, at the first time, all the companies that were feeding
26:48the gross revenue decided to take a step and think about their announcement campaign on
26:59X because of the lack of moderation that was mentioned.
27:05So I think that there is also this kind of pragmatic dimension, which is it's a businessman
27:14and he should take into account the fact that he runs a service that needs people to feed
27:22with money.
27:24And I know he has other company and it's a it's a mix and it's a cross possibility for
27:31him to sustain each of his Starlink and Tesla and so on.
27:37But still, if it's not sustainable anymore, because people become aware of the lack of
27:47moderation and the risk for them to have their trademarks tarnished by the fact that
28:00some horrible things are said on Twitter as they begin to make a step and try maybe to
28:09find other ways to communicate.
28:12I'm quite surprised that the political person, also journalists, keep on being so present
28:22on X while there are other social medias, there are other ways of communicating that
28:29are not requiring to give money and data to Elon Musk.
28:35We also need as citizens to decide not to be part of this network anymore.
28:41For example, I'm not on X anymore because I decided not to.
28:48And it's something that is quite easy.
28:50That brings up an important point, what you're saying.
28:53I want to ask several of the panelists about this, because, well, our show, we're on X,
29:01we're on Twitter because we want to reach a wide audience and not just speak to an echo
29:06chamber.
29:07So, Tarek Krim, is that the right thing to do or should we be going elsewhere?
29:11It's a good question.
29:13I think there's not a lot of choice.
29:17A lot of the social networks are organized by demographics.
29:22At least that's how they started.
29:24TikTok was targeting the super young, Snapchat, the teenagers, Instagram, the millennials
29:31and Facebook older.
29:34In some ways, X is an interesting thing because it's a fantastic tool to access the news.
29:42If you follow the right people, you can have access to an incredible amount of information.
29:47But now it's disturbed because you also get all the unwanted retweets and information
29:53and it plays on this.
29:56It's an echo chamber, but it's also a very limited echo chamber because then a lot of
30:01people know what's going on on Twitter because the media actually posts what happens there.
30:08And I think we are all exhausted.
30:12I think it's after years of high intensity, we're starting to understand that these tools
30:17are also toxic, so we use them less.
30:20We're becoming more, I would say, conscious about their limitations.
30:26One of the things that we didn't talk about is the reason Elon Musk needs Brazil, he needs
30:34particular language because right now the value of Twitter is as a social network close
30:40to zero because a lot of the advertiser have left the company.
30:44But as an AI data gathering tool, it has or holds a potential enormous value.
30:51He started investing a lot of money into chips.
30:55He's got his own models, he's trying to figure out how to create an artificial intelligence
31:00that can work this way and he needs a lot of data.
31:05And by the way, he's just agreed in the last 24 hours to comply with European rules when
31:10it comes to gathering data, basically hoovering up our personal data for AI.
31:17But the thing is the beauty of AI is that you gather data in California or somewhere
31:22else where the low is easy and then the result of the product will be sold everywhere.
31:27So, you need those Portuguese speakers for his-
31:31You need this Russian speakers that's also, by the way, potentially the value of Telegram
31:36is that they gathered so much private conversation that it's an incredible tool for training
31:41AI.
31:42And the value of we need data, we're running out of data in 2030, so five years from now
31:48there's not enough data we're talking about, including synthetic data and all these services
31:54have an enormous amount of private data.
31:57That's another question for we have legal expert here.
32:01Can we actually use the personal and private data for teaching AI how to think and learn?
32:08That's not a question that there's no doubt in Elon Musk that this is the value.
32:13And JĂ©rĂ´me Barbier, can this be regulated?
32:16Well, it is regulated when it comes to data uses in Europe.
32:19And I always find that I work in politics, so I'm very mindful of the wording of every
32:22declaration.
32:23And as you said, Musk agreed to respect the rules, which is funny, like we didn't really
32:28ask him.
32:29There is a regulation to operate in Europe and you actually need to comply with it to
32:32be able to operate that.
32:33The question, if Europe would actually enforce it to the end of it and ban Twitter from existing
32:39in Europe, I don't think so because we have much more check and balances that the Brazilian
32:43Supreme Court is very strong.
32:45So, yes, we can regulate it.
32:47It's not perfect.
32:48GDPR, so the general regulation of the EU, sorry, already exists.
32:58We know it's not really implemented to the best of it, although it's a clear framework
33:02that is globally and helped a lot of even like big tech companies out of the US to go
33:07in that direction.
33:08You also have a much stronger awareness, I would say, between users and a lot more NGOs
33:14that are working to see how they do it.
33:15All right.
33:16Laura Martins, for a while, again, we've been asking about what is the alternative to Twitter
33:22as the Guardian social media critic found in a recent post, in a recent article, it's
33:28not so easy.
33:29He quotes someone as saying threads is just deathly dull.
33:32And he also finds that very often it feels like a bot because people are just basically
33:38reposting whatever they put out on Instagram.
33:42So, again, it's this question of where do we find that global town square?
33:51How do you make it so that they're not hoovering up our private data for profit?
33:58Oh, wow.
33:59This is a one million dollars question, right?
34:03Yeah, it is hard.
34:06You know, Instagram tried threads, I don't know, for one year or so.
34:12And I don't know if in France, but in Brazil, it's not so big until now, even without Twitter
34:18for five days, blue sky is getting bigger in Brazil.
34:22But we also had one time with HOOF, with an Indian platform.
34:28But then when we had back Twitter, we're just like, OK, we are back in Twitter.
34:35So I guess we'd be just with them again if Twitter comes back for Brazil.
34:41And I'm sorry for always saying Twitter, not ask, but it's kind of hard until now to say
34:46ask.
34:48And I agree with them.
34:49It's hard to have one social media that is kind of well for all population globally and
34:56for all generations.
34:58They have all this kind of control.
35:02So yeah, it's not easy.
35:04I don't know if we can manage to have other platforms, even if Brazil would be so strong
35:09enough to put people from other countries in new social media just because we don't
35:15have X anymore.
35:16So, I don't know.
35:17Valérie Lord-Bernabéu, there was a big push last year towards Mastodon, which is this
35:25sort of non-profit thing that hasn't really taken off.
35:30How do you.
35:31Is it possible to do something that's both?
35:33Open source and non-profit and popular and works well.
35:43Yeah, well, this is more technical answer than a legal answer, I would say.
35:51I think that open source is something that has always been so important for the development
36:00of technology, but so difficult to implement for end users.
36:05So, we are in this paradoxical situation where we really need to have open format, open code
36:14in order to have a strong and vivid technology.
36:19But it's always a bit complicated for end users to handle those tools.
36:27And therefore, that's why the giants of technology have captured for themselves the open source
36:39value, whereas privatizing the end user instruments.
36:50And this is complicated.
36:52And that's why we have some flops, I mean, in this field, whereas it has proven to be
36:58more efficient, but it's the network defect doesn't work that well because of the difficulty
37:07for users to handle this technology.
37:09It's a problem of literacy, of technological literacy that we could not.
37:17It's just harder.
37:18It's not as seminal when you use it.
37:21It's not as easy, Tariq Krim.
37:23Yeah.
37:24You mean Mastodon, right?
37:26I think, listen, I think the problem in Europe is simply there's three layers to control
37:34your destiny online.
37:35You have the cloud.
37:37It's like where the software runs.
37:38We don't have any players.
37:40The operating system, we don't have any players.
37:43I tried 10 years ago.
37:45It was very hard to do it in Europe.
37:47Quant, right?
37:48No, it was called Jolly Cloud.
37:50When I did Netvibes, the third thing is the alternative for news, social media.
37:54We don't have any of them.
37:55If you look at China, China has actually built, they have several operating system.
38:01Every big company has cloud services and they have TikTok, QQ, they have so many others.
38:06They are in control of a destiny.
38:09I disagree with the policies and the way it works, but at least they have achieved technical
38:14independence.
38:15We always believed in Europe that we're going to regulate other people's instead of building
38:20our own.
38:21We should focus in Europe to build.
38:23Same thing in space, same thing in industries.
38:26We need to invest in building.
38:28Building new platforms can take five to 10 years, but it's absolutely necessary.
38:33We cannot continue relying on companies that are not only not owned by any of us and have
38:42allegiance to other interests, but also are now run by madmen.
38:48This is a really big question.
38:50How do we move toward a technical and digital independence?
38:54That means we need to build things the way we think they should be built with our own
39:00values embedded in them.
39:01Which brings us to France's president.
39:03Elon Musk's showdown with Brazil follows the August 24th arrest of Telegram founder Pavel
39:09Durov in Paris.
39:11French authorities, they grew tired of Telegram ignoring their calls to cooperate on illegal
39:16activity on the platform.
39:17Emmanuel Macron had courted the Russian born billionaire with a lunch at the palace and
39:22citizenship back in 2018 in the hopes that Telegram would relocate to France.
39:28Never happened.
39:29Still, on a visit to Serbia last week, Macron harbored zero regrets.
39:37Concerning naturalization, it's a decision that we made in 2018, if I recall, and that
39:41I take total responsibility for.
39:43It was taken in a conscious strategy of allowing women and men, whether they are athletes,
39:48performers, entrepreneurs, when they make the effort to learn French and develop wealth
39:52and innovation that influences the world, and when they ask for it, to be given French
39:57nationality.
39:58I did it for Mr. Durov, who made the effort to learn the French language, as I did for
40:03Mr. Spiegel, an American entrepreneur, as I did for actors and athletes.
40:08I think it's good for our country.
40:14Yeah, Mr. Spiegel, the head of Snapchat.
40:18JĂ©rĂ´me Barbier, listening to Tariq Krim's call for European entrepreneurship in the
40:26field of digital technology, with the French presence, he says, yeah, we're trying to instead
40:31entice foreigners.
40:33Your thoughts?
40:34Well, I can only join Tariq on that, and particularly as a French citizen working, that has worked
40:38in government several years, I'm of course biased because it's France's longstanding
40:41position in the EU.
40:43A regulation policy without industrial policy is at least partly fated to be doomed, because
40:48at the end of the day, you don't have the means to implement that nationally.
40:52So that's a fact.
40:54And a very good illustration was that at the early days of Musk's takeover of Twitter,
40:58which is now X'd, and they just shut down the certification process as it was done to
41:03replace it by a paying dimension, you could have the blue mark, there was a lot of debates
41:09among EU officials and governments to say we need to quit the platform, because it means
41:13that basically everyone paying the $8 fee per month could impersonate the account of
41:19a government, of a president or someone.
41:22And after consideration, no one left Twitter, because there was no other place for government
41:25and the EU to go and communicate.
41:28So they just stayed here and say, OK, we are going to negotiate with Twitter to have another
41:31way of certifying your accounts.
41:33And that is an example of what Derek just said, that if you don't have any alternative,
41:41you can go.
41:42Is it a turning point, though, the fact that you've had this showdown in Brazil, this showdown
41:46in France?
41:48Are things changing?
41:49I think it is for government's willingness to actually implement the regulation and maybe
41:55to go to the conflict with people like Elon Musk in the private sector and to say we have
41:59regulations and we are not just going to wait for the White House and the Congress of the
42:02United States to decide the regulation that will be implemented on their companies.
42:06However, I would be a bit more pessimistic when it comes to French industrial policy.
42:11In some fields it's working.
42:12In outer space, some measures have been taken.
42:15When it comes to digital policy, it's very difficult for a lot of reasons, including
42:18for social media.
42:20You have a winner's tax effect.
42:21So you need to have the larger pool of users to be interesting.
42:26So it's very difficult to enter the field.
42:29I would say we missed the train some decades ago already for digital policy.
42:34Laura Martins, final word on this, on whether or not this is a turning point or whether
42:41this will all go away and Twitter X will be back online soon where you are.
42:47Oh, wow.
42:49If it's going back or not, I guess we should ask Elon Musk if he's trying to just go with
42:58the laws, the Brazilian laws.
43:00But yeah, I guess it's a turning point.
43:02I don't know how much this is changing globally, but I guess this shows for big techs, not
43:10just for X, but for all big techs that Brazil and any other countries, we don't need them
43:16and we would banish them and do whatever it takes if it's about our laws.
43:22And I guess this is important because people like Elon Musk think that they can just do
43:27whatever they want.
43:28I'm not sure if I'm so positive about the politicals behind this, if he's losing power
43:38of his, like increasing his power after that.
43:41I guess we'll see more after September 7th and we can talk again.
43:47But yes, I guess it's changing how big techs are looking for countries, especially developing
43:52countries, that they normally just look for, then it's like, we can do whatever we want here.
43:57All right.
43:58We shall see indeed.
43:59Laura Martins, I want to thank you so much for joining us from Rio, Valérie-Laure Benabou
44:04in Brittany, Tariq Krim, JĂ©rĂ´me Barbier.
44:07Thank you for being with us here in the France 24 debate.