More events in what is starting to feel something like a global backlash against some of the big social media companies.

We’ve previously seen the arrest of Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov. Now, elsewhere, Brazil has totally banned the use of Twitter (OK, “X”) for anyone who lives there. on the basis that they’re refusing to appoint a legal representative in Brazil. This is something all foreign companies that operate in Brazil are required to do.

Once again, I know far too little about the situation to judge the rights and wrongs of the ban. Or for that matter its enforceability. Although, at least in theory, X is to be cut off at the ISP level, and hefty fines await any Brazilian users who use VPNs to evade the ban.

It might be noted that this follows Elon Musk, owner of X, becoming upset one of Brazil’s judges asked him to suspend the accounts of users he claimed were spreading disinformation. Elon is of course not known for maintaining his cool when someone does anything other than agree wholeheartedly with him. X is now claiming that the Brazillian judge was making “illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”.

Whatever the ins and outs of the situation, it seems a good amount of Brazil’s ex-X users aren’t all that disheartened by the news, or at least not to disheartened they can’t muster the energy to post through it. They just went somewhere else.

These events have apparently caused a huge wave of signups to X-rival Bluesky - setting an all-time-high record for activity on that platform, plus a substantially lower but above zero number to Mastodon.

From the recent reporting by “Last Week in Fediverse”, it sounds the Brazillian users have also made Bluesky a lot more of a fun place to be.