I am from Brazil, and although bizarre decisions happened before, I can say that this time they actually went through with it, and I can't talk to my psychologist (I only communicate with her with WhatsApp, I never considered that the government would ever actually shut it down).
As for the article it is one of the most bizarrely biased articles I ever read, spouting some information that are outright lies.
Example: it says that Marco Civil law was an example of the congress favouring internet openness, that is an outright lie, the judge that banned WhatsApp for 48 hours, used Marco Civil to do it, if Marco Civil had never passed, WhatsApp would not be banned today.
Another innacuracy is saying that it is a "conservative" congress dominated by "evangelical extremists" and "military apologists"
The biggest bloc in the congress was allied with the leftist president in the elections, and still is mostly allied with said president. (the exception is "PSC", that is a socialist christian party, they tend to ignore the president wishes a lot, still it is 13 deputies out of 79 in that bloc)
Second biggest, is indeed right-leaning, but their policies resemble US democratic party of the 90s, instead of true conservatism.
Third bloc is dominated by a party with no political leanings to left, or right (they only do whatever it takes to stay in power, and have left and right politicians in their ranks). The vice-president is of that party, and they are in "opposition" only because they want the vice-president to take over.
Fourth is PT, with 59 seats, it is the president party, and is named "workers party" and has many outright communist people in it.
Next 3 groups are socialist, then there is the democrats party, that has policies like US democrats, then the rest of the parties are mostly socialist too.
In total there are from 512 lawmakers, 108 are "conservative".
Also, I've been following the votes on the Uber ban on Brazil, almost in all cases left wing parties that voted to ban Uber (and some even proposed to not only ban Uber, but make a law that make apps that call regular taxis to send lots of personal information to the governmens, including full GPS-tracked route of the person while inside the cab).
Meanwhile the big bloc that is "conservative" (the one that on my list is on the second biggest bloc in the congress) is the one that regularly vote against laws that restrict freedoms.
Still, our congress is awful, and is indeed proposing (and sometimes passing) lots and lots of bullshit laws.