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Comment by asdkjlfkasjdf | Hacker News Reader

this law has less teeth than the digital millennium act, which the US had for decades.

it's only for group chats. and only for things that are already illegal (racism, etc) and fake news such as defined (openly and publicly) by the courts, on a case by case.

goal is to prevent another January 8th (Brazil's January 6th).

...and what is this newspaper about?!? their front page reads "Opinion: Tucker Carlson is about to revolutionize world journalism By Daniel Lopez (Opinion)".... weird content for "rio".

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> and fake news such as defined (openly and publicly) by the courts, on a case by case

And you see no problem with that? You see no problem at all with these judges essentially declaring anything they don't believe in to be a crime?

Besides, this law is mostly irrelevant. It's serving only to make it painfully obvious to all brazilians and the whole world how far gone this country is. This law is merely an attempt to legitimize what the judge-kings are already doing ever since last year's elections. Censorship is already unconstitutional and they don't give a shit. What's a little law to people who get away with unconstitutional acts? It's nothing... If this bill doesn't pass, they can just enforce it as if it had passed. They're the supreme court. No one's above them. The law is whatever they write in a document because police does what the document says.

> goal is to prevent another January 8th (Brazil's January 6th).

Protests shouldn't be "prevented". People have occupied Brasília before and no one spoke of "preventing" anything back then. Even Brazil's communist parties spoke out against the government's framing of the protesters as terrorists because it will obviously come back to bite them in the future. It's likely that the acts of vandalism were a false flag operation anyway since there's leaked security camera footage showing Lula's people assisting the vandals.

> and what is this newspaper about?

I apologize for that. I wanted to post a better one but this was the only english language source I found covering this bit of news at this point in time.

You see no problem in companies letting people use their platform indiscriminately to coordinate school shootings, riots and extremist groups?

> Protests shouldn't be "prevented".

Are nazi rallies or KKK gatherings categorized as "protests"? The people you mention, a minority, spent 3 months rallied across the country asking for military intervention, the opposition to be arrested or killed with nothing more than hopes and dreams because their candidate lost.

> camera footage showing Lula's people assisting the vandals

I'll bite. Where is the source?

> You see no problem in companies letting people use their platform indiscriminately to coordinate school shootings, riots and extremist groups?

I have no problem with unrestricted and fully encrypted anonymous communications at all. Every human being should be free to exchange ideas, no matter what they are. I'm not about to turn nazism into thought crime because that requires accepting the idea of thought crime in the first place.

The limit of tolerance is exceeded only when things escalate to violence. Everything you cited? The solution is heavy policing and weapons for the population so it can defend itself. Amazingly enough, there's talk of arming school personnel... It's gonna be ironic if the same people who said violence is solved by giving books to criminals end up gaining the right to bear arms for their own self-defense.

> Are nazi rallies or KKK gatherings categorized as "protests"?

Depends.

> The people you mention, a minority, spent 3 months rallied across the country asking for military intervention

So what? They can ask for whatever they want. They should not be censored just because you find it outrageous. As long as they're being pacific they should be able to continue.

They don't believe the election's results. As far as they're concerned, TSE staged its own intervention when it started almost unilaterally censoring Bolsonaro's supporters. Political censorship which is unconstitutional by the way. Who else do you turn to when the goddamn supreme court judges start shitting all over the constitution? By now it's become clear these judge-kings are running the country. That ship has sailed.

Also I don't think voting machine fraud is some impossible conspiracy theory either. It's hard to discuss this matter with laymen who don't even know what source code is but I convinced at least one person here on HN that there's a potential supply chain vulnerability in the voting machines. It's not "unquestionable and perfect" as the judge claims.

> Where is the source?

Videos were leaked to the CNN. It was around the time Lula went to China and publicly blamed Ukraine for the invasion. Shows Lula's people interacting with and assisting the vandals and just basically doing a whole lot of nothing about them. I have no doubt it was a false flag operation to justify the criminalization of the opposition.

> The solution is heavy policing

This whole ordeal with Telegram started precisely because of this. Free speech shouldn't be a cover to hate speech and criminal conduct, take it from Germany, who is dealing with it still to this day and will for the foreseeable future [1], what you mention is a clear example of Paradox of tolerance[2].

> They can ask for whatever they want. They should not be censored just because you find it outrageous.

People are entitled to their own thoughts, but they weren't asking for every family to be fed properly or for everyone to get puppies, their actions ended up with riot, damage to public property, people injured and road blocks that prevented people to get medical attention in life threatening conditions.

> Shows Lula's people interacting with and assisting the vandals and just basically doing a whole lot of nothing about them.

You mean the staff with heavily ties with the previous government, and that was suggested by them? Were the people that invaded and vandalized the congress and the supreme court Lula supporters too?

[1]: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/germanys-laws-ant...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

> Free speech shouldn't be a cover to hate speech

I don't consider "hate speech" to be a legitimate concept either. Hate is a perfectly normal human emotion. Government has absolutely no right to regulate how people feel about anything. People should be able to express their feelings, whatever they may be. Offensive speech impacts reputation and free association, it should not lead to literal prison.

> take it from Germany

No. In this context, Germany is not an example to be followed. I don't want to live in a country that feels the need to "sanitize" everything to the point of censoring swastikas from media.

If you're gonna delete harmful ideas from existence, I demand that you start with communism which has led to misery and tyranny in every country it was ever tried. Communists are in power screwing up my country this very moment. Until they're no longer allowed to walk our soil with complete impunity, I won't accept the banishment of any other idea.

> their actions ended up with riot, damage to public property, people injured and road blocks that prevented people to get medical attention in life threatening conditions

And that's the point where intervention is warranted. Doesn't justify censoring them either, just restoring order. Even Bolsonaro called for that.

> Paradox of tolerance

This "paradox" is actually a different formulation of my original argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

> I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies

> as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

> But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force

> for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument

> they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols

In other words, suppression by force is only ever warranted once the situation has escalated to actual violence. Exactly what I said in my post above.

> You mean the staff with heavily ties with the previous government, and that was suggested by them?

No.

> Were the people that invaded and vandalized the congress and the supreme court Lula supporters too?

I don't know, didn't see any footage of that.

The law is irrelevant compared to the bigger picture. If courts can force people/organizations to not advocate against laws, what is the point of elections and democracy. Why not just have a King? If everything is known to the great Court, why put up with the charade of democracy, since the new President might be full of "disinformation".

> If everything is known to the great Court

The great court isn't even made up of actual judges, by the way.

In Brazil, actual judges are selected by rigorous testing of law knowledge in a process known as concurso which roughly means contest. It's extremely competitive, applicants tend to be disciplined people who study many hours every day. People generally don't make it to a judge position without knowing their shit.

Supreme court judges aren't like that. They're just people appointed by politicians. The censorship-friendly judge who's ordering words into Telegram's mouth? He used to be the lawyer of one of Brazil's biggest drug trafficking gangs, PCC. Incidentally, that criminal organization supported the current president in last year's elections and was involved in a plot to torture and assassinate the judge who imprisoned him for corruption earlier this year. Supreme court ordered most of them released while many Brasília protesters are locked up to this day. It's surreal.

I'm glad the western media talked about this situation extensively before during and after the Brasilian election that ousted Bolsanero.

I suppose this is sarcasm, but it was talked about. Not in detailed depth, but the picture I got, many times over, was a far-right fascist wannabe that badly mismanaged the country, stole a lot, was disastrous for the environment, actually killed a lot of people through negligence, glorified military dictatorships, etc. was facing against a left-wing person that was literally in prison for corruption, and whose party has had a few other corruption scandals since that time.

Nobody was saying Lula is the good guy - he was the drastically less bad option than Bolsonaro.

Many journalists writing english language articles about Brazil are themselves brazilians. It's highly likely they're leftists too, so it's not surprising they presented that picture to you. I remember one instance of an american journalist reporting on brazilian affairs on live television: when Biden's CIA officials told our president not to question the voting machines. He was surprised that CIA people think they can openly tell the president of a sovereign country not to question his own elections. To me this was reason to suspect the CIA had compromised our voting machines.

I'd like to offer my own point of view as a counterpoint to the image painted by those journalists.

Bolsonaro is a loudmouth who needlessly offended a huge number of people by making light of COVID-19 deaths. He could have just shut up and allowed other people handle the matter but he just had to put his foot in his mouth. He's got this "myth" thing going on where he says needlessly outrageous things in public and everyone is awed by the sheer balls it takes to say such things in today's politically correct world. When he mocked COVID victims though it caused massive damage to his reputation. It was extremely disrespectful and accomplished nothing. In terms of actual death toll I don't think Brazil is any worse off than other countries but people still say he "genocided" the brazilian population. For that "crime" they wanted to try him like a nazi in Nuremberg. It's ridiculous.

I don't think he mismanaged the country. Considering the world wide economic meltdown caused by the war and the pandemic, he did alright. By the end of his mandate I had high hopes for the future. Now the current government is essentially undoing everything good he did out of spite and increasing taxes for good measure. I criticized his government and his ignorant handling of the pandemic but those problems seem so small now that we have literal communists in power.

By disastrous for the environment you must mean the amazon. It's not something I personally care about. I'd burn that entire jungle down if it brought us prosperity and development. Still I'd like to note the amazon was in much better shape under him than it is right now. Deforestation is a lot higher now, dunno why. Maybe Lula doesn't actually care either. His "solution" apparently consists of begging the king of england for money during his coronation while spending ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money on luxuries.

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