Brazil threatens to regulate social media after clash with Elon Musk | Hacker News Reader

Brazil threatens to regulate social media after clash with Elon Musk

ft.com

> “We cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks and put themselves in a position to violate the rule of law, failing to comply with court orders and threatening our authorities.”

There is nothing true in this sentence. Just an a priori assumption that the judge's power must be above everyone's speech , with a sprinkling of billionaire-hate

What sort of stuff is the judge censoring? I’ve just heard of this and the article is behind a paywall

> The comments came after X’s global government affairs team posted that it “has been forced by court decisions to block certain popular accounts in Brazil”. >

> “We do not know the reasons these blocking orders have been issued [and] We are prohibited from saying which court or judge issued the order, or on what grounds.” >

> The profiles are probably linked to far-right movements, which have found fertile ground on X and other social media platforms, including Telegram. Musk suggested the court orders came from Alexandre De Moraes, a Supreme Court justice who has been a vocal advocate of cracking down on anti-democratic content online, particularly following riots on January 8 last year when thousands of far-right demonstrators stormed government buildings in Brasília.

Very interesting. Why would a judge have an issue with accounts that contributed to the storming of government buildings in the capitol?

It is very suspicious as to why he would not want Elon Musk to personally intervene on behalf of these accounts. This smacks of wealthism (discrimination against high net worth individuals), as who is this judge to judge?

To my knowledge, X hasn't had a recent history of not blocking posts/accounts that actively incite violence.

What's weird to me is that the Brazilian court would prevent them from sharing (or even telling them why) the posts should be blocked, which accounts should be blocked, etc...

If you go to subreddits like r/Brasil you'll see people actively cheering the government's decision. These people want to be censored and have a massive hate boner for billionaires.

Seriously, go take a read at the subreddit. Even if you disagree with me on the judge's decisions for some of the accounts, you'll be shocked at how little nuance there is in the Brazillian community (who should be aware of how thin the line they're walking on is).

They hate some billionaires. The ones who fund the leftist agenda are cheered on.

I'm guessing you're Brazillian? I'm Portuguese and we're very strict about freedom of speech, almost like the US. Sad to see what's happening to my brothers & sisters.

I am. Brazil is unfortunately under a judiciary dictatorship since 2019, when a news magazine was censored for publishing an article about how one of the supreme court justices was linked to the county’s largest corruption scheme [1].

After this, the so called “Fake News Inquiry” was established illegally (some reasons for its illegality are described in [2] but there are books written on the matter [3].

Its been going downhill since then, with people being held in prison for two years now without accusation and with their lawyers having no access to court documents.

Elon is allowing people outside Brazil to finally be aware what’s going on here and for that he should be commended.

[1]https://crusoe.com.br/diario/urgente-ministro-do-stf-censura... [2]https://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/instituto-politeia/inquerito... [3]https://www.amazon.com.br/Inqu%C3%A9rito-Do-Fim-Mundo/dp/659...

According with Brazilian laws a court order can remove online content if it is related to investigations, hate and unbased defamatory speech. Which was the case for the removed accounts.

Why is Twitter picking a fight in Brazil and not in Turkey or India?

> a sprinkling of billionaire-hate

Everyone hates billionaires. That's simple human nature, right? :)

Only two kinds of people _say_ the don't hate billionaires;

  Other billionaires.

  People who (wrongly) imagine that they too one day will be  billionaires.

Also people who aren't disabled by envy.

But I don't think there's many of them. That's kinda my point. Sure it's the standard retort... "Oh it's the politics of envy... yadda yadda". But that's not what's happening if you think about it deeply and honestly. I'd say far more people simply fear them (or rather what insane things they have the unelected power to do).

The fact that you wrote "everyone hates billionaires" rather than "everyone fears billionaires" moves the needle towards the envy hypothesis.

Explain yourself more please. It sounds like you may have something interesting to say but need to elaborate. What do you think is the relation between fear and hate in this instance?

I'm just saying that someone who writes "everybody hates billionaires" is unlikely to be motivated by fear of billions because if that was the motivation, they'd be more likely to write, "everybody is afraid of billionaires" or "everyone know billionaires are a threat to the freedom on non-billionaires" or such.

Oh how disappointing. You're making it about me. I don't matter. Nor does my writing style. We had the chance to discuss an important philosophical idea. I guess a good way to be "less wrong" is never to venture much :)

FWIW I think people are less comfortable expressing fear (which in our culture we think sounds weak) than "hate", which seems more active on face value. There are a few things we can fear and love, like roller-coaster rides, tigers or beautiful poisonous flowers. But usually fear and hate cluster together more strongly as emotions.

I think the core reason people hate billionaires is they bypass democracy and accountability. You have to be a bit crazy to make or keep excessive money, so that makes them unpredictable and dangerous.

This makes sense. Disliking something is the same thing as being disabled. For example, disliking posts critical of billionaires is a hallmark sign of being disabled by fantasy

couldn't it be a simple growth hack strategy by EM?

I mean, X isn't in their best days...

“It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.”

— Thomas Sowell

Yeah, but how many DJs have actually been hanged?

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