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Comment by consumer451 | Hacker News Reader

> Twitter doesn’t have a choice but to obey local governments. If we don’t obey local government laws, we will get shut down

- Elon Musk (2023)

What is it exactly that's different in this case?

https://www.business-standard.com/technology/tech-news/twitt...

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The difference is that in India, it's his friends in the far right that censored things at the whims of their president. In Brazil, his friends in the far right composed by Bolsonaro supporters are the ones being investigated for a coup attempt and had their accounts blocked by Brazilian judiciary (not by the president's whim).

The difference is the claim that the requests violate Brazilian law. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1776989005848207503?s=46

What role does Elon Musk have in the Brazilian judiciary?

His claim is that X must abide by the law in each country it operates. So if an order is deemed to be in violation of the law of the country, that would be relevant. I presume it is X lawyers in the country of question (Or lawyers knowledgeable about that) make the adjudication.

OK, so did Musk investigate the legality of the order from Modi in India, or the orders from Erdogon in Turkey?[0]

There were solid arguments that both of those were not legal censorship.

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-censoring-content-recep...

Not sure, but according to Elon a significant difference in this case was that they were being gagged such that they would not have been able to disclose that the takedown requests were at the behest of the Alexader Morales and had to pretend it was X terms of service.

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1777386419561828804

Brazil's foreign policy has changed lately. It has been siding with Iran, Palestine, Venezuela, China and Russia.

i think we’ve seen repeatedly that his reasoning for loudly preaching to us all about “free speech” was never genuine or even realistic.

the first clue was the “public square” argument. a privately owned space by literal definition can not be public. the second clue was obvious to anyone who has ran a large online community or worked in real world gathering spaces: it’s impossible to allow all behaviors yet expect people to want to spend their time visiting.

he has shown his disingenuousness repeatedly.

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