US releases sealed Brazil orders to X, shedding light on account suspensions

Governments are not legacy and are rarely terrified by anything.

This is the mistake that arrogant tech players make up until they are smacked down and are either put in jail e.g. crypto space, heavily regulated e.g. EU or coerced into submission e.g. China.

And whilst they allow companies to push the limits e.g. Uber, Airbnb it is only up to a certain point where they have provided the maximum benefit to society at which they are swiftly reigned back in.

I'm uncertain what you mean by this. 'Hard power' generally refers to military and economic actions such as sanctions - ie where governments forbid third parties in the private sector (or indeed other countries, if they have the heft) to do business with the sanctioned entities. Can't see how that applies. The internet as a political factor is of course new, but transnational organization/ideology explicitly directed at displacement of the existing order goes back centuries.

Thought experiment: would a blockchain-like twitter app be possible? i.e. an uncensorable micro-blog, with the exact same rules for every individual and government. Perhaps a plugin ecosystem where users could add their own plugins akin to they may extend browsers (for things like filtering unwanted content).

I wonder if something like that could work. It could be unbiased to a cryptographic standard (at least in theory).

They weren’t using something as naive as keyword search even 20 years ago. That notion is more trope than reality.

Everything public is "monitored". It's called a search engine.

You don't need to look to countries outside the western sphere. There are the same restrictions to privacy and speech where fear based decisions were made with the exact same excuses. It invalidates these laws in the end.

Something precious is given up for marginal or even negative gain.

Clearly by the irony impaired.

IMO, as the CEO of Tesla, Musk should have never bought X imo from a business standpoint, even if he fully believes in full speech, because it simply traps him (most of the world has no where near as strong free speech laws as the US).

In India for example, if he doesn't kowtow to the authoritarian trending Indian government in power, he risks sinking any chance of Tesla expanding its marketshare in a democracy critical to Tesla's future.

The same goes for Tesla in Turkey. https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-erdogan-asks-us-elon-... . If X starts standing up for speech there, this could sink their future plans in another valuable market.

I think the fact that he backtracked on Brazil ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-16/musk-s-x-... ) might also show that he also worries about Tesla's future in Brazil.

Mind sharing the source on that report? Where was the link to it published?

The person being interviewed in that first link seems very biased, and obviously is for the authoritarian actions of the current Brazilian regime. She seems to take the stance that the secret unilateral censorship orders are “technically legal” while Musk and others take the stance that they are in conflict with Brazil’s own constitution. But leaving aside legality, obviously secret censorship orders based on political speech are very anti democratic - in the least such actions must be done in the open in full view of the public and not based on the sole judgment of one person. Even if it’s technically legal it should be debated and the law should be changed.

As an example of Aranha being biased, take this bit:

> So at the moment when were were managing to finally hold the main leaders of this attempted coup accountable, Elon Musk and Michael Shellenberger came onto the scene to attack the institutions that are prosecuting them, to usurp their power so they can’t convict them anymore. That was clearly their short term goal and in the long run Elon Musk obviously wants to be a player in the international far right and interfere in elections around the world, especially in the US.

What evidence is there that Musk wants to “interfere in elections”? If anything, he is seeking to remove interference from elections by advocating for less censorship and more neutrality.

Shellenberger didn’t “come onto the scene”. He’s been doing great research and journalism for a long time. Also pointing out one factual error that he readily admitted to doesn’t invalidate everything else the Twitter files uncovered. Even if you dismiss Shellenberger, there’s everything Glenn Greenwald has reported on what’s going on - is he also looking to support a coup? He faced attacks on his journalistic freedoms from the previous (Bolsonaro) administration and now the same from the present administration, for brave reporting.

Take that interview with a huge grain of salt. It’s Brasil Wire - which is a leftist (and therefore pro Lula) organization, and they’re not shy about their ideological bias:

https://www.brasilwire.com/about/

Negative.

The point is not that he shouldn’t be allowed to unilaterally ban social media accounts.

The point is that he shouldn’t be allowed to do that in secrecy, without providing any public justification, and not respecting the right of the accused to defend themselves.

People are getting silenced without knowing why they are getting silenced, and without proper due process/right to respond.

Joseph Stalin's critics claim that he abused his power and should not be allowed to put political opponents into gulags. However, most Soviet legal experts see his brash tactics as legally sound, and furthermore justified by extraordinary circumstances of the State of Workers and Peasants imperiled. They note his decisions have been either upheld by the Politburo or gone unchallenged.

While other countries may not have exactly the same legal institute as the American Constitution's First Amendment, Freedom of Speech is not only enshrined on the Brazilian Constitution but is also a part of the United Nations declaration of Human Rights (General Assembly resolution 217 A) from which Brazil is one of the signatories, ratified by the Brazilian Congress.

You probably don't know it, but international agreements signed by the chief of the executive and ratified by the congress ARE law in Brazil.

Maybe you are really a lot smarter and knowledgeable than the Americans you condescendingly cite in your comment, but apparently on this particular matter your level of knowledge is not as vast as you seem to think.

Where is this comment coming from? This reeks of anti-american bias, what substance does this add to the discussion?