Brazilian court orders suspension of X | Hacker News Reader

Brazilian court orders suspension of X

theguardian.com

196 pointsmmaia362 comments

"People who use VPN to access X will be subject to daily fines of US$8,900"

Edit: Thanks for this user https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41404325 for posting the court order and bringing this new information:

Apple and Google must remove all VPN apps from their stores!

Apple and Google must DELETE all VPN apps already installed on users' phones!!!

https://apnews.com/article/brazil-musk-x-suspended-de-moraes...

I think he's just making it up as he goes along now.

In Brazil, a Justice of the Supreme Court has the power to impose fines on people and companies that violate the law. In this case, federal law #12.965.

Can individual judges do as they please without any voting or consensus?

There job is to interpret and implement the law. So they should never do as they please but ensure the law is enforced.

Sometimes that's conjunction with a jury or as a panel of judges. Those scenarios involve voting or consensus. But not all judgements are made this way.

Decisions can be appealed or challenged by higher courts.

I did NOT violate the law.

How come he is deleting the VPN apps on my phone??? That I need to remote to my overseas job???

How come I I'm now banned from reading what Zelensky, Kasparov, Yann LeCun, and thousands of others world leaders have to say?

How come my neighbor, who makes a honest living through X-Twitter, has now lost her job?

> How come I I'm now banned from reading what Zelensky, Kasparov, Yann LeCun, and thousands of others world leaders have to say?

> How come my neighbor, who makes a honest living through X-Twitter, has now lost her job?

Because the other party did violate the law. Unfortunately, Twitter got taken over by an international ideologue who likes to pick fights, and you and your neighbor are suffering the consequences of that. He doesn't care about you in the least, and you should be wary about asking your government to pick up the slack for his egotism as it would just position him to further ignore or exploit you and your community.

(The broader VPN ban is admittedly another thing, though.)

> Twitter got taken over by an international ideologue

Twitter was bought from ideologues by someone who opened it up to other ideologies. While this may have increased the absolute ideological load on the platform it actually decreased the effective ideological charge since opposite sides cancel out each other, pulling the balance towards the centre where it used to tilt heavily towards a single side.

I don't think opposing ideas cancel each other out, like so much electrical charge.

The more opposing ideas on a platform, the more ideas are spread, tested, strengthened, weakened, and grown.

An echo chamber is where ideas go to die.

These people never seem to learn that when the table turns, and it will, that they won’t like it anymore. They lived when the censor suited them but cry foul when it’s in opposition.

It’s important to curate a culture and agreed set of norms that you can live with when you’re not in control.

> the effective ideological charge since opposite sides cancel out each other

I honestly, wholeheartedly wish that was true.

In reality, however, the ideology of whoever holds more economic power has orders of magnitude more weight than the one of the powerless masses.

- "How come I I'm now banned from reading what Zelensky, Kasparov, Yann LeCun, and thousands of others world leaders have to say?"

This is the single most important thing about tech censorship I wish more HN'ers would figure out on their own. It may be narrated as a fight between corporations and judges, but in addition to all of that, it's ordinary individuals' rights on the line. "To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker."

The right of an individual human to read what some individual account on a media platform wrote is a core civil right, and should be inviolate. It stands alone and apart from whatever other wrongs the platform is involved in.

The modern zeitgeist isn't merely burning books; it's burning down magnificent libraries of books in order to spite approximately five of them.

I think we should all just accept that these platforms are not suitable for the purposes of being a global bulletin board/library of human activity as long as they are owned and operated by private corporations who only care about your inviolable rights to speak freely when it suits them. There are other ways besides twitter to see what Zelensky says.

we should accept that government agencies are not suitable for the purpose of providing your basic food, medical, education, or security needs; who furthermore only care about your food, your healthcare, habeas corpus or rule of law when it suits them and maintains their job.

There are other ways besides the USDA, DoE, or FBI to get good food, health, education, and security.

Seriously? Governments' legitimacy is pinned to their ability to provide food and medical attention to their citizenry. It doesn't make any difference whether or not twitter exists or who has access to it.

I disagree. I think the platforms are ok if not without imperfections. HN is owned by a private corporation. Should you ban yourself from reading this as a result?

Things deemed illegal or not compliant by a jurisdictional entity often have negative consequences for others.

Most legal judgements are blunt swords.

Fairness is seldom considered.

I'm not agreeing with the outcomes here. Just pointing out laws get enforced, if they don't they aren't laws.

There is no "fake news" law. One was proposed and rejected by our representatives. Then the judge-king published a resolution of sorts which basically rammed the law through anyway.

Brazilian constitution says:

> Any and all censorship of political, ideological and artistic nature is prohibited

What he's doing is censorship, plain and simple. And it's unconstitutional.

They can't and won't delete any apps from your phone, but the apps would be gone from the stores, which does not make it much less of a bullshit.

Restricting access to X makes sense: the platform has removed themselves from the country, making it impossible to resolve legal and financial disputes in Brazil, so it makes sense they are not allowed to operate in the country anymore.

Then again, punishing users that access it through other means is baffling.

> They can't and won't delete any apps from your phone

Google can definitely install/delete apps from your phone remotely using Play Store.

Even if the goal of the brazilian judge makes sense, that doesn't make the judge's actions legal. In a country of laws, the end does not justify the means.

A thorough explanation of the applicable law, point by point, that demonstrates that everything that is happening here is outrageous :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

The actions are legal, in the sense they have been approved by the Supreme Court. We can argue about the morality of the Supreme Court deciding on the legality of their own actions, but in practice, they are, by all means, legal.

BBC has a decent article that estabilishes a critique of the same points you mentioned in your post: https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/c4n3wklk255o some of your complaints are quite fair, some don't.

In particular: "The Brazilian constitution specifies that the Supreme Court can only judge those with “privileged jurisdiction" isn't true at all. The Brazilian Constitution states a whole bunch of attributions to the Supreme Court, which you can read (in Portuguese) at:

https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constitui... (search for "DO SUPREMO TRIBUNAL FEDERAL")

The role you mention, about ruling over "privileged jurisdiction" is one of 20+ attributed roles, a small fraction of their attributions.

No, it doesn't make sense. The reason they had to pull out of the country is that representatives of X were about to be thrown in jail for an American business not honoring censorship edicts written by this judge. Why not Meta or Google? Because they've honored the censorship orders.

When he couldn't find representatives of X, he went after SpaceX and StarLink, even though no law allows him to do so. The judge is simply on a personal vendetta against Elon Musk solely on the basis of political alignment.

This isn't baffling, this is leftist totalitarianism at work.

This, except it's right-wing totalitarianism at work, seeking to silence the left wing (Lula et al), which appears to have won the election.

Indeed, before the election and subsequent fallout, the right-wing elmu was friendly towards the right-wing Bolsonaro, who these orders support.

No. The judge is attempting to silence anyone speaking out against the new leftist government. Meta and Google silently complied. X did not.

You're right, I confused 2 different South American elections and am dumb and sorry.

Not to being too much politics into the discussion, but Mr. Morais is hardly a leftist. In fact, he's been put there by the very president that removed Mrs. Dilma Rouseff, Michel Temer, who is quite obviously on the right side of the spectrum.

I was also baffled by them going after Starlink when it happened. Just like you, I found it absurd to go over a different company just because some person owns stakes on both of them.

Then, Starlink refused to block Twitter, and with that they kind of proved the Supreme Court's point that they operate under the same economic organization and are subject to the same leadership.

I guess they stepped into their own trap there.

Which part of that law have the users of VPNs violated?

the part they just made up of course!

It sure looks that way! He has just issued a new court order backtracking on the removal of VPN apps from stores. But the fine still stands: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41405776

Wow!

I had to check with local news, because I couldn't believe it. It checks out, he did impose the fine. (It's R$50k if somebody is as uninformed as I was.)

That is deeply messed up. Wow, that's nearly $9000 USD.

Yep. That is about 2 years of salary at the minimum wage.

And that's per day

Is it normal that a judge can impose such blanket fines on users?

This guy is the head of the STF, the highest court in Brazil, so he's kinda doing an "I am the law" bit here.

That said, I do think that judges in Brazil can have a larger investigative role due to the different legal system that does not happen in other countries with more separation of powers to prevent exactly this sort of thing.

That's not the case. The law as it applies, is thoroughly explained here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

To be clear, I think Moraes is out of control in this case.

This is Brazil. That guy is a judge-god-king. Whatever he writes on a piece of paper becomes law. Saddest part is even on HN you will find brazilians supporting everything he does.

Lets be fair now. It was not like this as far as I can tell, before Lava Jato.

Its just that the executive and legislative are now so weakened due to corruption scandals (and open investigations) that no one seemingly dares to move against 1 wild judge.

I wonder how this ends though. 1 judge seemingly has more power now than a set of democratically elected senators

It's been like this since always. "Doctors think they're gods, judges know". My legal medicine professor, a coroner, told me that during a class.

It got worse in 2019. Some magazine ran a damning article on them. In retaliation, they granted themselves virtually limitless power to investigate, prosecute, judge and punish "fake news" of all kinds, with themselves as the victims. They determine what's fake of course. Their powers just kept expanding until they essentially usurped everything. It got to the point this judge started proposing changes to laws directly to our representatives. The changes were rejected but he just rammed the "fake news" nonsense down our throats anyway via his "resolutions". It's under the umbrella of this "fake news" inquisition that the judge-king banned X in Brazil.

And not a single politician will move against them. Precisely because they're all so hopelessly corrupt. All the judges need to do to put them in the ground is unearth one of countless corruption scandals.

This is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship of the judiciary. Unelected judge-kings with lifetime mandates whose pens directly make the people with guns do their bidding. It's kind of ridiculous to even discuss "laws" at this point. These guys could write whatever they want on a piece of paper and it becomes law.

Even more context:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36543423

This is why side loading feature is important. Government shouldn't decide what should I do as per their whims.

That won't stop you from being fined $9k USD!

I wonder, is there a realistic chance the govt can somewhat easily detect what you have side loaded?

( short of opening your phone and browsing instslled apps )

Not remotely without a cooperating app or app store. But they could detect VPN traffic for most VPNs and tie that to your sim card which is tied to your ID.

The text is weird. It kind of looks like they meant to write something else entirely.

The order does say Apple and Google must take down the VPN apps, but the way it's been written makes me think it was intended to order VPN apps to make Twitter/X unavailable, but someone misunderstood it or poorly expressed it.

Of course you can't expect judges to understand technical terms very well, but this guy has been dealing with tech long enough I feel like they should know this VPN text is bullshit.

Pretty hardcore even by the Russian standards. People aren't fined for using VPN here. That's some next level.

Let's see what happens when Google refuses to comply!

Not gonna happen. But it should, if this is the order!

Why do you want Google of all companies to stand above the sovereign state, which is a representative democracy?

The ruling is incredibly dumb for sure (at least the removing apps from devices part), but if the sovereign state demands it, they'll either have to exit the market/nation entirely or comply.

being a democracy does not guarantee that everything you do is correct

Of course it doesn't guarantee that, nor did I ever imply such.

It's still the sovereign state however, businesses that want to be active on their territory have to comply with local legislation, wherever that legislation is an extreme overreach or not.

This is not a case of one arm of the government doing whatever it wants like with PRISM.

This is a public ruling. they're criminal if they don't comply, by definition.

Harriet Tubman was a criminal too.

Sometimes being a criminal by defying an unjust law is the best thing you can do.

Civil disobedience is something an individual can can do. That's something very different to this situation. The company isn't a person, the CEO could do civil disobedience and order that the company doesn't comply. But that'd be the same as exiting the market, as the government will be forced to take action anyway. And then they'd likely go to jail, achieving nothing.

You can't really do civil disobedience while everyone is looking at you, the way to do that is in secret.

I struggle to imagine how you would arrive at such a cruel & disturbing allegation, that corporations organizations & institutions must be morally blind.

Real life counter example, Leica Freedom Train, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leica_Freedom_Train

Overt disobedience versus subversive disobedience can have a risk. Yeah, don't do things that will eliminate your entity from the world. But often you should be willing to take some kind of an L (loss). The best time to fight injustice is as early as possible; push back if you can.

They're essentially saying that they don't want the US 1st amendment imported into their state. So they should block it like they have and that be that.

Poor bastards.

big stretch, this is only twitter, and with plenty of reasoning, history, and back and forward, where twitter has time after time ignored brazillian's court requests.

And why should Twitter recognize the Brazilian courts authority on speech?

It has to be case by case assessment of whether the law is just & right. We have a moral obligation to not follow - to practice civil disobedience - against unjust laws.

Banning vpns is a bridge to far for me. The state is placing itself too far above the people, demanding control which it is not entitled to, dictating how we might think & connect.

Letting a state grow ever more vicious in its enforcement, letting it cut itself off from the world & punish its citizens by denying them access to the internet & technologies that the rest of the world enjoys is their own real power, is the economic-military control they have, if they want to go to war with businesses. That's all they have for power. And it makes them look dumb, shows them to be bullies, and hurts their people.

We need some states to get uppity, so it becomes more clear that the Internet doesn't care & that states can do what they want, ban what they want, and the rest of the world will keep moving along. That's exactly what's happening here, and the state is, in my view, making an absurd fool of itself by going so absurdly far in desperation to try to apply the law. Fucking with the app stores just to drive home a grudge match with one service is fucking ludicrous & we should laugh out ass off at these fools.

Dude wtf. Are you serious right now?

It's a bit silly & over the top, but I do think there's a huge danger to this planet with lots and lots and lots of jurisdictions all over the planet who have all kinds of incentives to self deal, to try to bend the internet & computing to their whims.

And the Internet & computing can't have such extreme veto power over how we think & connect. Europe for example has granted itself a right to be forgotten, where even if you do awful awful things you can ask to have yourself removed from the Internet. And so far that's been respected... In European search results. But as much as they insist, we don't censor the rest of the world of those results, just because one group of people says so.

Whether vpns are available isn't exactly the same. But its still horseshit. It's still casting a gigantic net because you are a petulant shitty power-mad rule-maker. It doesn't seem representative of the nation either; it seems like some hyper-political over-reacrion horseshit.

There's just so many people who will be trying to control how we think, how we connect, control what the internet is. And I feel like there's a long running crisis of what we do and what we don't do to match nations. We maybe aren't at full Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. But we've had a number of services get to the brink fo bas again and again, only for someone to blink. And it seemed inevitable that this system of never testingimots was going to break, and when it did, rather than break reasonably & part ways, Brazil has just gone scorched earth, has drastically drastically upped the brinkmanship & blast zone, in extremely harmful ways. This is just my judgement call, but fuck yeah I think this shit deserves a colossal colossal colossal middle finger, and if Brazil wants to escalate, well, have fun doing something other than the internet that everyone else uses. You'll have to build that path yourself, and I don't think we should support & enable that schism.

The Court of Justice of the European Union clarified that the operator of a search engine is not required to carry out a de-referencing on all versions of its search engine. So, it's a bit bold of you to say that Europe is trying to control the entire internet when they explicitly told Google they're allowed to limit the impact to Europe alone.

Also, the "right to be forgotten" suggests more rights of the data subject than the text of the article provides for. The title is often understood by data subjects to be an absolute right to have personal data deleted - however if the controller has a legal basis for the processing of personal data, the exercise of Article 17 GDPR has usually no effect.

Wow. The VPN piece of this ought to be the nut graf. Wild overreach.

And banning a social media platform that millions use is not?

X has refused to abide by the governments decisions, so that is big but understandable news. Trying to casually ban all VPNs as part of that is surprising and excessive.

Banning a site is one thing.

Banning an entire communications technology, with abusively high fines for citizens who defy the ban, is on a whole other level.

X is not communications technology. It's a forum website controlled by a private company. It's not like they're a protocol or that they're infrastructure.

X is the site I was referring to.

Virtual Private Networking is the communications technology I was talking about.

Banning VPN's is what's shocking here.

Ok I misunderstood you. We’re in agreement then!

I expected the fine but he actually ordered remote removal of VPN apps from user devices? That's pretty fucked up if true. Wow

I uploaded the ruling to the Internet Archive along with a copy of the document pushed through Google Translate

https://archive.org/details/Brazil-Court-Suspends-X/

Wow! Day by day, I appreciate more and more how precious the liberty and freedom we have in the US.

And shame on Canada and UK!

What did Canada and UK do?

gun control

Criminalize acts that would clearly be free speech in the US: the trucker convoy (Canada) (even just voicing support for it); mean tweets as hate speech (UK) (recent riots, see also JK Rowling).

THIS JUST IN: Judge Moraes has backtracked on the removal of VPN apps from stores and phones. He has just issued a new court order.

But the ban and the fine of US$8,900 for users who use a VPN to access X-Twitter still apply!

The same judge that is responsible for X's suspension ordered Apple and Google to take down VPN apps from their app stores as well.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240830201851/https://www.conju... (Page 49 and 50, document is in Portuguese)

Brazil is heading down a very dark path.

For anyone curious:

    Proton VPN
    Express VPN
    NordVPN
    Surfshark,
    TOTALVPN
    Atlas VPN
    Bitdefender VPN

There are some pretty well known VPNs that are NOT on that list. Private Internet Access (PIA) for example is absent. Sure, it's used more for torrenting than anything else, but it's one of the most popular VPNs.

I thought maybe PIA just doesn't operate in Brazil, but they actually have a specific page dedicated to it:

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/vpn-server/brazil-vpn

Maybe that VPN is already illegal somehow in Brazil?

The listed VPNs are just examples. The order to take down VPN apps affects every VPN provider.

What about apps like WireGuard for iOS, which implements the WireGuard VPN protocol but is not offering any paid VPN services or subscriptions. Are those kinds of apps banned too?

And what about Anti-Viruses / Security apps, that usually have VPN functionality?

This is Kafkaesque!

F-droid might be a solution. ProtonVPN, possibly others can be installed.

Wouldn't be surprised if he banned/fined F-Droid too.

I think F-Droid is available as a regular APK on their website?

Everything this judge hates is illegal. Only their complete technological incompetence can save us.

Thank you very much for posting this document.

From what I'm reading, it also orders Apple and Google to DELETE VPN apps already installed on users' phones!

(I think this has been done in the past, in Brazil)

Microsoft and Apple operating systems include native VPN clients capable of connecting to many commercial and enterprise VPNs. Some routers and mobile hotspots include VPN clients, over which mobile phone traffic can be routed.

Arbitrary traffic can be tunneled over SSH to a low-cost VPS. Web browser extensions can tunnel traffic over SOCKS proxy. Tor/Tails can route traffic globally, without VPN.

Other network arms races: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41396206

VPN protocols are easy to recognize and block using DPI unless they masquerade as legitimate traffic.

Does Brazil have a national firewall like China?

Not yet. Individual ISP implement blocking lists throughout IP ACLs but mostly by DNS means.

Are computer VPN apps also banned?

How are they planning to handle remote employees whose employers use VPNs?

The document makes no mention of any desktop OS, so computer VPN apps should be safe.

That's not what is written in the document. VPN apps are compelled to block access to X in Brazil.

CNN Brazil and Folha de S.Paulo both can back up my interpretation of the court order.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240830223541/https://www1.folh...

https://web.archive.org/web/20240830223743/https://www.cnnbr...

The specific section about removing VPNs from apps stores is quite unclear, I'll give you that, but factoring in how that section is structured, it's safe to say it's meant to be an order to remove VPNs from app stores.

Thank you for the link.

I uploaded the ruling to the Internet Archive along with a copy of the document I pushed through Google Translate (which may not be perfect).

https://archive.org/details/Brazil-Court-Suspends-X

> IN VIEW OF ALL THE ABOVE, given the necessary legal requirements, fumus boni iuris – consisting of the repeated, conscious and voluntary failure to comply with court orders and failure to pay the daily fines applied, in addition to the attempt to not submit to the Brazilian legal system and Judiciary, to establish an environment of total impunity and “lawless land” on social networks as well as

> Brazilians, including during the 2024 municipal elections, the periculum in mora – consisting of the maintenance and expansion of the instrumentalization of X BRAZIL, through the action of extremist groups and digital militias on social networks, with massive dissemination of Nazi, racist, fascist, hate speeches, anti-democratic speeches, including in the period leading up to the 2024 municipal elections,

> I DETERMINE:

> (1) IMMEDIATE, COMPLETE AND INTEGRAL SUSPENSION OF THE OPERATION OF “X BRASIL INTERNET LTDA” in the national territory, until all court orders issued in these proceedings are complied with, fines are duly paid and a legal or natural person representing the company in the national territory is appointed in court. In the case of a legal entity, its administrative representative must also be appointed. The President of the National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL), CARLOS MANUEL BAIGORRI must be notified, including by electronic means, to IMMEDIATELY take all necessary measures to implement the measure, with this COURT being notified within a maximum of 24 (twentyfour) hours.

> (2) THE SUMMONS, to be complied with within 5 (five) days, and must immediately notify the court of the companies (2.1) APPLE and GOOGLE in Brazil to insert technological obstacles capable of making it impossible for users of the IOS (APPLE) and ANDROID (GOOGLE) systems to use the “X” application and remove the “X” application from the APPLE STORE and GOOGLE PLAY STORE stores and, similarly, in relation to applications that enable the use of VPN ('virtual private network'), such as, for example: Proton VPN, Express VPN, NordVPN, Surfshark, TOTALVPN, Atlas VPN, Bitdefender VPN; (2.2) Which manage backbone access services in Brazil, so that they insert technological obstacles in them capable of making it impossible for users of the “X” application to use;

> (2.3) Internet service providers, represented by their Presidents, for example ALGAR TELECOM, OI, SKY, LIVE TIM, VIVO, CLARO, NET VIRTUA, GVT, etc..., so that they insert technological obstacles capable of making the use of the application “X” unfeasible; and (2.4) That manage personal mobile service and switched fixed telephone service, so that they insert technological obstacles capable of making the use of the application “X” unfeasible

> (3) THE APPLICATION OF A DAILY FINE of R$50,000.00 (fifty thousand reais) to individuals and legal entities that engage in conduct involving the use of technological subterfuges to continue communications carried out by “X”, such as the use of VPN ('virtual private network'), without prejudice to other civil and criminal sanctions, in accordance with the law.

It is clearly seen that all of this has something to do with elections. I wonder if "digital militia" found some facts of rigging them?

Since I can't edit my comment anymore, here's an update: The order to take down VPN apps from app stores has been suspended until further action by X or Elon Musk.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240830235848/https://www.cnnbr...

> Brazil is heading down a very dark path.

But predictable. Contempt of and banning speech because it’s disruptive to the regime (cynically “our democracy”) and harassing political opposition is commonplace for socialist and leftist governments.

> The decision imposes a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800) on individuals and companies that attempt to continue using X via VPN.

Fining even users is a bit surprising.

How can a court arbitrarily impose fines on users like this?

The goal is that it's a scare tactic. There is no technical way that these fines could be imposed at large, outside of say, people outing themselves publicly or similar. This is the same wording that was used when they blocked Whatsapp.

collaborating with a law breaker in contempt of court.

Laws don't even seem to be applicable at this point. It is one supreme court justice that is issuing court orders as if he were a king.

The law does apply. Xitter is being sued, but Elon refuses to appoint a legal representative in the country. The judge has the right to ban the product until the owner or their representative shows up.

They can't. I can easily use a Brazil endpoint to establish a tunnel elsewhere and browse X, formerly Twitter. I suppose they could try fining the VPN service provider. (But even then they won't be able to prove what's going on.)

The logical next step would be putting you under investigation for using a VPN “because only criminals need privacy”

Getting really close to that

Can't you just ban public VPN services in the country?

China has nailed it.

China has nailed DPI-based techniques, and I am certain they’re exporting/selling the tech to other nations.

What if you're a public figure, maybe one critical of the government and you're still tweeting while in Brazil?

Seems pretty easy to enforce to me regardless of the technical ways people circumvent it.

It would be amusing if the government tried to introduce that as evidence and then got countersued for having used X themselves.

I know, I know. There is probably some exemption for law enforcement. Or if that was overlooked, there will be soon.

But it was still an amusing thought.

There's a lot to say about the Brazilian Supreme Court abuses of power.

And to be complete on the context, I expect it to have teeth.

Is it even remotely modeled after the US system of checks and balances? How does the court have what also seems like legislative power?

Yes, it's modeled after the US Constitution.

> How does the court have what also seems like legislative power?

It doesn't. It just does it anyway.

(Technically, it can dictate to courts how to interpret laws. On practice, it dictates things like "a person can only be arrested after a judge hosts a trial and orders it" as "a person can only be arrested after all judges host a trial". The power to interpret laws is extremely ambiguous.)

Even in the USA courts have some limited investigation powers over matters under the jurisdiction of the court, for example when a draft of the Dobbs abortion ruling was leaked.

Brazil has dialed this up to 11 by declaring the Internet as being under their jurisdiction. That means they can act as judge, prosecutor, and jury and issue court orders regarding anything that happens on the Internet. There is zero recourse because they are the supreme court.

The US is in no position to critique other countries' checks and balances right now with how the Supreme Court works

What makes you think that? The US isn't a single person.

Yes. However checks and balances work because the other branches will choose to assert their power over a branch that is overstepping. However, the other branches are in the hands of the ruling socialists, and they are just happy to let the judiciary do their dirty work. And, they have quite a few skeletons still in their closet after the Lava Jato scandal.

Anyway a thorough explanation of the applicable law, point by point

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

> However, the other branches are in the hands of the ruling socialists

I'm sorry, but... what?

The Executive is the one closest to this qualification, but Lula, Haddad, Zé Múcio, Tebet and the others in power are nowhere even close to being socialists! Lula perhaps, until about a couple decades ago was a little bit closer but now he's not even on the left very much.

The Congress and the Senate, on the other hand, are mostly in the hands of neopentecostal evangelicals, the pro-gun nutjobs, the agrobusiness tycoons and other capitalists and fascists.

Let's see:

1 - EXECUTIVE:

Lula is in the literal workers' party.

Fernando Haddad, Minister of Finance, did his own Master's dissertation defending socio-economics of the USSR, before the USSR collapsed and was an embarrassment for cocktail communists everywhere. The guy who calls economic shots is literally a communist fanboy.

Carlos Lupi, also Minister, is literally one of the vice presidents of the Socialist International . The word socialist is literally in the name, and he is VP of it worldwide!

2 - CONGRESS:

The opposition is in clear minority in in both chambers[1]. The opposition has almost a 2:1 deficit vs the Government inside the Chamber of Deputies

3 - MACRO:

The president's own party is in an alliance with the communist party[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Congress_of_Brazil [2]

They can't. A thorough explanation of the applicable law, point by point, that demonstrates that what you are saying is complete fantasy:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

Why they could: The ruling socialist party is allowing the judge to go on a rampage because the ruling class has too many skeletons in their closet to mount an effective defense against the opposition. They hope they can just play dead during this mess - but if history is any guide, the judge will come after them later.

Probably not going to be enforced, but just the same sort of an own goal.

Should have kept the focus on Elon Musk breaking the law.

Well we'll see how much teeth this fine based on how much Glenn Greenwald (who can't resist ranting on twitter) winds up owing.

Ironic he abandoned the US citing its freedom laws only to wind up in this situation.

Well him and his husband were endlessly targeted at points of entry to the US as retaliation for Glens reporting on Snowden. So he's not wrong is he?

> Fining even users is a bit surprising

Not really. Using VPN is illegal in China. The police can put you in jail for using VPNs. Of course, there are very few cases like this even though many people use underground VPNs. This is typical behavior of an authoritarian state: the government reserves the rights to punish you when the situation is right.

VPNs are not illegal in China. About a third of people in China use VPNs and the govt is fine with VPNs unless you're using it to break the law.

You’re right, technically VPN is not illegal, as long as the operators abide laws. It is using VPN to get across GFW that is illegal: https://m.sohu.com/a/738815891_800907/?pvid=000115_3w_a#:~:t...

So, yeah, it is practically illegal to use VPN in China.

Let me guess, you've never been to China.

This is a very, very sad day for the Internet. Unfortunately, you can expect that every app and every platform will get localized and blocking will be normalized.

Soon TikTok will be blocked in the USA. I expect this to serve as an example and an avalanche to follow across the globe.

Blocking a platform for alleged crimes committed the by operator or participants is a punishment for all the users. It’s ridiculous but unfortunately, it appears that the world is ready to accept this as a solution.

In this case was X not explicitly asked to remove the illegal content? They could have simply complied with the local law and avoided this outcome. With their hardcore engineers I’m sure they could have come up with a region-locked solution.

They already have regional blocking, they have been blocking political tweets and accounts in Turkey upon the request of the Turkish government since years now.

What is unclear to me from reading articles is whether they are demanding region blocking (which may not be reasonable but at least makes sense) or a global deletion of that content...

Right, many places require content be removed globally which I'm sure makes sense from their perspective.

They might have been able to do so but they claim not to want to cooperate with what they consider to be a violation of both Brasilian law as well as their own ethical rules. Make of that what you will but it is a more defensible stance than bending to the will of whatever tyrant pops up even if it does not improve the bottom line.

The richest man in the world calling someone stopping him a tyrant is the joke of the year.

No, its not. A thorough explanation of the applicable law, point by point, that demonstrates that the tyrant is wearing a robe

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

Why did you repeat the same message in multiples replies? This is weird. Replied once and it serves all them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41408410

How are you going to prove that TikTok is an intelligence and Psyop arm the PLA? The CCP does not respond to discovery in court cases of adversary nations.

If don't have any proof why block it then? Is this North Korea?

Anyway, if the US has suspicion of PLA working with TikTok and IMHO the should be suspicious, they can regulate how data is collected or how algorithms work and require mechanism that allows that be verified.

Because you'll never be able to prove it, but the proof is arguably in it's effects... whether it's riling up domestic activists to block naval operations in home ports, messaging your entire userbase in-country to DDoS elected representatives or drive political violence through mis/disinformation . I think the entire western world should unify to push TikTok out and at the very least ban all types of "recommendation" algorithms on foreign and domestic social media applications. Free market economics be damned pull out the regulation stick and go whacking

Not my words by an accurate statement:

"A Brazilian judge tells Elon that he has to block certain users of X. Elon says no. The judge says that he will then put X's legal representative in Brazil in jail. Elon closes the offices in Brazil. The judge says that he has to have a legal representative in Brazil, that is what the law says. Elon says "if I name another representative you will put him in jail". Then the judge orders X to be blocked in Brazil. And he threatens to fine those who try to use X in Brazil through VPNs. In other words, users who easily use X in Brazil to see memes become potential criminals when they did nothing illegal.

It's crazy. It's an abuse of authority. Because let's suppose that Carlinho Da Souza calls for burning all the kids alive, the one who commits a crime (let's suppose) is Carlinho, and Justice should be focused on him, not on the company that provides its platform without knowing beforehand that Carlinho is an idiot, and even knowing it later from his posts. And you shouldn't demand that the company prevent Carlinho from exposing his stupidity, that would be like telling the cell phone company not to let me talk on the phone because I threatened to break someone's face. And then, since the company says no, it won't prevent me from talking on the phone, then it blocks the cell phone signal throughout the country, for everyone.

Freedom of expression is being able to say what you want and take responsibility for the consequences. But the consequences are for the alleged offender, not for people who have nothing to do with it.

To make another cheap analogy, if someone stabs a neighbor, you can't ban knives and force butchers to cut meat with their teeth."

Related timeline:

Starlink will now be free in Brazil since remote hospitals, schools use it: Musk

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41397506

Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41392962

In case people are not aware, numerous professors of law in Brazil, pro democracy organizations, and journalists have called the change in Brazil as a lunge towards authoritarianism. This justice in particular, Alexandre de Moraes, has been called a threat to democracy many times even a few years ago. Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/world/americas/bolsonaro-...

Unfortunately the courts have made their own laws. De Moraes claims the court he previously served on gave him the power to issue secret unilateral censorship orders from the court he now serves on. It’s all convenient but obviously doesn’t pass the sniff test for legality. If the Brazilian governments wants new powers to censor the speech of political opponents, it must do so through constitutional change.

This is what Twitter/X is defending, and it is the right thing to defend. You cannot have democracy without free speech. And if businesses cannot conduct operations without threat of unreasonable fines and arrest of their legal representatives, then Brazil won’t be a good destination for business either. It is also very telling that Lula, who has a long history of corruption and scandals, came out to endorse Alexandre de Moraes’s actions. Meanwhile, other justices must either stay silent or support them to avoid retribution. It’s a scary time in Brazil.

This has been a bad week for Democracy/freedom of speech

All Elon needs to do is have a legal representative in Brazil for his commercial venture.

He chose this.

The courts threatened to arrest his legal representation if he didn't comply with their demands to take down accounts accused of spreading misinformation and hate speech. So Elon closed all offices in Brasil. You think he should risk having an employee thrown in jail?

Defying a court order can get you arrested in any country.

The orders of the brazilian court are just too arbitrary, and not just in this case. At some point it ceases to be a judicial court and becomes more of an Emperor's court where the Emperor is making laws as he is going on.

Defying court orders can get you arrested in any country even if you and others deem them to be “too arbitrary”

That was not the point I was making. In any case your point applies to defying the monarch too, which might be more applicable here.

This would be more applicable if Brazil had a monarch after 1889. Calling a judge that you don’t like a king does not make him one.

By this absurd logic calling the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" a dictatorship does not make it one.

Kim Jong Un’s title is Supreme Leader, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea, President of the State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Are you suggesting that he is also a member of the Brazilian supreme court?

> Are you suggesting that he is also a member of the Brazilian supreme court?

I never suggested that.

He is member of Korean institutions defined by Korean constitution, similarly how this judge is of a Brazilian Institution. Neither means there titles bear any similarity to what they are doing or what power they are exercising.

Your reasoning is that if we look at the history of North Korea we will see that it has been a dictatorship since its inception, and similarly if we look at the history of Brazil we will plainly that it has not in fact ever been a republic and this is evidenced by the fact that Twitter is blocked?

I do not understand the impulse to evoke a completely unrelated thing to try to make a conceptual argument against a fact that you do not even attempt to directly refute. Brazil does not have a monarch. If you believe that Brazil is a monarchy, I encourage you to expand on what you think a monarch is both in terms of power and historical context.

Yes, and? Doesn't mean that anyone who could avoid it should feel compelled to accept that when this is done by an arbitrary and corrupt government.

Also I'm not sure it's very common for courts to arrest lawyers (and basically use them as hostages) because of their clients actions in most countries.

> Doesn't mean that anyone who could avoid it should feel compelled to accept that

Courts can literally compel you to comply with court orders in virtually every country, unless of course as you have pointed out, you have the means to avoid being compelled.

The “… when this is done by an arbitrary and corrupt government” sentiment has no real meaning here as you have pointed out that Musk can avoid being compelled either way.

Nobody has been talking about arresting Musk himself, rather employees or representatives of Twitter who are required to be present in Brazil just for this specific reason (i.e. so that they could be arrested and used as bargaining chips to force the foreign company to do whatever the government/("independent") judiciary wants.

Also I really don't understand your overall point.

My overall point is that there is little indication that this is some battle between good and evil or right and wrong.

This is about a guy who faces no personal consequences whatsoever choosing to ignore court orders and a government penalizing his business for that choice. There is some speculation that maybe the judge is acting illegally but I haven’t seen anyone familiar with Brazilian constitutional law say that. There is also speculation that the judge is acting unethically, though the only “ethical” alternative offered is “let Elon Musk do whatever he wants”, which is less of an argument about ethics and more of a statement of what fandom a person subscribes to.

If the judge is acting illegally I sure hope the citizens of Brazil address that. If he’s simply pissing off a rich libertarian that’s popular on his own website then I hope he continues to do so.

> My overall point is that there is little indication that this is some battle between good and evil or right and wrong.

I wouldn't necessarily use words like 'good' and 'evil' here but the fact that a judge can (arbitrarily) impose a fairly large fine on any individual using a specific foreign website says everything I need to know about that country and its judicial system. Genuinely curious how can someone defend something like that?

> “let Elon Musk do whatever he wants”, which is less of an argument about ethics and more of a statement of what fandom a person subscribes to.

I assure you I don't really care for Musk or most of the things he does and (especially) says. That's entirely besides the point.

even if it complies with Brazilian laws why would that matter at all? North Korea and Russia and all similar countries also have "laws"...

> If he’s simply pissing off a rich libertarian that’s popular

So a government censoring it's political opponents is fine as long as they are using a platform owned by a rich "libertarian" jerk? The implication being that no platform/social network can be trustworthy and ethical unless it cooperates with (semi)authoritarian governments?

> judge can (arbitrarily) impose a fairly large fine on any individual using a specific foreign website says everything I need to know about that country and its judicial system

This is where you are inserting “arbitrarily” as both a statement of fact and moral wrongness.

Every single court in every single country has the ability to issue court orders on businesses that operate in that country. It is true in the US, China, the UK, North Korea, France, Australia, Myanmar, Spain, etc.

Name a country! That country has judges that can do things that you do not like. Even things regarding your personal definition of acceptable limitations on freedoms, speech included. And it can seem arbitrary to you.

Your issue is not with Brazil’s court, your issue is with courts in general. Except for…

> I assure you I don't really care for Musk or most of the things he does and (especially) says. That's entirely besides the point.

This is a thread about Twitter being blocked. Is there an any other action taken by the Brazilian supreme court that you have an issue with? If not, this is not a concern about the Brazilian constitution, this is a petulant billionaire screaming “dictator!” loud enough from his soapbox that even people that aren’t in his regular retinue of credulous followers fall for it.

> So a government censoring it's political opponents is fine as long as they are using a platform owned by a rich "libertarian" jerk?

If the judge is following the law, and his only actual sin is pissing off some crybaby libertarian for having to comply with the law, then the judge has committed no sin at all.

Anyway all of that aside, all of this actually stems from Elon Musk refusing to comply with an investigation and court orders around an actual attempted coup in that country. Musk’s credulous supporters will either say “that’s not true because Elon posted that it’s about something else” or “actually the coup should have happened because Musk said the current government is bad and we should support undemocratic government overthrows because Elon says they are good”

His side of this is literally nonsense. It is defended by unserious people.

> your issue is with courts in general

Not all laws are equal, just like not all countries and courts are. Some are more authoritarian and arbitrary than others and therefore inherently less legitimate.

> His side of this is literally nonsense > actual sin is pissing off some crybaby libertarian for having to comply with the law

Musk is a jerk, I get it and fully agree with that. How is this relevant, though?

Also you really have no issue with the attempted VPN ban and fines for individual who are using Twitter? Or a legal system that could allow something like that? Really?

I see that you saw “crybaby libertarian” and felt compelled to comment on it but did not read “coup” and feel the same way.

“I see you said a mean thing, mayhaps you did not write anything else before or after that” is not a correct way to point out an ad hominem fallacy.

Which of the following statements would you agree with most?

A. This whole thing is not about the events of January 8th

B. The events of January 8th were good, actually. They should be repeated until the current government is forcibly overthrown and someone sympathetic to Bolsonaro is installed.

C. I do not care about the events of January 8th. My concept of freedom of speech covers incitement to violence, a right that does not exist in any country.

Moraes is on the Brazilian STF, the highest court in the land. In other countries, this kind of stuff would go through multiple lower courts. Here, the head guy is just giving direct orders and answers to approximately no one.

So it's the orders of one judge acting as judge, jury & executioner, which is not how we normally think of lawful process.

Now that is the Brazilian system but... there's a damn good reason other people don't do it that way. And a damn good reason that dystopian book was named "Brazil."

You mean the dystopian movie? Funnily enough the Brazilian constitution, which allows atrocities like this, was written years after the movie.

If a court orders you to shoot someone in the head, would you do it?

If the tooth fairy asked Bob Ross to do a kick flip over Mordor does that mean that Long John Silver’s is open on Sunday?

This question is an equally relevant response to someone pointing out an uncontested fact about how courts work.

Is it?

It looks like Long John Silver’s is open every day but Christmas and New Year’s Day.

That sounds like a pretty American way to see things. What's next - we send F-16 to bring democracy to Brasil ?

Somehow, we came to normalize that US Tech companies, are above local laws. They pay virtually no taxes in countries they operate in.

The brazilian court does seem pretty arbitrary, and not behaving at all as we would expect (we, as in the 'West'). Just don't do business there and it's fine.

Isn’t this scenario the equivalent of arresting a lawyer due to the actions of their client? I can’t think of any country with a functioning legal system that does that

I'm sure that if Xwitter dispatched a "legal representative" to North Korea who has full moderation powers and will agree to be subjected to anything that a North Korean court orders, even an unblocking of it in NK could be negotiated. Does that mean that it is Musk's fault that his site remains blocked in that country, too? Conversely, is it actually normal for countries to personally punish legal representatives for actions that their employer performed, even if they did not have the power to prevent those actions?

It feels fairly arbitrary from the outside because they complied with similarly gross takedown demands in Turkey and India;

https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-censorship-elon-...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/05/twitter-accuse...

The missing context here is that the "misinformation accounts" that X was supposed to remove here are spreading the right wing propaganda saying the election was stolen from far-right sweetheart Jair Bolsonaro. On the other hand, the requests in India and Turkey are coming from, you guessed it, far right sweetheart Modi and Erdogan governments.

If you think Elon is doing this to defend "freedom of speech" I have a beautiful bridge to sell you.

I think he should not commit crimes, if he does, yes, he need to have a legal representative. That's how the rule of the law works.

Because the Supreme Court arbitrarily threatened the legal representatives, and Elon didn't comply. There is no legal process whatsoever, nor the regular mediums have been used. It's all arbitrary without the due process. Even a legalist would need to concede that the law hasn't been followed in the first place.

> There is no legal process whatsoever, nor the regular mediums have been used

That's simply false. The proper legal processes are being followed. It's just a narrative pushed by those who refuse to accept that their actions are/were illegal and have consequences.

A thorough explanation of the applicable law, point by point, that demonstrates that what you are saying is complete fantasy:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

Alright, let's see. First item:

> In Brazil, a judge cannot open an inquiry.

False allegation, the inquiry was asked by the Federal Police and the judge accepted it. If it starts with a wrong premise we can already know what's coming next.

As you said - Moraes didn't threaten. Moraes executed.

The prior legal representative of X had all her personal bank accounts frozen.

According to X the Brazilian Court threatened the legal rep with imprisonment, then after they quit the court froze the bank accounts of said rep anyway.

If that is true it strongly biases me towards believing X is in the right.

Those are astonishingly authoritarian actions.

https://twitter.com/GlobalAffairs/status/1829296715989414281

Appears to be at odds with what's reported in the linked article.

The Guardian is a reputable, independent source. X is neither of those.

Where/How does The Guardian article conflict with X's statement?

It lays out the reasons for the dispute in several paragraphs, there is no mention of what was claimed, but reasonable representation of both sides position:

"The Brazilian supreme court has ordered that X be suspended in the country after the social media platform failed to meet a deadline to appoint a legal representative in the country."

"The dispute began in April, when Moraes ordered the suspension of dozens of accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation – a request Musk denounced as censorship." X, formerly known as Twitter, has been without a legal representative in Brazil since 17 August, when Musk announced that his company was shutting down its operations in the country “effective immediately” due to what it called “censorship orders” from Moraes. The service has remained available to users in the country.""

"Moraes’ April order to X to block some accounts stemmed from an investigation into “digital militias” who backed former president Jair Bolsonaro’s attempts to stay in power after his 2022 election defeat. After Musk refused to comply, the judge included him in his investigation."

"On Wednesday, Moraes gave the company 24 hours to appoint a new legal representative in Brazil – a requirement for foreign companies operating in the country – “under penalty of immediate suspension of the social network’s activities”."

I have recently learned more about this. As I understand it goes something like this.

The legal representative of a foreign company in Brazil is expected to be legally responsible for the actions of the company in Brazil. This seems to make sense as Brazil probably thinks having individuals be personally liable for company actions to improves alignment with local laws and gives Brazil more leverage over otherwise exceptionally powerful global organizations.

However my understanding of "Legal Representative" is the North American understanding. A lawyer who is representing the company and not liable for the companies actions (those would be the directors).

I think these articles would do well to add this clarification as threatening to in-prison, and freezing the accounts of a lawyer representing a client in court is wild.

Doing the same thing to a person with direct legal liability is a little more sane.

I suspect The Guardian and X's accounts are both correct and it comes down to the expectation of the Legal Representative in the Brazilian system.

I don't really understand the pro-authoritarian stance.

People hate Musk so much that they would rejoice at the Devil doing him harm.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a widespread fallacy. Attitudes like that gave us alliance with Stalin once, and subsequent 40 years of a Cold War.

I don't know what content was requested to be removed. If the opposition was spreading lies about elections being stolen, that seems like reasonable content to moderate.

Not all moderation is bad, and different places have different tolerances for it. I keep seeing people say "silencing the opposition" but not actually providing what that means in practice.

Could be authoritarian, could be not.

Given musk's history as a right wing agitator, I want to see data before coming to any conclusions here.

> that seems like reasonable content to moderate

Why should the government be the one to make that decision? If anyone has a conflict of interest, it's them, no?

I mean, Germany bans nazi imagery in media. Many countries ban false advertising. A number consider it not ok to discriminate against people based on their characteristics. Fringe health statements are often disallowed. TikTok just got hit with a speech case about a girl hanging herself to death because of a video.

Government moderates speech all the time, and yes, there's obviously grey areas and opportunities for abuse with those systems. I want to see the examples. Not someone grinding an axe with "the opposition"... show me what was not allowed.

False advertising (and libel/slander) are about not saying probably false things in contexts where truth is required.

They're a bit different to people being allowed to have an opinion and say it without a tech giant (then) or judge (now) stopping them.

As for banning images - sure. Tricky. Don't particularly like nazi symbols, but I personally wouldn't ban them. They aren't magically evil symbols that trigger awful behaviour.

It definitely shouldn't be the richest man in the world, a foreigner.

You are not forced to use his platform if you don’t like it.

Yes and I don't use it but he is forced to respond to court orders :)

Yes he is, just like Sophie Scholl. Power-mad tyrants tend to do that to people :)

> If the opposition was spreading lies about elections being stolen, that seems like reasonable content to moderate.

Absolutely not. That might be the absolute world's last content that should be touched.

Come off the hyperbole. You don't believe that. I guarantee you you can think of content that's something we should moderate less.

What about opposition candidates spreading truthful information. You'd really moderate the truth away before you'd moderate blatant misinformation?

Fair point - I mean opposing speech in general, and not just that specific phrase. I wasn't clear.

Right. Oppositional speech is worth keeping.

But when oppositional speech is like, "Covid vaccines are made from dead children, so you must not vote for whomever", I start to be like, a whole lot less sympathetic to the idea that we should not moderate at all.

I think you shouldn't be calling censorship "moderation". If you want censorship then say so.

Nah, the Brazilian government will lose this round. X is not going to cave, and the government doesn’t have the technological capacity to quickly spin up their own Great Firewall.

I bet China would be happy to help. It also cracks me up that people on this site were almost entirely in favor of a TikTok ban, but when it’s someone else’s government doing what amounts to the same thing then they’re “heading down a dark path”. Could folks please make up their minds and not treat the US as though it’s exempt from the “dark paths”?

For starters the US never threatened VPN users with a $9k daily fine

That’s what’s coming next.

I've heard that for 15 years straight, they went for adult content RealID before going for VPNs - which, if your beliefs end up being true - was a ridiculous order of priority. Thus, I don't think they'll go for VPNs.

You'd think with all of the people saying "they won't go after..." and being wrong people would show a bit less hubris.

Ah yes, the platform that advocates free speech is totally worth the same hate as the platform that is a demonstrable psyop by a communist regime.

If you believe X advocates free speech, you have an imperfect view of X or free speech. Maybe they made your political speech more permissible, but they are clamping down hard on other speech.

Free speech absolutists should be just as irritated by today's X as yesterday's Twitter. Subbing out one set of permitted speech for a different set is not a free speech win.

Pretty simple explanation: US good, rest bad.

January 8th in Brazil - "troubled Southern American country", "broken democracy", "banana republic"

January 6th in the US - just a blip in the world's most perfect democracy. etc.

US media in a nutshell: https://imgflip.com/memetemplate/460629937/our-blessed-homel...

The average person doesn't know what a DNS is and isn't willing to pay for a VPN. Society isn't a tech bubble.

I don't know what you mean by "the average person" but most of my friends in Brazil, even the relatively tech illiterates, not only know what a VPN is but many or even most of them either have paid or currently pay for one.

In what way? Musk decides what's OK and not OK on twitter.

Twitter isn't a platform to promote democracy, it promotes what Musk wants.

Twitter has turned into hot garbage. For years my feed was pretty clean as it's almost exclusively tech. Gave it up recently as it was clogged with right-wing conspiracy, odd videos and random made up AI young women randomly following me occasionally.

In the way that Brazil has ordered Apple and Google to delete VPN apps from users' phones?

Don’t forget unsolicited porn and videos of soldiers being blown up

That's ridiculous. You think Elon Musk goes around reading people's tweets and deciding what he wants or not? Or trained an AI model to only allow content that suits him?

The guy literally gets community-noted every once in a while. It's free speech.

Try saying "cisgender" on Twitter, of course the guy is moderating speech he personally doesn't like. It's not difficult to observe.

So Elon Musk getting community-noted is him moderating speech he doesn't like?

Elon Musk getting communit-noted is a fake way to pretend he could also be wrong but xitter is so great that it helps him fixes his biases.

You assume that's speech he doesn't like.

What's the relationship between twitter and free speech? I genuinely don't see that argument.

Not allowing secret manipulation by the deep state, corrupt states, or removal of speech that doesn't cater to extremist sensitivities.

It's the reason for the entire news post we're all commenting on.

When Elon first bought Twitter, they released a bunch of information on how governments (specifically the US government) was pressuring Twitter to remove content, often for political reasons (i.e. it was a conservative account, etc). He stopped doing that, and generally supports free speech on the platform; sort of in a 2008 reddit way

It is not just about X. A nation of almost 200 million was deprived of mobile VPN use by decision of a single person.

Sure, I can't really argue with any of that. How is it even remotely relevant in this case though?

If you don’t like Musk’s platform, feel free not to use it. Nobody is forcing you to. But if you try to lock me in a cell when I decide to use it, you are attacking my freedoms.

Musk deciding to not have a legal representative in Brazil attacked your freedom, which is the consequence of his acts.

A god-king sidestepping applicable law, attacked the freedoms of brazilians today. That's the real origin story. Here is each law being broken by the judge:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

> In what way? Musk decides what's OK and not OK on twitter.

Before Musk, others were doing the same, but on the other side of the political spectrum from where Musk is now. Nothing new.

I find the conflation of democracy and freedom of speech strange. They are entirely different things.

The absence of one always leads to the absence of the other in the long run. The USSR constitution is one of many such documents by authoritarian nations that guarantee freedom of speech in considerable detail.

How can you even have democracy without freedom of speech?

How can you freely choose who to vote without free exchange of information?

I might not agree with Elon Musk on things he says and does these days, but he's very much in the right here, at least if you value freedom of speech, privacy, and democracy.

The judge tried to silence the political opposition on Twitter via shadowbans and removal, Elon didn't comply, so they decided to go after Twitter employees in Brazil, to which Elon shut everything down to prevent the employees from being jailed, then since Twitter has no bank accounts in Brazil, they went after Starlink's accounts, and now they've banned the platform, add to that that they're fining people exorbitant amounts of money for circumventing the ban.

I'm oversimplifying it, but the matter of a fact is that this judge and the political party in power are acting like fascists, they've even tried getting several popular VPN applications banned by asking Google and Apple to remove them.

EDIT: For those in the comments pointing towards India (Modi) and Turkey (Erdogan). I personally didn't like when Elon bent over for them, he likes to call himself a free speech absolutist, but he's a hypocrite, and those aren't the only two cases of him going against is so called morals, but that doesn't change the fact that this is wrong, and two wrongs don't make a right.

Uh, the judge tried to punish insurrectionist and Twitter agreed to comply and then just didn't as opposed to how they did in India or Turkey.

I thought Lula was left wing.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Indeed.

> I'm oversimplifying it, but the matter of a fact is that this judge and the political party in power are acting like fascists, they've even tried getting several popular VPN applications banned by asking Google and Apple to remove them.

The political party in power is socialist and defines itself as socialist. The president openly defines himself as a "socialist". [1]

So, they aren't acting as fascists, they are acting as socialists. Which, granted, is mostly the same in many aspects.

[1] https://jacobin.com.br/2023/10/lula-e-a-construcao-do-social...

For those saying "just use a VPN" -- who is to say the BR government isn't going to use this as a cash extraction weapon against those critical of the state.

Pull up a list of all known BR notable people on twitter. See if they tweeted anything since the ban was in effect. Fine them and rake in the $$$.

The govt probably WANTS it to be circumvented.

VPN users are being fined as part of the order, a pretty massive fine.

These rulings are clearly arbitrary and have no basis on anything. They should be thought more like a Monarch's orders. Yes the monarch can any day order using Linux you will have to pay a big fine if he somehow gets angry on Linux.

They've even asked Google and Apple to take down several popular VPN apps from their stores and delete the apps from user's phones.

I wonder what all the walled garden lovers have to say about this. Would have been nice to be able to install apps and VPNs on your phones without Apple's or the government's ability to block it right? Or are you still going to stick to the "it's for our own safety" party line?

Walled garden are an orthogonal (although themselves non trivial) issues compared to an arbitrary court issuing random arbitrary monarchical summons. No amount of custom tweaked linux will protect you there.

Can someone explain the me what actual power do Brazilian supreme court justices have? Seems like Brazilian judges are like Judge Dredd.

The actual power is what a society will accept. At this point it seems like he can do anything a monarch could do in a kinda modern society.

Sure but I'm asking in theory, what is the power of justices according to their constitution.

That's explained in Article 102 of the Brazilian Constitution (in Portuguese):

https://constituicao.stf.jus.br/dispositivo/cf-88-parte-1-ti...

So just from skimming a translated version, it does not seem like Judges have the power to impose fines, ban unrelated companies that are owned by the same person, or ban things like VPNs. Am I missing something?

You are not missing anything. The Brazilian court has done far more about things which it does not have any basis for. There are many previous HN threads about it as well. Some brazilians had detailed those instances in those threads.

I'm guessing a "skimmed translation" probably doesn't give you a complete understanding of Brazilian law...

Yes, thank you, that's why I've been asking people. Do you have an actual answer or do you just have nothing of value to add?

I respect this response. So many people would have derailed the conversation by disagreeing.

Do note that some a important power of the US supreme court, the right to declare laws void because they are unconstitutional, is not a right listed in the Constitution itself.

Rather the supreme court declared in 1803 that they had that right, because it makes sense if you sort of squint at the constitution.

On paper, the Congress is perfectly capable of removing any supreme court minister for any kind of wrongdoing. They can't exactly reverse the decisions, but they can make them ineffective too.

On practice, well, they are clearly above the other powers, and only the supreme court plenarium can do anything about the individual judges.

The main issue here – and this is will eventually happen to every democracy – is that given the right incentives and conditions, _everything_ can be considered "legal" from a system perspective.

Because of authoritarian traumas post-WWII, most democracies evolved to a highly controlled executive, mostly by the judiciary – which is supposed to be monitored by the legislative.

But if you pack the court (the left is dominates Brazil in the last 40 years) and pay enough to the House (the executive controls the federal budget), you pretty much won the game (you are able to make your own rules).

It's amazing how someone from outside like Elon Musk is way, way more powerful than all elected representatives in Brazil, simply because he is somewhat independent from the political apparatus (the most voted congressman in the last election had been arbitrarily banned from social media, so votes really don't count).

The only way out is a combination of international pressure + local manifestations.

> X and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in several countries — mostly authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest.

In judicial systems like the Brazilian (and sadly many European ones) a judge that’s sufficiently high up in the judicial ladder gets to be judge and jury.

He is technically bound by the law, but he also has the power to interpret the law as he sees fit (many such cases in Portugal for instance).

This system puts too much power in the hands of a single person and as such is ripe for abuse for personal causes… or worst, for personal gains. There’s nothing democratic about this.

It should be a jury of fellow peers to decide if someone is guilty of actually breaking a law.

I don't think it is about judicial systems and what not. The judge is only able to take dictatorial powers in Brazil because the society as a whole is not in a position to fight against it and kind of accepts it as something unfixable (lots of people might even support it). I doubt the Brazilian Constitution gives him such vast power.

The problem is many politicians who have power to change it or remove such person are dirty and to keep their mandates, prefer to not talk or do anything about it! On the other side the current voters are brain washed or manipulated through presents during the elections to vote in someone, so it'll be a long journey to reverts things here.

This peer thing arises from a common law heritage. Brazil operates under civilian law. Totally different.

Even in Brazil typically one person does not get to be judge and jury. Alexandre de Moraes is currently on the supreme federal court, and was previously president of the superior electoral court, which is the other top level court in Brazil. Note that De Moraes served on both courts at the same time. As part of his powers on the superior electoral court, he granted himself the authority to perform unilateral censorship through secret orders as part of his duties in the federal court. This is obviously not legal and totally absurd legal theory since it violates the separation of powers of these two courts. These powers should only be granted to the judicial system through new legislation or changes to the constitution.

For the curious, this is the main Brazilian legislation about the topic:

https://www.cgi.br/pagina/marco-civil-law-of-the-internet-in...

What starlink chooses to do will be most interesting, deny any connection, block X like the isps have been ordered and try and get their bank accounts reinstated.

Or pull out of Brazil on the ground and operate as a rogue isp whose money can be blocked, in the short term at least but not their service.

I hope it's the 2nd, be a lesson to all world leaders, and not just ultra authoritarian ones, that the Internet doesn't respect geographic boarder and you cannot control it like that.

I’m guessing starlink is already (or soon will be) ilegal to sell in Brazil.

So, assuming this judge won’t go as far as forcing people with starlink antennas to remove their existing installations, they will be the only ones able to use outside access. And that is an extremely low percentage of the population.

> that the Internet doesn't respect geographic boarder

There's a tonne of regulations already applying to the internet. Yes you can control it like that and many countries do. Twitter already had flags for filtering content based on local laws.

It's a cool overall idea, but no. It doesn't work like that in practice. Not for a person not very informed about traffic masking anyway.

Starlink ceased operations in brazil and doesnt have a bank account. Musk tweeted that he will keep it for free in brazil because some remote schools use it.

Starlink cannot really operate as a "rogue ISP"; they have to license radio spectrum from Brazil and they have to share lawfully intercepted communications with Law Enforcement.

The list below contains all the countries where the government is very worried about the information available on Twitter/X:

- Brazil

- Venezuela

- North Korea

- China

- Iran

- Myanmar

- Pakistan

- Russia

- Turkmenistan

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Twitter

Can anyone speak to the motivations of this judge?

Does he have a valid/legal/moral point under Brazilian law with attempts to ban those accounts on X? Or is he just a toady for da Silva?

Yes - there is a law that you need to have legal representation in Brazil and Musk is just flouting the law.

So shutdown it is for Musk

That came after the judge's order to block the accounts. That is a secondary issue, not the primary one.

On that topic, can you speak to the judge's orders to freeze the bank accounts of X's legal representative, even after she had resigned? What's the deal there?

Musk is happy to comply with blocking anything and anyone when it suits him: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41404534

Sure but that does not answer GP's question.

shutdown it is because he didn’t agree on collaborating with a tyrant. Would you do it?

Elon loves collaborating with tyrants though [1-2], so that theory doesn't check out.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2023/03/28/twitter-modi-india-punja...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/musk-defends-ena...

The core facts are: Brazil demanded information regarding Brazilian users, and believed it was in their right to do so. X believed that the requests did not comply with Brazilian laws, and refused. Neither side yielded, so X closed up shop in Brazil, and, as a result, Brazil is blocking access to X.

There is actually more to this here, it was not just information about Brazilian users, the request was actually to shadowban (block without notifying the users) specific accounts. Some of those accounts happen to be political opposition (actual politicians too) to this judge and his party in general. I believe twitter or musk himself leaked all court documents when this request came in.

Twitter/X closed shop because, after stating that they would not comply with these requests, the judge threatened to jail every Twitter/X employee in brazil in retaliation. So to avoid putting these employees/people in danger they chose to immediately close all offices.

Something similar happened in Argentina with twitter as well I believe, and in that case they relocated most of the employees and their families via political asylum in Brazil at the time, if i'm not mistaken.

Just a year ago Musk was happily complying with censorship orders in Turkey [1] and [2]

In Brasil's case he decided to abruptly pull out if the country.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/musk-defends-ena...

[2] https://theintercept.com/2023/03/28/twitter-modi-india-punja...

The difference is: Brazil is being run by Lula Silva, who opposes Bolsonaro, while Turkey is run by Erdogan, and India is run by Modi.

If you want to connect the thread, look into what kind of leaders Bolsonaro, Modi, and Erdogan are.

That's some conspiracy theory.

Musk is pretty right wing, it's not unreasonable to conclude he'd support other right wing governments and oppose left wing ones.

You could also spin it the other way, the only countries that have banned twitter so far are very authoritarian or dictatorships. Why does "Brazil being run by Silva" want to be part of the club?

What is this judge's party?

Musk has been in a feud with this particular judge for a while now.

This article covers the beginning of the fight

https://apnews.com/article/brazil-musk-x-twitter-moraes-bef0...

And this one is an update on how both sides are acting kind of ridiculous

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/08/29/elons-standoff-with-braz...

A judge that gets in a "feud" with a litigant, for any reason, is totally unfit to be a judge.

"Judicial temperament" is how I've heard lawyers describe the ideal.

To be fair the “feud” wording that’s been used in US media is much more supported by Musk handling this situation by posting weird AI generated memes about the judge than the judge issuing a court order and then imposing penalties for refusing to comply with it.

You're reading that backwards, it is Elon who is feuding, which is to say Elon defies the rulings of the court and Elon slanders the judge on twitter.

So meanwhile the judge is trying to enforce a law that Elon is actively, and spitefully, breaking.

He appears to be really mad.

Elon is yeah, he's posting AI images of the judge on twitter like it's a macho move.

Mocking a siting emotional judge who is used to having his way _definitely_ qualifies as a macho move in my book. Whether it is a move that elon can afford, we still don't know.

for non-Brazilians trying to understand the situation:

(1) a supreme court judge ordered X to remove some political profiles saying they are spreading misinformation

(2) coincidentally (or not) most (if not all) profiles are from the opposition

(3) Elon said that that was censorship and closed the office in Brazil

(4) The judge applied hefty fines but those couldn't be fullfied since X doesnt have a bank account in Brazil anymore

(5) The judge orders a judicial blockage of Starlink's brazilian branch accounts to pay for X fines

(4) Finnally, Brazilian law demands a legal representative (a person who will be liable) and Elon say (very loudly) we would not comply

(5) X is now banned by all means

What's the structural link between X and Starlink?

Both are owned by Musk. I know that is too simple, but that is relatively common in Brazil (to easily link companies because they share owners or shareholders)

It's not common at all.

Musk is shareholder of Starlink, but there are many others. This is kind of thing is only used in cause of fraud like a person who puts other company in name of a third party to avoid fines.

It also shows foreign investors that investing in Brazil is unsafe.

This is the part that is most interesting to me. Sure, judge will eventually get his way but the secondary collateral damage to Brazil is going to be significant. I wonder if the judge had considered this in his ruling.

Looking at the "block all VPNs" judgment, I wonder if the next step is banning Teslas from the road.

Moraes' order claimed they were part of an "economic group" due to Musk's ownership. That's pretty much it.

Since then, Starlink has just said that everyone can have free service for now since they can't get paid anyway. They're in use in a lot of remote areas, like Amazonia, and the Brazilian military came out with a statement the other day saying that they rely on Starlink and if Moraes wants to shut that down, it will screw them over.

> Moraes' order claimed they were part of an "economic group" due to Musk's ownership.

The problem is that this is not true, the two companies are not part of the same economic group. They are two completely different organizations and even if they were, this type of decision is only made when there is fraud of the type: you owe the government and it is known that you are the owner of a company despite there being no legal connection (i.e., it is in the name of third parties).

It is an absurd decision that shows the world how unsafe it is to invest in Brazil.

Yeah, I won't defend this decision, it's an unaccountable decision made by a single man who has decided that he personally has the right to decide what people can and cannot say.

I've heard some defend it as "well, that's just how the law is in Brazil" but the same defense could be given for any dictatorship and it's rather telling that even those who advance this as a defense do not even attempt to give an account for why a single person playing judge, jury & executioner is a good way for this to be done.

This seems similar to the fate TikTok has in store.

It is sad to see nation states taking the route of censorship, it seems like some super form of helicopter parenting.

Starlink will not block X-Twitter in Brazil:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41421531

I can't express in words how horrible it's been to see the country I loved go spiral downhill due to a corrupt president and an non elected judge with ties to the REDACTED faction. At least 30% of the country is in favor of that. The country is infected with corruption everywhere, from small scale to the core. I'm leaving the land my family has worked hard for 200 years and moving to Uruguai. At least I have the option. I always wanted to stay apart from political discussion and for the most of the time I was center-left. From now on, I do not help nor connect with any cockroach who endorse this (the brazilian left wing party).

Slippery slope is a fallacy, they said.

How would the Brazilian gov. know if a person is visiting X on a VPN, if the VPN is of good quality?

They don't need to. Selective enforcement is a key point of dictatorships. They can apply this fine to people they don't like. In general all such orders will have a chilling effect.

If they post

lol, so simple. True. Thanks.

Any Brazilian with a known handle, will be vulnerable the moment they post anything. It doesn't matter the quality of the VPN at all.

What happens if a Brazilian travels to USA and tweets from there.

Then returns to Brazil?

This might affect our ability to recruit talent from Brazil if the use of VPN is forbidden.

If you're in Brazil:

Tails [0] is surprisingly easy to use. Do your own research I guess, but it might help you out.

[0] https://tails.net/

Citing that it might be cumbersome for App Stores to implement the order then revert it, de Moraes reverted the order for Google and Apple to ban VPNs from Stores.

I bet it won't stop there. He won't be satisfied until he blocks Tor too, which X / Twitter could plausibly setup as an Onion service.

This is all because the National Assembly that promulgated the 1988 Brazilian Constitution chose to specifically ban anonymity. It's on paragraph IV, article 5 of Brazilian Constitution.

I got downvoted for posting the obvious topic here so once again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41316512

X already has an onion service I believe, check the x.com meta tags for "onion-location".

X Onion Service Seems to be Located at https://twitter3e4tixl4xyajtrzo62zg5vztmjuricljdp2c5kshju4av... in case anyone cares.

I certainly don't!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41316512

Maybe musk should bring back the onion link to Twitter that he purged.

So that the judge can start fining TOR users?

It is funny how many people who, if Putin's Russia did this, would immediately understand what is going on here and not make complicated excuses about law or the subtle nature of free speech, instead when Brazil does this pretend that this is something different simply because they so vehemently disagree with Musk and his politics.

Of course most of those people also disagree with Putin's politics, but to them Musk is the "near enemy", which is more dangerous to them than the "far enemy".

If one sees any fundamental psychological drive in an average American's positive reaction to this news other than pure tribal/religious desire to annihilate their political opponents, one has not yet put on those nice sunglasses from They Live. Don't get me wrong, of course there is the occasional actually principled rational person, but overall the vast majority of reactions to this fall along tribal lines, even here at the orange site, which maybe once was full of geeky libertarian types but has clearly for a long time now been overrun by a different sort of person.

Gonna enjoy hearing from people defending this because they dislike Elon Musk

Somebody needs to patiently sit down with this judge and explain to him that the jurisdiction of his court (and his understanding of technology) has limits.

Good luck, Brazil.

“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 on decision to follow Modi's requests for censorship

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

This is not the government

The parent is saying Musk complied with these requests elsewhere without complaint, he's only making a fuss about it in Brazil. It's an odd hypocrisy or shift in strategy.

strategy about what? Elon isn't bound by some personal institutional law, he acts according to his whims. Even if we assume he was being hypocritical, the severe response from the judge makes the latter seem like he has ulterior motives

ps. every major company has applied double standards wrt censorship requests in the past, the subject has a long history

Strategy about complying with censorship requests. He's happy to do so when it aligns with his politics, and makes a huge fuss when he it doesn't.

As a distant observer, it seems wild to me that anyone thinks this is about free speech.

X has an office in Bengaluru that does engineering, so leaving India would be non-trivial.

Also Modi is an elected popular leader. India's censorship laws have been passed through the normal means. If Musk pushed back most Indian institutions would rally against him.

de Moraes is a chief justice making decrees that it's not clear he has the power to make. He's doing it in an unhinged fashion. Getting out of the country until things cool down is probably the smart move.

For the record, if Musk is to be believed, the requests from the government stink IMO. However, the judge making this ruling is part of the government and setting the law, is he not?

I don't know about India, but in Brazil, the requests sent to X (Twitter) have no legal basis, that is, they are illegal by nature. The entire process that resulted in this blocking is secret and not even the defense lawyers had access to the investigation.

I am not sure about India either, but according to my extensive legal training from looking at this wiki entry... it appears to be legal, yet probably unconstitutional.

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

I am not sure why people keep bringing up Turkey or India as a justification for authoritarianism in Brazil. The orders for content takedowns in India were more obviously legal and were not done in secret, but in full public view with clear avenues for legal challenge.

On the other hand, in Brazil Alexandre de Moraes sits on two different courts at the same time and claims that one court gave him the power to unilaterally censor/ban/arrest people in secret from the other court. It is obviously a farce, even to the slightest investigation. Twitter/X is correct to challenge it since it isn’t legal within Brazil.

Well this is fun. Nice to see a government with some teeth for once instead of bowing to the whims of every multibillion mega corporation or agitated billionaire.

Yes very nice to see a court acting as judge jury and executioner all at once and fining random VPN users random amounts without needing boring things like law. Maybe Plato was right and philospher kings work best.

It’s not even a court but a single justice on the court, who claims he got the legal power from the other top level court, which he conveniently served on previously (seriously). No laws were passed to give Alexandre de Moraes the power to issue secret orders to censor, ban, or arrest without due process and without transparency to the public. Obviously no working democracy can tolerate these types of authoritarian attacks on free speech.

It's nice to see a government which is threatening to fine its citizens US$8,900 per day for using a website which was banned because it didn't remove the accounts of that government's political opponents?

If you want to live under a government with a lot of sharp teeth against capitalists, North Korea may be your ideal country.

I miss the days when religious zealots like you were against sex or whatever

I’m neither religious nor against sex or whatever nonsense you’re talking about. I’m for law and order, and for suppressing bad actors in society.

I am glad to see Brazil is not afraid of these billionaires. If only the US could start enforcing laws the same, no matter what your worth or who you are.

I wonder if Brazil is finally going after corruption that I believe exists there.

>“implement technological barriers to prevent the use of the X app by users of the iOS and Android systems” and to block the use of VPN applications.

I wonder how they can selectivity enforce the VPN part of the ban ?

You should be embarrassed to be such a petty authoritarian cheerleader just because that power is being abused against someone you dislike and disagree with.

You mean like Musk is happy to do what Brazil asked of him/X as long as it’s Turkey or another autocrat like Modi he wants to be in bed with?

The brazilian court can fine X, block X, caese it's Brazilian assets, ask ISPs to block it, block it from app stores, atleast all this they can do with some judicial basis.

Fining random VPN user is just going far above and beyond that.

Then you have to put majority of Europe in bed with Erdogan - people connected with attempted coup were removed from universities in Sweden and Germany - and other countries.

That's a different subject.

The fact that someone does a bad thing doesn't justify a government becoming arbitrarily tyrannical against them and everyone associated with them (in a way that has nothing to do with the bad thing the guy did to begin with).

And the bad thing is not even in the same category as what the government is doing, since Musk censoring Twitter is non-coercitive, while Brazil censoring Twitter is coercitive.

Equating both is analogous to equating an insult to a punch.

For one, equating these different situations is ridiculous and shows you have almost no knowledge of each country, its politics, or its laws. Modi is not an autocrat, by a long shot. Erdogan, sure I can believe that at times, for example the purge after the failed coup. But each country’s cases are VERY different. In both Turkey and India, however, Twitter followed court orders because they were obviously legal per their local laws. In India’s case, the orders were public, transparent, and easy to challenge. In Brazil’s case, the orders are secret, not transparent to either the victim or platform, and impossible to challenge since Alexandre de Moraes is threatening to jail Twitter/X’s legal representative. The main problem is that such orders are unconstitutional in Brazil. No laws were passed to give the judiciary this power. None. It is illegal and authoritarian. Twitter is right to refuse these orders, per local laws.

I'm relieved that at least HN is pushing back on opinions like these. If you really want to be scared, look at the reddit threads discussing this on technology, worldnews, etc. The young online generation is more than happy to embrace authoritarianism and censorship as long as it hurts someone they dislike.

When someone will embrace anything to harm you, you have to be prepared to weaponize the same things.

The ironic effect of this ludicrous behavior and judgement by this crazy Brazilian judge will be that more people will flock to X. This will be the Streisand effect on steroids.

Quite the claim and hyperbole. I’m fairly certain the exact opposite will happen because most people are not tech savvy and will not bother to circumvent the blocks in place. Some local alternatives will pop up and they’ll use that instead. Twitter is also no longer the town hall of the internet, or whatever people were calling it.

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