Hacker News Reader

Comment by IncreasePosts | Hacker News Reader

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?

View on HN

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.

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...

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com