Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

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 ?

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com