Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
theverge.com
theverge.com
I liked how urbit did it, just paste s3 bucket credentials into the app settings. A - its pretty cheap even for a terabyte of storage, B - it removes liability from the application not having to host user content, C - it increases decentralization, with many hosts in many jurisdictions able to host content.
EDIT: I went to sign up for a new account and right away I'm given the choice to host content on my own server, neat, I think I'll give this a try [1]
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20240831230005/https://bsky.app/...
Relays actually don't process media; that's up to the applications. We intentionally keep the repo-hosting costs low (and they'll get lower soon) so that self-hosting your data and keypairs remains affordable. Think of the application model as equivalent to a search engine, with the repo-hosts (PDSes) being web servers. That's almost exactly how it works.
The only way decentralization would make a hug of death irrelevant is if the individual nodes weren't processing the full network, in which case you're not getting the global social experience, so.
Edit: tremendous, thank you!
If I host gifs at bsky.jazzyjackson.xyz, and my posts are indexed by some number of relays, and finally viewed by bsky or an alternate front end app, is that app mirroring my gifs to shoulder the burden, preventing traffic from hitting my $5 VPS?
I always thought {bit,web}torrent would be a good fit for this problem of mirroring content among multiple hosts, but maybe there's a reason no one has gone down that road.
Thanks!
edit: we did have some degradations (user handles entering an invalid state, firehose crashed a couple times, image servers are giving bad load latencies randomly) but we managed to avoid a full outage.
What I really like about it is the ATProto, which while imperfect, seems like the best current design for the next gen of social media built on a federated foundation.
- DID for identity
- PDS for data mobility
- algo feed & moderation choice, you can build your own and anyone on Bluesky can use it (https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati...) If you didn't see, they recently added anti-toxicity features and are looking towards community notes
- Bluesky is the twitter like view, but you can build anything on ATProto and leverage the shared infra
I'm personally working on a "reddit" like view of the Bluesky network. Not a reddit clone, but a different way to organize the same information around topics, news events, and/or links. One could also design their own Lexicon and build something very close to reddit. One of the cool things is that all the objects for all apps are stored into a single SQLite database per user. So if you want to move your data to a different host, all of the apps, content, and connections survive that migration.
I have seen them respond with intrigue and support once these things are explained.
Most other "interesting protocol" projects are used exclusively by interesting-protocol enthusiasts.
Major news orgs now have accounts too
Dorsey is certainly focused on that realm
There is no predicting what approaches will win, but those 3 are the current viable options I think.
FYI I am part of the crypto crowd myself, but I am a SWE looking at these systems, not a CT gambler, lol.
That alone gave me pause, as Twitter ended up as one of the most despicable platforms we have to suffer today (and yes, those issues are inherent in its nature, and long predate Musk buying it). But I guess that they might have learned from their mistakes this time ??
Will this happen? No clue but it is cool to see someone innovating in this space. Let’s see what people come up with.
bsky isn't there yet, but it's growing
Many non-nerds care about having their own TLD and corresponding email address, yet still use Gmail/GSuite, whether via their webapps or IMAP/CalDav/CardDav.
And arguably the most important thing keeping Google accountable for the quality of their products is the threat of users being able to move out on relatively short notice (i.e. without losing all of your historical inbox content and most importantly people being able to reach you via the identifier they know).
Bluesky seems closest to replicating that to the Twitter-like use case. (Mastodon is severely lacking on both portability of identifiers and portability of data across servers; there really needs to be a lightweight middle ground between self-hosting and complete reliance on somebody else's infrastructure).
I see a trend.
(2) There is plenty of equivalent content
But community notes works well. That's evidence that reasonableness emerges when you boost content that a diversity of people appreciate, regardless of whether people are sound and reasonable.
> What you describe is a flamewar maintenance algorithm.
Are you saying my idea will increase flamewars? I believe it should decrease flamewars, and that's why I want to see it implemented. Again I point to community notes. If a diversity of people like content, it's probably level-headed, and that's why community notes works so well.
Echo chambers aren't intrinsically bad, only when it's about politics and social issues - i. e. stuff that will affect everyone in the end.
One example can be that there is a mass attempt at pushing some viewpoint, it may not stick long term but it sticks for the duration of time the content is viewed by the most amount of people. Kind of like how upvote bots mess with Reddit.
Looking forward to login being oauth based, but from what I've vaguely remember skimming these weeks, that's an @proto limitation that is being worked on?!
Is the PLC DID (the one all bluesy accounts use) still hardcoded to a single centralised provider?
Now that X got banned in Brazil and to potentially lose over 100M+ users we are starting to see which platforms they are choosing to sign up to.
So far, Bluesky is seeing a surge in user registrations after the invite system was lifted a year ago. I would expect Threads to also see a surge in registrations as well.
Mastodon however appears not to be even considered as a migration path at all yet, but either way it is still early days for all options.
We'll see in the next 6 months after this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39471807
I'm looking at one of the Mastodon Users Count bots and it seems like there's a 43% increase in sign-ups per weeks since last week. Of course, I have no idea why and that might be normal noise.
Threads has too big of an image problem to overcome. No one wants Instagram for Twitter.
Bluesky is the only platform currently that has a chance, but it’s an under funded, tiny team who can’t ship on time. Bluesky will see a surge in registrations but no change in DAU as they still haven’t supported video, so no one will stay on the site.
It has about 200M MAU. So a lot of people clearly do want it.
So pretty easy to tell in the analytics which site the user is on.
PS: Nice to see our resident mastodon hater (OP) is still at it, including the requisite smug "told-you-so"/"i totally predicted this!!~" link :D
Thread doesn’t stand a chance. I don’t have an Instagram account. So I am not going to create one for Threads. Nope. I know friends and colleagues who detest even the idea of this connection even though they have accounts.
Meta/Fb didn’t create X/Tw competition/alternative. They created an Instagram add-on.
Does bsky stand a chance? Probably? Does ATProto stand a chance? Nope, it doesn’t. Sad, but it doesn’t. It has the same Mastadon problems - not technical but practical.
Twitter/X has 368m MAU. Threads has 200m.
Based on trajectories Threads will be the biggest text-first social network in less than a year.
It's amazing how out of touch people on here about what is popular or not.
https://applemagazine.com/is-the-long-extinct-social-network...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostr
supposedly more distributed and censorship resistant than bsky. https://thenewstack.io/bluesky-vs-nostr-which-should-develop...
They take very different approaches even if they have similar goals.
Neither is better I think unless you want to get fanboy tribal. It is to be seen what apps will scale and gain adoption for each, though bluesky having a few mil in funding and normal users definitely puts it in the lead.
Speaking as someone funded in the crypto industry... nostr, IMHO, is dominated by BTC maxis and creating a monoculture around it, which will prevent adoption, b/c a social network isn't going to just be talk about NgU and HODL'ing all day.
I use it daily and I very very rarely see spam messages.
Now, traffic is going to Bluesky. I wonder if this means that Bluesky has or will be offered the same choice. We might see what the character of that organization is by what choice they make.
No need for hypotheticals. He did do that (this is an easily-verifiable fact [1][2][3]).
> [...] the censorship they were claiming to oppose.
The thing is that this is clearly an empty claim, when Musk has no problems either complying with similar censoring orders from right-wing governments (Modi, Erdogan) or with arbitrarily censoring people for using medically-approved terms (like "cis" or "cisgender") that he simply does not like [4][5].
All of this censorship by Twitter is (legally) 100% within their right to do, as a private entity, but then whatever claims he (or Twitter) has of being a "defender of free speech" ring a bit hollow.
Given these things, the more plausible explanation for Musk's actions is not that he wants to defend free speech (or that he is fundamentally against censorship), but simply that the request comes from a (left-wing) government that is not ideologically aligned with his views.
It's a choice. But choices have consequences.
[1] https://slate.com/technology/2023/05/elon-musk-turkey-twitte...
[2] https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/world/2024/04...
[3] https://theintercept.com/2023/03/28/twitter-modi-india-punja...
[4] https://www.advocate.com/news/cisgender-restriction-x-twitte...
[5] https://nitter.poast.org/elonmusk/status/1719077000483066319...
I don't know if, in this case, it is justified or not, but it seems to be lawful (the same way that the censorship requests in India and Turkey were), as far as I can tell (I assume a judge of the Supreme Court knows a bit more about Brazilian law than you and me).
Given that Musk/Twitter seemingly has no problem complying with lawful censorship demands (or engaging in arbitrary censorship even without lawful censorship demands), it seems clear to me that Musk has no problem with "more censorship in the world". That was my only point.
My personal opinion on whether there is higher or lower need for censorship in the world is rather irrelevant (since I have no power or platforms to censor), but I certainly see no problem in actively censoring terrorists, bots, spammers and scammers (for example).
In this particular case, I do not have enough information to state with certainty whether I think this particular case is legitimate or not, but it does seem to be lawful (which is the criterion that is seemingly important for Twitter/Musk).
I have no particular preference with regards to whether Musk chooses to be consistent or not: that's his decision and he/Twitter is the one that has to endure the consequences of his actions (not me). Since I am not a Twitter user, it does not affect me either way, and I don't see how it will significantly affect Brazilian's capacity to freely communicate (note: there are plenty of other private communication platforms that do comply with Brazilian law... Telegram, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, etc.).
On the other hand, I do think it is hypocritical to claim to be a "defender of free speech", and then both engage in non-state-mandated censorship AND comply with state-mandated censorship (as long as it suits him or Twitter). It's a laughable claim. That was my only point.
This was discussed at length only two days ago. If you disagree with this, just refer to this comment thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41387024
My account is rate limited to ~5 posts/hour so I don't plan on recreating that thread here.
Discussion about would-be coups seems to be fraught... probably best to avoid the term ?? I'm remembering those funny (for an outsider) images of the January 6th USA Capitol invaders seemingly being lost at what they were supposed to be doing once in the building... (though this took a darker turn when we learned, much later, that Trump did not show up because his own security service prevented him to !)
What are the "crimes" they're being accused of? Getting the opposition locked for "crimes" is basically authoritarianism 101. See: Venezuela[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Venezuelan_presidential_e...
Crimes like calling the current president a friend of dictators. Which he is. This guy rolled out the red carpet for the Venezuelan dictator months after he was elected. He also defended his recent "reelection".
Crimes like calling the current president a communist/socialist. Which he is. He literally calls himself one. I even have videos.
It's all "fake news" according to the judges.
Go read the decision: https://www.conjur.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/PET-124...
More generally, one doesn't get to say "No, judge, I won't comply with your decision" without repercussions.
God this sounds so 1984-ish.
Maybe the Supreme Court in Brazil is "wrong" and "corrupt" where legislators in India and Turkey are not, but knowing a fair bit about all three countries, I doubt very much that to be the case. So then it's a business decision -- or more like a "whatever pisses Elon off" decision, which in the end is just as "corrupt" as your typical corrupt dictator who acts on whatever pisses them off.
One thing I’ll mention: after Musk acquired X in 2022, they were engaged in a lawsuit against the government of India in 2023 to fight censorship orders, that they ultimately lost (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66083645). Not that it matters because India ended up passing various regulations (legally) that give their agencies various powers to censor.
Note that in Brazil, no new legislation or constitutional amendment was passed that would give this one Supreme Court justice this power to censor, ban, or arrest. Also note that the orders aren’t from the Supreme Court but one person sitting on it, Alexandre de Moraes.
Moraes does seem to be acting like an unaccountable little dictator in his fiefdom, which is dangerous. But then again Elon acts like an unaccountable little dictator in his fiefdom, which is also dangerous, so I don't really mind that X is getting banned. I'd feel completely differently if it were Mastodon or even some other commercial network over which a single person doesn't have an iron grip.
This is not exactly true, so let me explain it. Moraes is himself a justice on the Supreme Court. He was not granted authority by it. His own claim actually acknowledges that no new laws (either legislation or constitutional amendments) were passed to give him this power. Instead his claimed power rests on something more confusing and again, illegal. Brazil has two top level courts - an electoral court and a Supreme Court, for simplification and use of common international language. These two are separate courts and are supposed to have separation of powers. When de Moraes was president of the electoral court, he proposed in October 2022 to the electoral court that he be granted the unilateral power (as a single person) to remove online content as part of his role in the other court, the federal court (where he was inaugurated in 2017) - this is all easy to verify and there are many sources (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_de_Moraes).
Obviously, it is a total violation of the separation of powers for him to sit on one court and grant himself powers that he can use through the other court. Because no new legislation is involved, it also violates the fundamental role of the judicial system, since the creation of laws is part of the legislative power in Brazil.
> But then again Elon acts like an unaccountable little dictator in his fiefdom, which is also dangerous, so I don't really mind that X is getting banned
I don’t condone Elon’s erratic behavior. However, I think generally he has been more on the side of free speech and civil liberty than the previous leadership of Twitter. For example, after Musk’s acquisition, Twitter tried hard to stop censorship in India through a lawsuit against the government that they battled in 2023. They did not succeed, in part because India passed laws that legalized censorship unfortunately. But at least Twitter/X tried. As far as I can tell, they have been consistent with their public policy of following local laws when it comes to content moderation and censorship. But in Brazil’s case, the orders appear to be illegal (example: https://x.com/AlexandreFiles/status/1829979981130416479/phot...).
Whatever his demeanor is though, he is a private individual, and his actions matter less than actions of the state. Alexandre de Moraes is a Supreme Court justice. Whether Elon antagonizes him or not, he should remain neutral, stick to the law as written, and lean in favor of civil liberties as a default anytime there is something controversial or ambiguous.
Also, whether some action breaks your idea of separation of powers doesn’t make it illegal (that’s for the judiciary to determine). You may think it’s I democratic but that’s a separate matter (I think a lot of things in the US are undemocratic, especially considering we elected a anti-democracy corrupt businessman as president and may elected him again)
Read the NY times article; it is not amazing well done but serves to show how unaccountable the orders of the judge are.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/world/americas/brazil-x-b...
Then read the orders from the judge (as claimed by X). "Secretly ban this sitting senator within a few hours"
https://x.com/AlexandreFiles/status/1829979981130416479/phot...
Is some selective censorship from Musk better than nothing? Since his selective censorship appears to be primarily aimed at supporting right-wing causes, I have a hard time feeling like the answer is "yes".
Imagine you are a Brazilian. The government will censor these speakers whatever they appear. If you favor this ruling you are agreeing with the statement "Yes, I trust the Brazilian government to be the one to determine what is misinformation and against democracy and to make action to prevent me from seeing it"
Twitter/Musk can not substantially change your access to information as there are many other sources. The government can.
Here's my own thought experiment: if X overtly and publicly said they would fight all censorship-related actions by left-wing governments, but acquiesce willingly to all right-wing governments, should I be happier about that than if they treated all governments equally? I can understand why the answer for some is "yes, because for those individuals in those countries they deserve freedom of expression even if it's only given as a tool to power structures trying to erode their rights." But while I get it, that's not how I feel, because then the actions aren't motivated by principal, but by an effort to shape global politics.
It's best if there's no single monolithic "winner" in the exodus from Twitter because that community would descend into the same patterns of stupidity that are unavoidable past a certain community size.
The next phase of social media should be about community affinity and quality, not size.
i’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line the same group of sil val investors started trying to convince us that everyone should want to be in the same place at the same time or it’s somehow a “failure”.
i keep repeating it, but that kind of ridiculous idea wouldn’t ever be fun in the real world and it’s just as ridiculous to suggest it would somehow be different just because it’s “online”.
every city has multiple styles of restaurants, bars, clubs, stores, etc… for obvious reasons. sometimes we want a quiet night out, sometimes we want a loud concert. some people don’t enjoy the same things i enjoy and i don’t enjoy their shit tastes either ;) and that’s totally ok.
i’m very very skeptical of anyone who suggests _everyone_ should have fun being in the same venue at the same time. it’s weird af. the mere suggestion is incredibly shady at worst and plain ridiculous understanding of people at best. it’s one of the quickest ways to make me stop taking someone seriously.
https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati...
They do the same for feeds, 4 core components, with user choice and interoperability for each
Or, perhaps the domains of the content itself is blocked so apps continue to work but fail to load content within certain borders ?
apps implement views on that data, and may or may not follow the rules, of gov't or users. For example, even though you can block a user, detach a quote post, or hide comments, apps have to implement this behavior, and nothing stops a person from finding that relation.
ATProto is federated, not centralized, and not something gov'ts and regulations have thought thoroughly about. Also, with DID, I believe DNS blocking will be hard because I can change the name and still get to the same content
Not trying to be combative but I find this mode of thinking is likely to backfire, governments don't have to think they can just act - has bsky thought seriously about what their response will be to the same laws that X is suffering from?
It's also worth seeing how it plays out with others, while you are still not on the radar. Part of the reason Xitter is getting harsher treatment is because Musk antagonized. That's not the best way to negotiate, especially since he said he'd abide by local rules, like how he said he'd be better for free speech.
I think Bluesky would get banned.
Users could swap moderation service or swap interfaces
The one thing that could happen is the PDS deleting the record for everyone, everywhere
One thing to separate is Bluesky from ATProto. Bluesky is the default implementation of the 4 core pieces, but one could use alternatives for all of them as well and still have their content show up in the bsky app. Imagine if Twitter was open source and federated
It's not really tools for circumvention. The Bluesky app is more like Chrome for the ATProto network, the best implementation of a viewer, open source and leading edge. The moderation is less federated, more about user choice, as each labeller is centralized, but there are many of them.
So, not to undermine efforts from Bluesky team - I applaud their SoTA attempt at microblogging architecture and platform so far - but Bluesky definitely has not solved the messy question of legality, ethics, and speech, at theoretical levels. Only hypothetical and/or operational.
> Deleted Post
>> Katie Tightpussy: BLACKTHORNE: We are a moderation service for Bluesky with the goal of improving social media for progressive queer folks and leftists who wholeheartedly enjoy Japanese anime, manga, games, hentai, fan art, and doujin.
MARIKO: The Anjin incorrectly believes that he is an expert on Japanese culture.
>>> Sign in Required
>>> Sign in Required
>>> Yep, the "controversial fiction" thing is such a sad (yet hilarous) cop-out. They KNOW it's wrong so they employ this linguistic obfuscation to try and make people think they aren't pedos.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:hslv64eax7d2lwrm7qtg44ud/po...
The reason why you aren't finding anything specific to Bluesky is because it's not a Bluesky specific problem. Every social media that goes big in Japan will have this Japanese pedo flood problem, if you prefer it expressed in that kind of vocabularies. Social media that do not experience this stays irrelevant in Japan, for better or worse(frankly said likely better for profitability).
It happens as a spontaneous flood of 50:50 mix tangentially labeled pedo:nonpedo mixed content stream consuming non-negligible bandwidth, increasing in volume exponentially until Japanese fraction reaches steady state of >50% by content, ~30% by user count, and >50% of top popular accounts. The mixture and fraction metrics show indefinite steady up trend.
Gargron, the Mastodon author and benevolent dictator of the Fediverse, famously gave up and went on to basically race filter Japanese from the European half of the system, which by the way I have no choice but to fully respect given his circumstances, options available, and value to be recovered. Twitter famously deleted trust and safety team, and according to Elon Musk himself with his tongue in cheek, Twitter usage in Japan is "growing", amid its worsening Indo-Arabic spam problem and tanking global popularity. Even literal pornography websites like PornHub had this exact problem, in whose case they were forced to nuke the website to get rid of so-called JAVs using unverified CP as an excuse(lots of JAVs feature easily CP frameable females). And Bluesky created the whole moderation framework and default enforced implementation in response to it.
Anyway, what I'm saying is just, only, Bluesky's whole moderation framework is a post hoc solution to this problem, so while strong resistance against oppressive evil radical totalitarian governments sure is considered as one of ultimate goals, it's definitely not the goal in their initial problem definition.
I think that people are are celebrating the ban of X, and moving to decentralized platforms, forgot that the whole point of decentralization is to make censorship difficult.
When you move to bluesky, you just support an even more free version of twitter.
Feed (algo) and moderation services are choices at the individual user level
Very different when compared to NOSTR, where are a variety of domains and apps keep popping up everywhere around the globe.
IG, FB, WhatsApp, etc are all still running in Brazil last I checked.
The previous administrator was removed and another wasn't appointed, running foul from the societal laws.
Telegram doesn’t have a local entity and complies with Brazilian law, which is the only thing that is required. There is absolutely no need for local representation of foreign entities in Brazilian law.
Twitter having a local office is simply a commercial decision - easier to conduct business, better relationships with customers, local tax vs duty over importation of services etc.
That people are also leaving because of twitter being banned in their country isn't relevant to the original claim
That is being FORCED.
This isn't about you and your friends that hate Elon leaving for other platforms.
I'm on Mastodon and Bluesky but rarely visit -- not sure I need that kind of network after all. I don't feel any loss of value after closing my Twitter/X account, and am glad to have the time back.
I've basically narrowed my use down to two networks that I visit regularly:
IG (private account) for photos of friends/family and some interesting strangers. I keep my follow list quite short, and unfollow liberally if I feel I'm not getting anything out of the content anymore. But lately the sponsored and ad content feels like 5-to-1 vs my actual follow content. If my family didn't use it to see pics of my kids then I'd close it.
HN: the only reason HN works is that it's not centered around "following" people (like every other network), which then becomes a race to get more "followers" which becomes some sort of currency. I saw this happening with Quora in its early days where after a promising start and really interesting content/replies by actual experts, it turned into a little attention-seeking groupie club--that's when I closed my account.
The stream has noticeably more Portuguese in it these last couple of days.
In my brief experience with Twitter, it felt suffocating. Every recommended tweet didn't see me as a person to share thoughts with but as some sort of prey, like they only wanted me for my attention, formulating tweets with open-ended questions and clickbait to bait me into engaging with them.
On Tumblr, it's just people's blogs. I follow a guy who takes photos of birds. No sweating. No engagement metrics. Just cool birds. Check it out https://www.tumblr.com/doingitfortheexposure
It's relaxing.
I don't think Twitter users would get used to the peace of mind that Tumblr can offer them.
In fact when I checked Bluesky, some new Brazilian users were talking about how there was no "trending topics" section in Bluesky. A part of Twitter's interface that I personally tried very hard to avoid looking at.
Nostr is the actual solution for this dilemma and our best bet to preserve free speech right now.
I also think that anyone, especially someone prone to childish tantrums like Musk, having unquestionable control of a major network on which citizens can air their views, is also very dangerous. Free speech that is free of control is essential.
We have a network where you can post what you want to say. It’s called the World Wide Web.
Plenty of places to share your view. At least, anyone can create a webpage.
X.com is where the action is at. It's where the news makers and shakers are.
Ultimately they are private platforms and as far as I'm concerned they can censor as much or as little as they want, but its a fundamental problem of any algorithmically managed feed of user generated content. There's no easy fix there and you'll always piss of a large chunk of the population.
Its demise had felt sad. Really sad. Hatred for Google hadn’t taken proper shape by then. And it had died before being completely Googlified.
So obviously Musk is not protecting free speech here because he usually doesn't do it. What is he protecting?
[1] https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-or...
(X is facing a deep decline in revenue, cutting its valuation from $44B to ~$12B [Musk’s stake is worth ~$7B], and Musk makes a choice that drives millions of users to an alternate site: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitters-revenue-collapses-84...)
I don't know how anyone can continue to claim this with a straight face when he sued advertisers for not continuing to advertise on the website.
I.e. Musk did not sue the advertisers.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.39...
Parties include the following. The last 5 are advertisers.
- WORLD FEDERATION OF ADVERTISERS;
- UNILEVER PLC
- UNILEVER UNITED STATES, INC.
- MARS, INCORPORATED
- CVS HEALTH CORPORATION
- ØRSTED A/S
docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69017972/x-corp-v-world...
Do you think the Sherman Act is an unreasonable limitation on the free market?
I make no claim as to the nature of claim, the appropriateness of the Sherman act, or if the claims will fail as a matter of law or fact (or neither). I am not a lawyer and am especially clueless on the topic of antitrust law.
I did however, incidentally, see this recently which may be of interest on the topic:
https://verdict.justia.com/2024/08/26/why-elon-musks-and-xs-...
And unless Musk has some extraordinary evidence it will be difficult to provide those advertisers colluded together to better themselves at the expense of other market participants. Especially when they aren't even in the same markets.
Also if you think this situation is akin to a cartel god knows what you think of IMDB or the Michelin guide.
Given Musk's personality, I would not be the tiniest bit surprised if he's suing without any actual evidence, just because he's angry and because he can.
I mean, remember, this is the guy who tried to get out of buying Twitter, and then refused to pay out contractually-obligated packages to many of the former management team he fired. (I'm not the biggest fan in the world of golden parachutes, but this was pretty egregious.)
As far as I am concerned, his contributions to the US, society, and the future via Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, etc., dwarf his various foibles.
P.S. if the pay packages were contractually obligated, then the courts would have forced him to pay them. Courts are generally pretty biased in favor of employees when they sue their employer.
P.P.S if his case has no merit, the advertisers are hardly unable to defend themselves, they are huge corporations. You don't need to feel sorry for them.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/modi-twitter-bbc-m...
“It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things,” he added, referring to the multiple companies where he is CEO.
Concerning.
Brazil is rapidly turning into a police state.
Unfortunately western countries are no longer willing to set a good example to encourage developing countries to follow.
By choosing to frame things like that, it almost sounds like multinational monopolies on social media controlled by murderous fascist regimes and used to push industrial loads of machine-generated propaganda is something that's somehow preferable.
But Twitter is also owned by Russian oligarchs linked to Putin himself.
https://www.dw.com/en/what-do-xs-alleged-ties-to-russian-oli...
We're talking about Elon Musk's Twitter, who around the time of Russia's invasion of Ukraine was found to have hardcoded censorship of pro-ukraine content as well as users who posted pro-Ukraine content on Twitter.
This is not speculation. When Elon Musk did that stunt on open-sourcing Twitter's source code right after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the source code explicitly included references to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in hardcoded rules to downrank discussions on the topic.
https://gizmodo.com/twitter-musk-ukraine-crisis-open-source-...
This is just the stuff he accidentally leaked.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/ukraine-pushing-slowly-wes...
People are living in parallel universes.
Seems like this is a case of not letting the prisoners talk to each other too much lest they start to have some ideas of their own.
Any law that’s only selectively enforced, is ripe for abuse by any kind of government. More so by a government that’s descending into autocracy.
[1] https://x.com/sofiafonsoferre/status/1830181842898530650
"Is it ok for foreign companies offering services to Brazilian citizens to ignore Brazilian law? Even if that company is Twitter and it means you lose access to Twitter?"
The average person does not really care about what's right or wrong or fair - just what's in their interest.
The average person cannot or does not think - "But what if a bunch of other companies were doing this thing? What if we had to treat them all fairly?"
That's why it's good when you have a legal system that at least attempts to be fair - instead of just populist and doing whatever people want.
These decisions hold until ratified or rejected by the court as a whole (which they all eventually will, but it's not fast) or successfully appealed. Appeals can be made only to another Justice or to the court as a whole - no expedited process, because there's no higher authority.
Besides, who'd make the appeal? X has no representation in Brazil (that's why it's been suspended), and there seems to be consensus on that specific point, of legal representation being a requirement by law, so the general attorney or other officials will not question the main decision.
The side decisions are a different matter, that about VPN apps and app stores had been withdrawn. The fine for accessing X is more controversial: hardly enforceable (for just browsing, at least), ongoing hot debate in the country about it being within the Justice's power.
In fact, the Court will probably expedite a whole court judgement on that, and apparently there's no consensus across the Justices on that.
Moraes essentially wanted a hostage. Executives of companies shouldn't be arrested for things they have no power over, such as content moderation. My guess is that Moraes wanted to force Musk's company to not have a legal representative in the country, because the moment you know if you accept a job there's a high chance that job will result in you being arrested, those business men and women won't want that job. So Moraes clearly forced a situation that drove X out of the country.
If anything – it would still have been incredibly draconian and abusive from Moraes part – but it would have been “less bad” if the had skip the whole "arresting the legal representative" thing and had went straight to "block Twitter/X for not complying with his orders" part. But I guess Moraes really wanted to go for the "they didn't have a representative in Brazil, so we ban it" narrative.
Which by the way, this requirement, even if it's in the law, it surely not demanded from the vast majority of online companies that offer their service in Brazil. Otherwise they would have blocked Blue Sky as well, because (I assume) it doesn't have legal representatives in the country. So at best this law is being selectively enforced.
If Twitter/X were to hire a rep in Brazil, regardless of the title they're given, that rep would have little to no power over the moderation choices of the parent company.
Which is kind of weird and illegal in many countries, but in the US it is almost the norm.
Also no, chairman isn’t only accountable to themselves. Where did you read that? Investor having seats on board is so they can have a voice in the direction of the business.
Activists investors often try to have a minority stake and a board member so they can force changes at the company -[0]. A recent example is Elliott’s effort at Southwest Airlines -[1]
[0] - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/activist-investor.asp
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/elliott-b...
Not sure why you include investors all of a sudden, as I didn't mention about that. I have no issue with shareholders having a seat on the board.
Musk could choose to furnish the Brazil office of Twitter/X with the necessary resources to do content moderation to conform with local law. He chooses not to, with predictable consequences in terms of legal liability for any local representative.
So an internet service with global availability has to maintain staff for all 200-ish countries?
How exactly was the judge's decision here not in accordance with the law?
I'm not "a part of the government base" and I happen to think this decision was lawful. Don't assume everyone who disagrees with you is doing so for political reasons. It would be too shallow to do so.
So I read that this is all because musk refused to appoint a Brazilian citizen as an X representative, as dictated by Brazilian law. I have not verified this part.
Musk refused because the last person to fill that role had all their bank accounts frozen by the judge.
The judge also cut off payments from Brazilian citizens to starlink, something about relating star link to x. so musk said “well then starlink is free for Brazilian citizens because I don’t want to cut people off from their internet connection.” Or something like that.
Edit: blackeyedblitzar child comment of this has better information.
The root of the issue is that Alexandre de Moraes, a single justice on the Supreme Court, has been issuing secret orders to censor content, ban accounts, and jail people over political speech. This is unconstitutional in Brazil per article 5 of the 1988 constitution, so X refused the orders. Note that the text of the Brazilian constitution explicitly says that the freedom of expression is guaranteed without censorship (it mentions “censorship”). If they were legal orders they would have complied, as they have in other countries.
Also the “Musk refused” part isn’t accurate. Ultimately these decisions are made by Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X.
And Musk didn't fight as hard in India or Turkey for accounts of people that did far less.
There's obviously a bias, I wonder why?
https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-jair-bolsonaro-spacex-s...
Anyways, Alexandre de Moraes - the Supreme Court justice in this situation - is acting unconstitutionally in multiple ways. Issuing orders to censor, ban, or arrest in secret is depriving the victims of due process and the public of accountability. He also said himself that he is not getting his powers from law but from what the other court he sits on gave him as a new power, which is just a made up legal invention on his part. How can a court make up legal powers, when that is meant to come from the constitution and legislation?
> And Musk didn't fight as hard in India or Turkey for accounts of people that did far less.
You are one among many attempting the whataboutism of bringing up Turkey and India, even though it has no bearing on what is happening in Brazil. I don’t agree with censorship in any of these cases. However, Twitter/X has publicly stated that their policy is to comply with local laws in each country. The difference is in the legality of orders per that country’s own laws. In Brazil, there is a right to freedom of expression without censorship, per article 5 of the constitution. Also another difference is that the censorship orders here were done in secret - like with gag orders that make it invisible to the public - and this is both highly unethical but also makes this judge unaccountable and difficult to challenge.
Unless you were already part in an attempt than it's more likely you aren't just express your opinion but coordinate your next attempt over social media.
Free speech has limit. Just look at Charles Manson, he didn't kill anybody but he talked others into.
You wouldn't call Russian orders through Telegram free speech, would you?
The same entity behaves differently on the same issue but from different requester.
By your logic every complain about racism is whataboutism.
"Why got the black man jailed for drug possession but white man got probation?
"Whataboutism!!!"
There are various ways to resolve a conflict; to comply to your opponent's demands just because he happens to hold a high enough office is but one of these ways. Complying to unlawful orders so as to preserve profits is often seen as corruption. Sometimes the best way to resolve a conflict correctly is to take a stand.
He's obviously known for his hands off "I just allocate capital" attitude towards his businesses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Brazilian_Congress_atta...
The same people who wanted to overthrow the government and wanted a coup d'état by the military?
I doubt that the US government would differently in such cases.
And Twitter censored accounts on behalf of Turkey and India for political reasons but in Brasil they act differently, maybe Musk is in favor of Bolsonaro.
And that Linda makes the decisions is questionable at best
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-linda-yaccarino-tw...
Their shareholders don't want controversies screwing up their investment, so the management acted accordingly in the company's best interest.
Unconstitutional in which country? And if you disagree with that in Brazil you can make your case to the Supreme Court.
Musk was playing chicken with a Brazilian Supreme Court judge who called his bluff. He obviously lost, because the latter has immediate legal power and X doesn't.
As in Brazil constitution? They don't have free speech, but freedom of expression. Read article 5 of the Brazilian constitution.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2013.85...
It normally boils down to a <we allow this, except when this>, vs <we allow everything without restrictions>.
There's also wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_10_of_the_European_Con...
Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater; prior restraint, as is the case for e.g. restricted data under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954; copyright...
Which means Freedom (including of Speech) in its very conception is more bounded that the US notion of Free Speech (which, even though also limited, is less restrictive).
However, Free Speech based on the First Amendment only applies to the individual's relations with the State. A private employer in the US can fire an employee for saying something that doesn't reflect the values of the company, even if that speech was lawful. In France (and I assume most Freedom of Speech countries), the constitutional protection applies even with private entities and an employee cannot be fired for a lawful speech. .
But the whole point of freedom of speech is for situations where it does "harm others". If nobody has a problem with your speech, then you don't need laws to protect it. The protection is only useful if speech comes into conflict with someone.
Freedom of speech doesn't stop where somebody else's rights begin, it starts there. There is no need for freedom of speech before that.
Broadly speaking, freedom of speech can mean two roughly orthogonal things:
1. Lack of government censorship.
2. Freedom of speech as an outcome: a society where people can speak their minds without excessive consequences.
Sense 2 is inherently vague and can't be regulated, as people won't agree on when the consequences are excessive. But it's usually what people want when they care about the freedom of speech.
The two senses are sometimes opposed. If you say something other people find unpleasant and a million people decide to ruin your life, it's clearly against freedom of speech in sense 2. But if you have laws against such mob justice, they can easily violate freedom of speech in sense 1.
Freedom of speech in sense 2 is more about culture than government regulations. If you have a highly polarized society, you can't have freedom of speech in that sense.
It's a question of value: either you think Freedom of Speech is the highest form of freedom and right that one can hold, and all the other freedoms must come second, or that all freedom and rights are equal, and the role of the Constitution and the law is to find a balance between those.
Who decides if someone is harmed? Did I really harm someone if I called them a homophobic slur? Can I say that someone harmed me if the mispronounce my name?
I - a soberania;
II - a cidadania;
******III - a dignidade da pessoa humana;**** (The dignity of human being being assured)
Then it comes the Art 5:
Art. 5º Todos são iguais perante a lei, sem distinção de qualquer natureza, garantindo-se aos brasileiros e aos estrangeiros residentes no País a inviolabilidade do direito à vida, ''''''à liberdade'''''' (freedom, not only speech), à igualdade, à segurança e à propriedade, nos termos seguintes:
IV - é livre a manifestação do pensamento, sendo vedado o anonimato. V - é assegurado o direito de resposta, proporcional ao agravo, além da indenização por dano material, moral ou à imagem; [...]
In none of art 5 parts it says the freedom of thought and of expression is Absolute, on contrary, i let here for you guys translate yourselves the paragraph V... It's not censorship when you comit a crime, you lose your freedom when you comit a crime (depend on the aggravation of course, its penalty dosimetry)
> “IX. expression of intellectual, artistic, scientific, and communication activity is free, independent of any censorship or license”
And note that the introductory text that precedes this reads:
> “Everyone is equal before the law, with no distinction whatsoever, guaranteeing to Brazilians and foreigners residing in the Country the inviolability of the rights to life, liberty, equality, security and property, on the following terms:”
In other words, “communication activity” (which posting on Twitter obviously constitutes) is protected without censorship.
Source: https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Brazil_2014?l...
And who is her boss, again?
Initially, consequences were not that bad (take down of some illegal posts), then they went to removal of recurring offender profiles.X ignored those Supreme Court Justice orders - their only legal course of action being to comply and file an appeal to the Supreme Court as a whole. That led to further escalation against their legal representation in Brazil and their executives (which is according to Brazilian law), which led to Musk shutting down the local representation rather than following the local law. Which put X in a non-compliance state and led to the order for its blocking.
If you understand the initial order to take down posts of defamation and illegal speech as censorship, you comply and appeal. Ignoring a court order is not a legal option.
In Brazil you can go to jail for a slur against a queer person. That is not the case in the U.S.
The question is not about Freedom of Speech, it is about changing the laws on what is protected and illegal speech. I do not like Musk as a person, but what he is doing is an act of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is the active, and professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government.
I am wary of the tightening fence around what is protected speech. I am a historian, and the censors never end up being the good guys.
The moment that something is deemed "illegal" to express, there inherently is no more free expression present.
You can have freedom of speech, but there’s no country were it’s absolute. You’re always responsible for consequences of what you say.
Article 19
1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
(b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.
The general rule is that you have the freedom to do and say whatever you want as long as you don't harm others.
Unrestricted free speech simply does not exist and any free society will have mild censorship, otherwise a lot of terrorists, criminals and fraudsters could defend themselves under free speech.
If there are "election rules" that regulate what can be posted online, that's censorship. Even if people are inciting violence or formenting revolution, banning them is censorship.
Most governments participate in censorship, and most people are OK with some level of censorship. But Brazil's constitution guarantees freedom of speech without censorship, so their courts have no business issuing orders to censor social media.
This is a bad litmus test. Courts order fraudsters to stop doing fraud all the time. It's censorship. But it's acceptable censorship, even in America where we have a uniquely-potent First Amendment.
That can't work in reality though. So at best it can only be a theoretical ideal, merely a guideline for practical legislation. Same way French constitution has equal rights for all citizen baked into its constitution for more than a century.
Each day the popular vocabulary shrinks more and more, until we're back at cave man levels. Tower of Babylon.
If the order is illegal you show that in court. U.S. district courts constantly issue illegal orders. There is a massive difference between appealing for an emergency stay and just blowing off the court. (Musk is a brilliant entrepreneur. He has given zero shits about the rule of law across his career, domestically or abroad.)
At the end of the day, both sides in this case are posturing. The judge gets to act like he's standing up to us American imperialists. Musk gets affirmation from his anti-work censorship crowd. The fact that X f/k/a Twitter has zero employees in Brazil should tell you how much that market really matters to him.
> Ultimately these decisions are made by Linda Yaccarino
This is nonsense. I have a lot of respect for senior people on the X team as well as many of their shareholders. Yaccarino is an obvious puppet.
I fully support Brazil banning X because a country can do whatever they want, but let’s not pretend X owes Brazil anything.
Brazil is irrelevant to X and countries that act like dictators deserve to be ignored by foreign companies. It’s hilarious to see Brazil play their cards and show they have no power over their citizens by threatening to fine them for using a VPN to access X.
This isn’t bias against LATAM, I also want to see Australia lose business due to their crazy spy laws.
Oh, I totally agree with you. But they're not worth negative money. This was a cheap stunt for both sides to pull off. But it's still a stunt. X's TAM has been cut. Brazil's reputation harmed. But both men have personal interests that make those costs worth it, and there isn't anyone in their respective domains who can check them.
Said "freedom of expression" in Brazil is constrained by the following paragraphs, that for example explicitly:
IV - requires anything considered "free speech" to be explicitly non-anonymous.
V - anything considered "free speech" must pay compensation to harmed third parties.
X - "free speech" can't violate the personal privacy and honor of third parties.
XVII - "free speech" doesn't apply to you if you're trying to assemble a paramilitary force.
It is not "free speech" in the "I speak what I want" sense at all. Violation of those rules isn't considered "censorship" because you didn't have the rights (to be anonymous, to harm others, and to assemble juntas) to start with.
You cited term X which says people's intimacy, private life, honor and image are inviolable. Looks like you didn't finish reading it though. Right after those words is written the following:
> the right to be indemnified for the material or moral damage secondary to their violation is guaranteed
It basically says you're entitled to a payday if someone damages your privacy or reputation.
Nowhere does it say that censorship is warranted. The constitution goes out of its way to explicitly mention that censorship is prohibited multiple times and in multiple places.
> The expression of intellectual, artistic, scientific and communication activity is free, independently of censorship or license
> Any and all censorship of political, ideological or artistic nature is prohibited
I know nothing about Brazilian law. But in general, we always create exceptions to free speech when balancing harms. Spam filtering. Fraud. Et cetera.
You certainly can, but it usually takes the form of defying the order and appealing to a higher court for a stay pending trial and then hopefully and eventually a reversal of the order when hopefully it is indeed found to be unconstitutional or otherwise illegal.
This is unconstitutional according to their interpretation of the (very extensive and vague) article 5 of the 1998 constitution, maybe. At the same time, if you disagree with a judicial order, you probably should appeal the order, rather than refuse/ignore it. Ignoring judicial orders has consequences.
> Note that the text of the Brazilian constitution explicitly says that the freedom of expression is guaranteed without censorship (it mentions “censorship”).
It says a lot of things (that can be interpreted in many ways). Note that it also says "é livre a manifestação do pensamento, *sendo vedado o anonimato*". Did Twitter/X refuse to give information about accounts, after having been asked by the Supreme Court? If yes, then it can also be said that they are breaking article 5 of the 1988 constitution.
In general, constitutional laws (in Brazil and elsewhere) tend to be rather vague. The devil is in the details. Just because it says somewhere that "é livre a expressão da atividade intelectual, artística, científica e de comunicação, independentemente de censura ou licença", doesn't mean that you are free to express your art of screaming "fire" in a crowded theater, for instance.
> If they were legal orders they would have complied, as they have in other countries.
In general, a person (or other legal entity) are not free to pick and choose what laws or judicial orders they want to follow, depending on their own interpretation of the law. Or, I mean... they can... but there are usually consequences to ignoring judicial orders.
Also, it probably is not a great idea to try to intimidate/aggravate/insult/threaten the judge (https://nitter.poast.org/elonmusk/status/1829005086606901481...) during those legal proceedings. Judges tend to not love that.
If the argument is that it is illegal to "censor", due to the Brazilian constitution, then Twitter is already engaging in illegal behaviour whenever it bans accounts (or auto-removes tweets) for using terms Musk dislikes (like "cis" or "cisgender").
I really don't buy the "free speech" argument here, since Twitter has never been an "absolute free speech" space to begin with. Note that Musk had no problem censoring and banning accounts when asked by the Turkish or Indian governments.
In the US first amendment protections only apply to the government. Is that different in Brazil?
Furthermore, there is already a precedent here: both Telegram and Meta have been previously (temporarily) banned from Brazil until they decided to comply with judicial orders (after which, they were unbanned again). Why does Twitter think they are special in this regard?
If the judicial order is (correctly) justified by an inconstitutional law, then it's that specific law that has to be challenged, not the judicial order.
These are in no way equivalent. e.g. the first amendment only protects you from the government not from private organizations (if anything them deciding to publish or not to publish your content is an expression of freedom of speech and is right that the Supreme Court has confirmed). Obviously I'm not fully aware how exactly this works in Brazil but I doubt if it's fundamentally different.
> both Telegram and Meta have been previously (temporarily) banned from Brazil
That's still unreasonable.
Also you're still dodging the VPN ban order...
Anyway.. I understand that authoritarianism has a certain appeal to some people and actually might lead to some positive outcomes in some rare cases.
Sure, but we are not discussing the first amendment, or US law in general. As you must be aware, protection of freedom of expression rights are different in different jurisdictions.
> Obviously I'm not fully aware how exactly this works in Brazil but I doubt if it's fundamentally different.
I would not be so sure. For example, it is not legal to display a swastika in Germany (even though Germany is usually considered a democratic rule-of-law country), even though it might be legal to do so in the US.
> That's still unreasonable.
Just stating this (without any further argumentation) doesn't make it so. My only point is that, apparently, there is legal precedence for such kinds of things (i.e., banning a certain social network when it refuses to appoint a legal representative in Brazil).
> Also you're still dodging the VPN ban order...
I'm not dodging anything... that is a different issue, that we can further discuss, if you want to have a discussion in good faith. Trying to change subjects without addressing the point I made could be seen as moving goalposts, though.
> Anyway.. I understand that authoritarianism has a certain appeal to some people [...].
Ad hominem argumentation is not the best approach to argumentation, if you want to be taken seriously and have a discussion in good faith.
I'm not sure what do you mean by that. How is this specific decision, or some of the other examples/laws you've mentioned not authoritarian at least to some extent? It doesn't mean that they are not necessarily or unjustifiable in every single case.
> Trying to change subjects without addressing the point I made
I kept repeating this point in every comment I made. Yet you ignored it from the very beginning. Also it's not a different subject, it's intrinsically related to the decision made to ban Twitter since that's how the judge decided to enforce it.
> without addressing the point I made could be seen as moving goalposts
The point that different countries have different laws? Well that's a fact, not sure how can I address it. However I'm curious where do you draw the line? e.g. the USSR had laws, Russia has laws, Venezuela has laws so does China, Hungary and every other country. They all have vary different attitudes to freedom of speech and a bunch of other matters, do you believe that they are all equally valid, reasonable and legitimate?
I mean that "trying to argue based on (your perception of) the person you are talking to, rather than what is being discussed, is a bad argumentation strategy".
> How is this specific decision, or some of the other examples/laws you've mentioned not authoritarian at least to some extent?
Even if it is (which you surely haven't demonstrated), in what way does that imply that I (or anyone else) feel "appeal towards authoritarianism"? Stick to discussing the subject, instead of discussing the people you are talking to, if you want to be taken seriously.
> It doesn't mean that they are not necessarily or unjustifiable in every single case.
If they are legally, morally and ethically justifiable (at least sometimes), then it's not really "authoritarianism": it's just "rule-of-law".
> I kept repeating this point in every comment I made. Yet you ignored it from the very beginning.
No. The only time you mentioned it (in a response to me) was when I called you out. If you disagree, please post the supposed previous comment you made (in response to me) where you bring up the VPN ban issue.
> Also it's not a different subject, it's intrinsically related to the decision made to ban Twitter since that's how the judge decided to enforce it.
From what I understand, the only thing that was banned was the use of circumvention technologies for the purpose of accessing Twitter (which seems legitimate if his previous ruling is to be effectively enforced). From what I understand, the blanket ban of VPN technologies (which does not seem legitimate to me) has been reversed.
> The point that different countries have different laws? Well that's a fact, not sure how can I address it.
The way to address it is to accept that US laws (and US standards of free speech) do not apply to this case, since it is outside of US jurisdiction. Furthermore, to accept that, if a company wants to operate in a certain country, it kind of has to abide by its laws and regulations (regardless of whether they are legitimate or not).
> However I'm curious where do you draw the line? e.g. the USSR had laws, Russia has laws, Venezuela has laws so does China, Hungary and every other country. They all have vary different attitudes to freedom of speech and a bunch of other matters, do you believe that they are all equally valid, reasonable and legitimate?
Obviously not, but the fact remains: if you want to operate in USSR, Russia, Venezuela, China, Hungary, or wherever, you need to comply with local regulations and laws. Or, of course, you can choose not to, but then it is quite likely that local authorities will do whatever they can to prevent your company from operating in their country.
Musk/Twitter has no problem complying with Turkish and Indian court requests and laws, even when it involves censorship. Yet, it can't seem to do the same when it comes to Brazilian court requests and laws. Strange...
It was a secret order from one justice of the Supreme Court, not an official order or decision from the whole of the Supreme Court. It came with an order to maintain secrecy to avoid public scrutiny, which tells you all you need to know about its legality and ethics. Anyways, X’s appeals were not heard by the same supreme court, and that’s probably in part because the other justices are also intimidated by the aggression and power grab by the authoritarians in the regime - namely de Moraes and Lula himself.
If a government commits atrocities at the highest level in secret, should no one refuse or speak up? Of course not - it’s by airing these out in public that it can even be challenged, if there is corruption or authoritarianism. You don’t have to just blindly comply and accept dictatorships.
> Note that Musk had no problem censoring and banning accounts when asked by the Turkish or Indian governments.
This feels like a distraction not an argument - it’s not relevant what happened in other countries. Also X did challenge censorship in India at least, in a lawsuit after Musk acquired Twitter. They lost the lawsuit in that case, but the main thing is that censorship was legal in other jurisdictions where X complied. It’s illegal in Brazilian law, which is why they aren’t caving to the demands of that one single rogue supreme court justice.
It's relevant, because it shows that Twitter/Musk has no problem engaging in state-mandated censorship, as long as it the mandate comes under the form of a judicial order.
The fact that Twitter/Musk also has no problem engaging in non-state-mandated censorship (e.g., banning of arbitrary words that displease Musk), further reinforces the notion that the refusal has nothing to do with "not wanting to cave to [censorship] demands".
> Also X did challenge censorship in India at least, in a lawsuit after Musk acquired Twitter. They lost the lawsuit in that case, but the main thing is that censorship was legal in other jurisdictions where X complied.
According to article 19 of the Constitution of India (https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1218090/), "all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression".
> It’s illegal in Brazilian law, which is why they aren’t caving to the demands of that one single rogue supreme court justice.
According to what? Constitutional law (the same way censorship is also illegal under Indian Constitutional law)?
If the supreme court justice is "rogue", there are specific mechanisms in the Brazilian political system to boot him out of the TSF.
> You don’t have to just blindly comply and accept dictatorships.
Unless the dictatorship changes the constitution (or some other laws) to make censorship legal, right? Otherwise, it's ok, according to your logic, since Musk/Twitter is ok with censorship, as long as (they consider) it is legal.
Oh... so now Twatter/Musk is "god-like" and above the law? Judge Dredd?
Why Elon doesn't bring "peace and liberty" to China? Or other nice countries?
It's only for existing customers and because they can't charge them anymore, but don't want to drop the customers just yet. It's a business continuity plan, not some altruistic gesture.
Why is there someone always making this comment every time a company or someone rich does something good for a bunch of people?
There's no such thing as altruism, with humans it's all self-interest, and that's good actually. Might as well point out that the water is wet. So why make this comment?
I made the comment, because parent suggested that starlink did something for the citizens in general. That's not correct. The good they did was incidental to preserving customers until they can start charging again.
And specifically I mentioned that, because the good part gets played up as some kind of freedom stance by many people online... but it's not. Even the announcement didn't describe it as such.
Musk could cut off Brazilian Starlink subscribers in the hopes that the backlash would change things in Brazil. But instead he probably thinks keeping those customers on (and happy) for free is the better choice for his business.
I agree with you that altruism exists, but I'm not sure I'm willing to give Musk the benefit of the doubt for many of the decisions he makes.
It doesn't scale though. You end up in a position where you can afford to do something like that if you behave altruistically.
What a goofy assertion.
Yeah, the big concern for Starlink and Musk is maintaining non-paying customers.
It's not altruism either, it's political.
It's the same reason you get offers of discounts or free periods when you try to cancel services from large companies. They care about your worth over years, not just right now.
The whole thing started because X refused to take down posts judged as defamatory against some politicians in Brazil, as well as some profiles accused of consistently posting fake news and borderline illegal content. One can disagree with the ruling and appeal, but ignoring a Supreme Court Justice order is not a legal option, which led to the escalation.
True that no one would want to step in as a legal representative of X in Brazil right now, but that doesn't change the legal requirement - it exists so that the State has the power to enforce law over companies effectively operating in the country. The US is doing something similar (in process, motivations are quite different) by threatening to ban TikTok, for instance.
The Starlink ruling is mostly being considered an overreach by the Justice. It may take some time, but it will likely be withdrawn. Him deciding to keep the service for free, as long as it complies with the law, bears no matter and should be read most likely as a publicity stunt.
Servers are holding up so far! Fortunately we were overprovisioned. If we hit 4mm new signups then things should get interesting. We did have some degradations (user handles entering an invalid state, event-stream crashed a couple times, algo crashed a couple times, image servers hit bad latencies) but we managed to avoid a full outage.
We use an event-sourcing model which is: K/V database for primary storage (actually sqlite), into a golang event stream, then into scylladb for computed views. Various separate services for search, algorithms, and images. Hybrid on-prem & cloud. There are ~20 of the k/v servers, 1 event-stream, 2 scylla clusters (I believe).
The event-stream crash would cause the application to stop making progress on ingesting events, but we still got the writes, so you'd see eg likes failing to increment the counter but then magically taking effect 60 seconds later. Since the scylla cluster and the KV stores stayed online, we avoided a full outage.
What I can say is that the protocol is a neutral global layer for data, which can then enable multiple applications with their own moderation policies and decisions. There's always going to be moderation decisions we make that people will disagree with. The point is that something can be done about that disagreement - you can have other applications on the same network that makes their own decisions. I think one of the best things that could happen is that Brazilian developers fork the Bluesky app and build locally-owned social platforms on the atmosphere.
> "A word to use when something is astonishingly cool, fashionable, or popular."
This makes it easy to send thugs to their house and 'encourage' them to comply with any political demand. Jurisdictional arbitrage, particularly sites hosted in America following the first amendment is the only thing keeping anti authoritarian speech alive in authoritarian regimes.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/audio-pakistan-global-critics
https://x.com/alexandrefiles/status/1829979981130416479?s=46...
https://x.com/AlexandreFiles/status/1829980105567059997
They are doing a daily dump.
PS. Somehow all of this feels very natural when done by Musk. It kind of makes sense. It feels like “yes yes, he’d do this”.
You grant them power they asked. They don't deal with it, but ask for more power. At some point they stop asking and label you as the problem.
Bluesky is built on atprotocol (atproto.com) and can be thought of as an open distributed system. The event stream is for replicating throughout the various services.
more precisely wanted to understand how do you generate the event stream from sqlite
1. data repos are actually signed merkle trees, which gives at-rest authentication of the data as it gets shipped across organizational boundaries
We've been living in a fantasy land of "no political affiliation" in the tech world for decades, and now that the age of the hyper-rich has come once again, they are realizing the benefits of using the power they wield to shape the worlds they live in.
So now in the early stages of this century's great fight, we'll see our beloved tech giants join the political fray in full force, dragging their follower armies along for the ride.
And it works, too. Just look at the comments here.
When has the rich not been more or less 1:1 with The Powers That Be(tm)?
The form changes with the sands of time, but the essence is always the same.
Which "we" are you speaking for? That doesn't sound like the tech world, we've had a lot of explicitly political tech movements over the years. Off the top of my head some of the more successful and major ones were:
- Cryptography.
- Free Software.
- Cryptocurrency.
The Silicon Valley based companies have been politically active since at least 2016, there have been a couple of political exoduses by various groups to alternative platforms. The non-Silicon-Valley companies have been worse and generally suspect to the point where nobody expected political apathy (is anyone going to claim that Chinese social media are not politically subordinate to the state?).
"Political affiliation" is much narrower and comes with a specific named politician or political party — even if they're not going to get in, such as Lord Buckethead or the Green Party of America.
That was the tipping point. Before Trump, it was common to hear techies in the Bay Area proudly proclaim that they didn't concern themselves with politics. (Reminds me of the way aristocratic Europeans talk about commerce.)
Tech always had views on policy. But it wasn't outwardly opinionated on politics, certainly not partisan politics, in the overt (and influential) way that it is today.
Sure. But Elon changed teams. He used to be bipartisan. But he chose a champion in the aftermath of Covid and--by the looks of it--he's chosen a bad one.
(In an alternate universe where Musk stuck to what he's good at, I could see the entire Artemis programme being delegated to SpaceX and a bipartisan adoption of Tesla as America's EV standard bearer. Instead, there is real political capital in creating a rival to SpaceX. And Tesla is going to have to constantly be on the defence against cheap Chinese imports from the Democrats and establishment Republicans.)
He has always said, for many years, that he got into SpaceX to work towards the goal of making humans a multiplanetary species, and he got into electric cars to work towards the goal of having a sustainable energy society.
I think he legitimately believes that “the woke mind virus” is an existential threat to our society, and if that threat isn’t addressed then the other goals don’t matter because society will collapse before they can be realized.
From a near term business perspective his political actions are dumb, but from a personal motivation perspective they make total sense.
Or in other words, Musk is primarily driven by a savior complex, not greed (which is unfortunate for investors).
Sure. I don't think he's a hypocrite. He has, however, hyper fixated on a topic that's in vogue in tech circles but totally irrelevant elsewhere.
Unlike in technology, where one can credibly fail upwards, doing that in politics comes at the cost of influence. And in this block order we're seeing, tangibly, the consequences of Elon Musk's deteriorating influence.
Wokeism as it pertains to social media's discussion of the woke mind virus. Everyone has an opinion on it. But it's not of practical relevance to most people, certainly not most voters. Sort of like modern art.
Yes, like modern art. It’s talked about a lot. But it’s an obsession of a few and irrelevant to most Americans.
Yes, like modern art. It’s talked about a lot, especially by a particular core who gain money and influence from it. But it’s an obsession of a few and irrelevant to most Americans. It certainly doesn’t build one a national platform.
but – I do think that there are elements of the “woke mind virus” that are okay with censorship. I don’t think that censorship has any place in a democracy, and I do think it is a problem we need to address.
The executive branch asked Twitter to ban a NY Post story on the grounds that it was misinformation when it wasn’t. It was “malinformation”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malinformation
They didn’t correct the record, and Ro Khanna emailed Twitter to cut that shit out: https://www.businessinsider.com/khanna-emailed-twitter-free-...
I really don’t like Elon, but I fear the previous Twitter censors more. Media is supposed to keep the government in check and not the other way around.
The Twitter/X experiment seems to have primarily succeeded in demonstrating that nobody has good solutions for this problem, and just repeating words like “misinformation” and “free speech” doesn’t get us any closer to a solution.
Props to Bluesky for trying something else, at least.
Some friends have an ancap libertarian and they were targeted before.
Woke content is not censored and you can find it on X, it's just that most left-wing people left for alternatives.
I went to bluesky briefly and I was inundated by transgender explicit content. I didn't open it again.
That kind of monarch-like behavior didn’t exist on Twitter before Musk. Their protocols for hiding and removing content may have been very flawed, but at least there was a process.
Then let’s not focus on some made up boogeyman and ignore the fact that in 2020, the executive at the time was happily reaching out to Twitter and other platforms asking them to remove posts. The guy Musk is supporting was happily asking Twitter to remove posts.
But let’s be clear, they were asking Twitter to enforce its rules. And you can argue that the government asking like that is illegal, but I’ve yet to see a guilty verdict in court so, until that happens, Twitter enforcing its rules isn’t censorship. No one has been denied their first amendment rights.
More importantly, by Musks own yardstick, Twitter is no longer the bastion of Free Speech it was when he took control. So regardless of what you think, Twitter is worse off now.
The reason I moved country is because woke politics is making life worse. Crime is through the roof, kids can't go out in the cities by themselves because it's too dangerous. They started doing mandatory "gender identity" education in school, teaching crap to my kids.
I'm still in Europe and observing a progressive decline so I'm ready to move to Asia, the Caribbean, South America (Argentina maybe?) or maybe switch to the enemy and go to Russia or China, depending on how the situation evolves.
Dictatorship for dictatorship, I just want a low tax, safe place and governments to bother me as little as possible.
I can only think of two reasons:
1) Localised messages to and from the user. Not every language supports gender-neutral singular "you/they".
2) Demographic tracking e.g. for advertising: I've been given unskippable ads on YouTube for sanitary pads, and have forgotten which ad network presented me with one for dick pills.
85% is mainly how much I trust the sources: my experience has been kind of factoid is often true, but sometimes turns out to be "this source sounds like it means X, but actually it means Y" or worse "we made it up and you'll never check".
That said, I ought to have written "I can only think of two *good* reasons", because the third reason is "whenever anyone makes a database of people, we automatically add gender without even thinking about it".
By taking sides in a partisan culture war, he has made his core mission essentially non-partisan. Maybe he does really believe all of that stuff about "the woke mind virus", or maybe he realised that he can buy a priceless amount of political capital amongst people who would instinctively hate the goals of his project just by uttering the right incantations.
When was the last time you were in a red state? Driving an EV of any kind is a strong political statement.
> By taking sides in a partisan culture war, he has made his core mission essentially non-partisan
Not how partisan affiliation works--think of someone who flip flops from one side to the other. They aren't seen as above the fray or non-partisan. Just unreliable (albeit, usually, useful).
This surprises me (I believe you though!). I've read lots of articles and fun facts lately about how places like Texas go fastest at installing solar panels, because solar is now the cheapest source of energy and all. I'd blatantly assume that those new solar field owners would be charging their cars with their own electricity, also purely for money reasons and not climate/ideological ones.
It’s not only happening in the US but has also started to happen in other countries like Australia.
I found it weird tho, like fair, they were pissed about Twitter, but surely the planet is the bigger issue?
Musk has pissed off the left to the point where the left is not thinking clearly about him and his companies anymore. Regardless of what you think about Musk, Tesla is actually pretty great.
In any thread about EVs there is a typical HN commenter desperate to tell you that they drive a hybrid, not an EV like those silly virtue signalers.
For those who remember the vicious attacks on the Prius it's a wild shift in attitude.
In any thread about climate change they are desperate to tell you that you’re a climate denier when you point out inaccurate information.
For those who remember the vicious attacks on science, we called that the dark ages.
Those scientists believed they were asking reasonable questions and pointing out potential inaccuracies. But imagine you were an HIV positive patient in 1995 and you latched on to this scientific debate to conclude that probably you should just eat a lot of vitamins and things will work out fine, since the scientists can’t seemingly even agree on whether you’ll get AIDS…
This is not a theoretical example. AIDS denialism cost hundreds of thousands of lives during roughly 1995-2005. There was a Nobel prize winner (Kary Mullis) who supported the movement with his authority despite never having done any HIV research. The government of South Africa was also involved for their own political reasons.
It was a lot like today’s climate change denialism and needs to be remembered. The major difference is that the personal consequences of HIV denialism were felt within a few years on an individual level, so the matter was resolved within decades. With climate change, it’s going to take a century and today’s denialists won’t be around to feel the effects.
The thing that is so maddening is that we're already feeling the effects of climate change, but the denialists just claim those effects either aren't really happening, or are caused by something else (without bothering to define "something else").
This is how science works. Being right is not "science". Science is verb. If the questioners were right we would be calling them heroes.
The bad guys were the people who took this receding debate within the field as evidence of conspiracies and worse, and convinced thousands of people to treat their AIDS condition with quackery instead of effective drugs derived from the HIV-AIDS theory. The organized denialism killed people. That’s not science.
Fifty years ago, there was no shortage of funding for medical scientists who tried to prove that tobacco didn't cause cancer. (You can guess where that funding came from.)
There is a significant amount of people choosing to not purchase a Tesla because they don’t want to be associated with Mr. Musk.
SpaceX is more insulated because there is essentially no alternative. If Yspace existed, I’m sure a significant amount of people would choose to champion that instead.
I think you’re vastly underselling how much Mr Musk his communications and his association with the new hyperbigoted misinformation-hub Xitter has turned people to dislike him, powerful and influential one’s among them.
Yep, and I know people who have sold their Teslas because they don't want to be associated with Musk any longer.
Tesla's offered an experience in terms of pure acceleration off the line that actually made them cool, even people who might never buy one wouldn't mind experiencing one off the line.
Buying Twitter and wading into political debates isn't a depoliticization strategy, and if he'd wanted to pick a colour of his politics to optimize his business success (surprisingly unimportant when your product line is as far ahead of competition as SpaceX/Tesla have been) the correct choice would have been beige.
Imagine having to completely break contact with your own father because he hates who you are so much :'(
The issue is that many people who feel this way (seemingly Musk included) swing to the other extreme and embrace policy positions that only serve to further support and entrench systemic racism.
I'm not always comfortable with the methods and rhetoric of some social justice advocates, but I'm not going to present that as evidence that the movement they support is dangerous and we should strive for social injustice instead.
If “woke” involves an understanding that media is mostly filtered through large corporations and crafts narratives used to serve the interests of the ruling class, I’m not surprised a billionaire owner of a media company would consider that a problem.
Rather than identifying actual problems people are facing, media wastes our time with irrelevant distractions. Don’t worry about the opioid epidemic. Don’t worry about the fact that kids increasingly can’t even read after graduating high school. Don’t worry about corporate consolidation and monopolies. You should be worrying about “wokeism”.
Musk blames 'wokeness' for his daughter rejecting him after he didn't accept who she was. His entire conflict with the left and the 'woke' is centered around this one issue. He can't accept that he was rejected because of what he has done, so he needs someone else to blame and fight with. He bought X as his propaganda tool, he doesn't care about the consequences of his actions on society—he only wants to win.
> Musk is primarily driven by a savior complex
I don't think that's correct, it seems more likely that he was always driven by an inferiority complex.
Extreme doubt.
But that is probably the reason why he came out of the closet about his views.
I think a lot of people have similar views to his, they just keep quiet. Because, well, look at what happens to you if you don’t.
Right. And that is?
He is a man who owns an electric car company but has been pushing climate change denialism as his political position and supporting politicians who do.
There's competition because Tesla is not the dominant prime mover it's valuation implies it should be, and people have sensed - correctly - a market opening. No one I know recommends "buy a Tesla" anymore for your first electric car - they say buy a Hydundai Ioniq or wait for a Chinese brand to get cheaper.
People are actively embarrassed to drive Teslas, which in turn means there's a growing market for "anything but a Tesla...". And because of that all of the actual faults of a Tesla are paid that much more scrutiny.
He showed his true colors, there is no correction possible, people just don't rewrite their core personality. Support for puttin' and overall war in Ukraine, support for dictators, very bad stance on many societal topics, treats his employees like slaves, proper piece of shit as a parent, utterly childish reactions of an immature boy rather than Man - we haven't seen the worst yet.
Brilliance in some aspects means nothing if its dragged down into mud by rest of personality. I know some still worship him for the positives and ignore or even appreciate the rest, I can't and won't.
As for Musk, he's a weird one for sure. He made me realize that I don't know the politics of most CEOs (or even know who they are). Which is just as well, I don't want to ponder in the supermarket whether my bodywash is ideologically consistent with my shampoo.
I'm sure pre-Musk Twitter wouldn't have lost the entire market in the 7th most populous country.
So your explanation should be rewritten as “remove people from the way of legal consequences from breaking local laws they/Musk can’t control (buy) in their favor”.
It sounds like the same thing but it’s the difference between fleeing persecution and fleeing prosecution.
I'm not qualified to tell if the judge giving them is a partisan hack or not, just like I can't make that distinction with the judges that Musk appears to shop for in the US with what others describe as SLAPP lawsuits.
But obeying a judge isn't optional in either case.
To the individual representatives of a company? That's very rare, and not common like you make it sound.
"The company you're representing in this legal process hasn't complied with my orders so I will have you personally arrested".
Twitter refused the order, which means that Twitter is interfering with the legal process in Brazil. This sounds like "contempt of court" to me, which is a thing which results in a judge sending people to prison — no idea what it is in Brazil, but IIRC the maximum penalty in my country of birth is 2 years' imprisonment.
Brazil's legal system requires companies like Twitter to have an office in the country in order to receive such orders, which I think means it's literally her job to make those orders happen. Regardless, by closing the office Twitter was directly violating Brazilian law.
As companies cannot themselves be imprisoned, I do not see what alternative there would be than directing obligations onto a specific human. Buck has to stop somewhere, and while I know a lot of people who would celebrate if this judge decided that the correct somewhere was "international arrest warrant/request extradition of Elon Musk personally", I suspect this judge would have to go through a few more checkboxes before that doesn't get "major diplomatic incident" written all over it.
(Perhaps less of an incident if it's concurrent with the EU saying "We're issuing Twitter with a 6% fine on their global annual turnover for non-compliance with the Digital Services Act", which seems to be another battle Musk is Leeroy-Jenkins-ing himself into).
Effectively, the judge makes it impossible for X to defend itself in court because he'll just have anyone arrested who tries. That's not something you'll find in the developed world these days.
No, on two counts.
First, Twitter is free to seek out a lawyer to represent them in court. Most people hire lawyers for contract work rather than as a permanent employee, so this remains possible even with no assets within Brazil.
Second, there was nothing to be defended until they refused to comply with the lawfully given order within the required deadline.
That they chose to fire their staff member and close the office in order to prevent compliance with the lawfully given order, was an actual offence in its own right. To my limited understanding, it is also an offence in its own right to refuse a lawfully given court order. But in both cases, Twitter was not being punished until they actually broke the law.
Courts in the UK and the USA may issue an injunction, both to prohibit and/or to compel an action, and this may bind on people not directly before the court:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injunction (note in particular that interim injunctions may be given prior to a ruling on the case itself)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injunctions_in_English_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interim_order
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quia_timet
And, pertinently to Starlink: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_freezing
Compare and contrast Twitter in Brazil with Lavabit in the USA: Lavabit was ordered to provide certain information in secret (with an injunction to not talk about it); they protested, they first provided that information in an obtuse form that was considered contempt, they provided it in a form which was acceptable, then they closed their business in response and took further legal action in response to what they — and, to be clear, I — consider to have been a manner incompatible with the public view of American Democracy:
"""Levison said that he could be arrested for closing the site instead of releasing the information, and it was reported that the federal prosecutor's office had sent Levison's lawyer an email to that effect."""
and
"""Levison wrote that after being contacted by the FBI, he was subpoenaed to appear in federal court, and was forced to appear without legal representation because it was served on such short notice; in addition, as a third party, he had no right to representation, and was not allowed to ask anyone who was not an attorney to help find him one. He also wrote that in addition to being denied a hearing about the warrant to obtain Lavabit's user information, he was held in contempt of court. The appellate court denied his appeal due to no objection, however, he wrote that because there had been no hearing, no objection could have been raised. His contempt of court charge was also upheld on the ground that it was not disputed; similarly, he was unable to dispute the charge because there had been no hearing to do it in."""
The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety
or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?”
[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors...
But HN seems to think that Brazilians are NPCs without politics or constitution of their own.
https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-or...
Since Musk took ownership, the company has received 971 government demands, and fully complied with 808 of them. Before Musk, Twitter's full compliance rate hovered around 50%; since the takeover, it is over 80%.
Many US companies are now feeling forced to choose a side. At least I now know which to boycott..
But most of Europe is still sane, luckily.
Ps rather than blaming transsexualism it might be smarter to blame the Tories who have been skimming (and selling off to their own companies) the NHS until there was nothing left.
DEI was a political statement—one that you agreed with and felt was necessary. Abandoning DEI is also a political statement—one that you disagree with and think is not okay.
You're welcome to disagree with the people who disagree with DEI, but I'd hesitate to claim that these companies were "strongarmed" into it—the programs always existed as a political tool for the company to curry favor, not as something that was added for its intrinsic practical or moral value. The political climate has changed, which means they no longer serve their true purpose.
The important takeaway from this reversal is that the progressive theory of change that's been leaned on for the past few decades was a bad one. We thought that a lot of progress had been made, but it turns out it was all surface level and easy to undo when the pressure to keep up appearances went away or reversed. "We need to do this because it will look bad if we don't" is a very fickle tool for motivating real change.
You have to change hearts and minds within the broader population in order to bring lasting power towards change, but that's something that the modern crop of progressives entirely gave up on 10+ years ago in favor of racing to the finish line and declaring victory prematurely.
(Cue comments that the right can't be reasoned with so there's no point in trying.)
I can't speak for America as I've never been there, but here in Southern Europe it was pretty successful and at least LGBTIQ+ are really well accepted now <3 I know many clubs where people get banned if they make racial or gender slurs but in general it doesn't even happen.
I think part of the issue is that what is considered "left" in America (liberal/democratic party) is still very right-wing here in Europe, especially in economical terms, not as much in social ones. What the republican represent would be radical-right here.
So I just can't compare politics here.
I think that the fact that Europe leans further left than the US is actually part of the problem we have with moving at all— American progressives got impatient to join you and lost the discipline and patience that characterized previous generations' efforts towards change. The approach they've taken instead is entirely ineffective and, as bemoaned by the parent commenter, creates short-lived successes that quickly get rolled back.
Sorry pal, you're going to have to make it on merits, not your gender or skin color.
>See what happened to Ford, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson, and many others. Decades of progress are being thrown out the window.
Racial quotas in the workplace is not progress.
>At least I now know which to boycott..
Oh, so your boycotts are fine? Classic leftist hypocrisy.
I'm not advocating for positive discrimination. Just no discrimination at all.
It's very important to have the proper procedures in place for when that does happen. That was part of the diversity programs. Programs against bullying, education for managers on gender identity and how to deal with the difficulties around them, how to pick up on bullying etc. It's this kind of thing that I do myself (not as a job but as a voluntary side assignment in my job). It's amazing what kind of sexism and racism you hear when you go on a company trip and have a few drinks with high-level managers. So clearly this work is still highly needed.
Don't forget these programs were started because things were going the wrong way, people who were different than the standard cishetero white male had less chance to a job and were making less money when they did get one. This is of course not acceptable.
I don't think quotas are the answer. But rather fines when a company goes too far askew. "We only hire white cristians here" just cannot be acceptable.
> Racial quotas in the workplace is not progress.
That was only one small part of the diversity programs, and not one I necessarily agree with.
> Oh, so your boycotts are fine? Classic leftist hypocrisy.
I never said boycotts are wrong anyway. If right wingers want to boycott companies like Apple, go ahead.
This is of course a thing in that nobody can hide their colors anymore, but I'm specifically talking about the rich now feeling empowered enough that they even have the hubris to challenge governments of the world for their own benefit, and in some cases even build their own empires to escape the limitations of governments by forming their own rich-people-only worlds.
For example: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/magazine/prospera-hondura...
So long as you continue fighting left vs right, you're fighting the wrong enemy.
But giving the "other team" a voice (my team, in some ways) is valuable, and we aren't going to give it up easily.
And please, don't point to the fact that there are right-wing loons on Twitter, because there are crazies from all sides all over the internet.
Sure, I get that. Just stop pretending that it's about principle, then!
> In India, he agreed with an order imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take down accounts and posts related to a farmers’ protest that swept through the country in February, their demands including guaranteed prices for their produce and debt waivers.
(https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/31/brazil-moves-to-blo...)
And there are outside actors currently working hard to ensure that this happens, because they want a return to the old imperial world order (where powerful nations capture territory and expand, and weaker nations die at their hands and are colonized).
If you are in the U.S I am sorry you have this take on free speech, because it is distorted.
Free speech is defined by law and the law is clear. Freedom of speech means the free and public expression of opinions without censorship, interference and restraint by the government.
Musk isn't hard right. There is a lot of overlap positions between him and Bill Clinton (the original one from the 1990s, I do not know what he says now), except that Musk is anti-war and obviously talks like he was on Usenet.
I can't understand that software engineers, who vigorously defended free speech and also the somewhat trollish communication style up to at least 2010, came to be assimilated and reprogrammed by their employers.
Even Zuckerberg now backpedals and says that Covid censorship and suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story was a mistake.
It's easy to say with the benefit of hindsight what was a mistake and what was not. Some things need to be censored - that's how it's always been. The question, of course, is WHAT needs to be censored, HOW MUCH it needs to be censored, HOW it should be censored, and WHO decides.
In the old days, it was easy: If it wasn't on prime time (TV, major newspapers, syndicated radio), it didn't exist. And this cabal served us well, providing a small number of voices to tell people who they were and what to believe.
Now with a potentially unlimited number of voices going up and down in popularity with unprecedented speed and across nations, we're headed into unknown territory, so there are going to be a lot of mistakes, and nobody can know for sure if our nations can even survive it.
No. There are very few things that 'need to be censored' by the government (or corporations with almost government-level power), and it's hard to think of any beyond CSAM or legitimate threats to national security.
On the other hand, there are a lot of things that children should be protected from. But we're failing miserably at that. They're watching extreme porn and gore while the censors are focusing on silencing adults with the wrong political views.
For me, Musk/Trump is indeed fresh trollish air in all this seriousness and iam astounded, that no one else enjoys it. But i also have the feeling, it is a last breath before police state takes over. Because a state can not allow its citizen to go rogue.
Russia purportedly supports free speech right wing groups, though I think the problem is vastly overstated in order to discredit them. Most of this is organic,too.
Whatever is the case, left or right, we cannot let our own beliefs be dictated by whatever Russia supports or co-opts at any given time. Similarly, vegetarians should not abolish their beliefs just because a notorious 20th century dictator was also a vegetarian.
Obviously for people whose idea of freedom of speech begins and ends at actively promoting vice signalling in regimes which have some degree of speech protection whilst doing exactly what an autocrat like Erdogan asks because "you can't go beyond the laws of a country", Musk represents an improvement, but that doesn't have anything to do with promoting First Amendment ideology overseas.
Musk is not perfect by any means wrt free speech.
His version of being a free speech absolutist is that people who agree with him should absolutely have the right to free speech.
So he's merely an equal and opposite reaction to what the other tribe have been doing for ages?
He didn't fundamentally change Twitter. He bought a powerful propaganda tool/weapon and aimed it in the opposite direction.
(I suppose he's also using it as his own personal megaphone, whereas the previous owners would merely ensure that chosen voices were amplified/suppressed rather than using their own voices directly)
Not sure how we start to approach some sort of disarmament process when it comes to these propaganda weapons, though.
> He bought a powerful propaganda tool/weapon and aimed it in the opposite direction.
I'd say not. I don't think twitter itself wasn't aimed directly in any direction before Musk, other than “away from where firing may cause twitter problems”. They operated from a position of cowardice rather than political bias.
Sometimes this was towards the right because there was a fairly centrist or centre-left¹ bias online, but it often very much wasn't. For a clear case of them not aiming at the right, look at them leaving Trump and many like him alone at a time when they were flagrantly going against twitter policies, but slapping them for that would have caused too much grief back at them. It may be a complete coincidence², but Musk first started getting really serious about taking over around the time twitter started cracking down on that group (having joked about it prior to that IIRC, though it did take over a full year for his first actual takeover bid to happen).
----
[1] These definitions are difficult. Often what America seems to see as centre-left or even actually moderate left, is things that many over this side of the big pond would see as more centrist.
[2] Though I strongly suspect not.
I'll caveat this by saying I've never had a twitter account or any desire for one¹ meaning my views are those of an outsider and occasionally a passive reader – but from what I can see twitter acted from a position of cowardice² rather than any political machinations.
----
[0] One man's fair slapping of an arsehole, is another man's unfair restriction of speech.
[1] At first it was a daft novelty, then a novelty that had perhaps outstayed its welcome, then just a place far too full of people who thought twitter was a good idea, then the famous got hold of it and it became a tribal shit-show & soon after a political shit-show – all before Musk jumped in with both feet and a lot of other people's money.
[2] Hence not kicking Trump (and a few others close to him or relevant rhetoric) despite flagrant breaches of their stated policies, until such time as he was a lesser threat due to not getting a second term, and before that kicking people not because of any internal moral code but because of what advertisers might think.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/elon-musk-censors-twitter-in...
And he regularly bans journalists who don’t lick his boots.
https://newrepublic.com/post/177936/twitter-suspends-account...
Stop listening to what he says and pay attention to what he does. You’re being swindled.
> He is exporting the 1st amendment to us nations who don't get to experience such freedoms.
This is particularly absurd. “The first amendment” isn’t a paragon of freedom unique to the US. And it only applies to government censorship. You can’t “export it” to other countries by means of a social network.
I am paying attention to what he does. I use Twitter for hours every day.
The point is less about "free speech", because of course you're right, this is Musk's version of free speech.
But the real issue to the left is that he's allowing speech that, in recent history, has been considered "dissenting" or restricted. The fact that in the past week we have had Zuck come out and say Facebook was pressured to censor COVID19 materials and that we have mainstream politicians and bureaucrats calling to THROW MUSK IN JAIL is insane. Utterly insane.
The people behind this are getting found out, and there will be political consequences.
This is happening all over Europe as we speak. And even though it happens to be extreme-right atm, it doesn't have to be. We've seen extreme-left revivals in the past as well.
In the US, a populist just needs to win a primary, ie 50% of 50% of the American votes, and he is immediately at least nr2 in the run, and they get the support of one of the major parties.
Saying that populists / extremists also exist in Europe is just a bad comparison.
I don't think that the American election system holds any relevance to the problem.
The problem is fueling divisiveness to manipulate people with a "us vs them" mentality.
How else can you force working class people to vote against their best interests, such as taxing the rich fairly, ensuring access to affordable health care, uphold basic workers rights, without resorting to blatant fearmongering and moral outrage with bullshit like "they want post-birth abortions, impose sexual abuse in schools, import scary criminal gangs from distant foreign lands, etc"?
Not to mention the industrial level of propaganda dumped by foreign actors to destabilize democratic nations.
The UK is also a FPTP system, but has strong parties outside of the two main, for instance in the last general election over 42% of people voted for a party other than Labour or the Conservatives.
[admittedly that’s an outlier, but looking over the last few elections at least around 20% went to parties outside of the big two]
To be clear: FPTP is terrible, but the reason the UK system isn't as broken as the US one is because the correct functioning of the Legislature is much more vital to the overall system - i.e. 3 viable parties can exist because they're fighting over hundreds of seats, and then it's by the Legislature that the Prime Minister is chosen - rather then by direct vote.
One reasons out of ocean of reasons - number of actual votes for X or Y is irrelevant, its all about blocks based on some old history nobody should care about much anymore that decide winner. Freedom of choice is very limited, strong populists like trump have much bigger and long lasting effect than in more multipolar elections.
But for sure its a spectacle for masses for a good year and polarizes society for whatever bad reasons there are, that should be concerned about more serious topics than this.
The problem is that there seems to be a large overlap between that enemy⁰ and certain arguments on the right side of left/right political debates, so it is very difficult to separate the two even on those matters where that overlap isn't actually present.
The matter is made worse because right-leaning political groups are less ideologically opposed to being influenced by that enemy's main power: being able to buy stuff/opinions/people.
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[0] I assume you are meaning the arsehole rich¹ here
[1] There are some nice hyper-rich out there, but they aren't as vocal as the others so we don't hear much from/about them – much like the more moderate people with right-leaning views, who aren't heard over the yelling of others.
Hopefully someone who isn't a hard libertarian bankrolls one soon so they don't get pigeonholed as places for exactly one ideology.
Meanwhile The New York Times is titling an article: "The constitution is scared, but is it dangerous?"
There's nothing more belonging to the rich than the mainstream media, including the NYT. They were the people selling you the FTX scam and explaining you SBF was the second coming of Christ.
Now that Harris wants to "force congress to ban guns in her 100 days, or take executive orders if congress doesn't do it", of course that the NYT is publishing about the constitution being potentially dangerous.
And the problem is... Prospera in Honduras?
As long as you keep reading The NYT, you're fighting the wrong enemy.
> congress to ban guns
This sounds desperately needed and like an exceptionally great idea to most people that don't live inside the US bubble.
Maybe broaden your horizons a bit?
You are definitely correct there. Twitter was a shit-show in this regard long before Musk came along and made it worse. They did far too little to enforce their own policies (let alone common decency) on things like bullying and hate content for far too long, for fear of losing users and therefore advertising money or being punished because some of those openly breaking those rules were in high power at the time, and this led to an “open season” feeling for all sides.
[for the avoidance of doubt: I've never had a twitter account, after the initial novelty stage it has always been far too full of the sort of people that think twitter is a good idea]
I don't think dr Eggman should be able to attack in that way.
There is no proof but there was a threat and retaliation which is a terrible precedent.
It is like Eggman attacking Sonic for something that Shadow did.
I wonder about:
> Hybrid on-prem & cloud.
I wonder about the factors/considerations that led to hosting a given data/services on-prem or outside. Were there purely technical considerations or were there also about "self host what can't get leaked" (think GDPR, privacy concerns, things like that) ?
We are all still using it via VPN. We get all the govt related info from it, and no one is asking, how come the govt dept themselves are using twitter when it's banned?
No one will move to bluesky/threads/mastodon because as I said everyone is on twitter.
Afterall, if I want to know about the next road blockage or electricity outage, I know I need to go to twitter to check, where else would I go?
these are bullship tactics, but they seem to be working, and the internet is fracturing. It was nice while it lasted, but we will no loner have a 'world-wide' web, just national networks with passport controls on accessing external nets.
Turned out officers run their entire dept on Whatsapp.
Everything is adhoc, emails are in the old 2MB email, 50 MB inbox era, websites have not been updated since they were created and only page that gets changed is the organogram, (got to advertise the new minister in charge).
So no websites are NOT a reliable source of info. For example, there does infact exist a website to check loadshedding and work shutdown schedules... but my area was split off from a previous feeder and now has a new feeder code, but the website was not updated so I don't updated for my meter.
But I can check the twitter account and see tomorrow's shutdowns, and if I am regular, I can be prepped for tomorrow's 5 hr shutdown.
same for other things like road closures, due to protests or security corridor or whatever. Maybe other things, twitter is the best source of info.
Officers maintain an active twitter profile (despite the ban!) because ministers also are there, and they want their work to be visible.
If your boss sees the tweets of your work and people praising you in the comments, that improves your chances of a promotion and better postings.
Personally I would check my providers website/status page in such circumstances.
I hate than many providers now consider updates to Twitter/ Other social media sufficient and do not bother to publish to their own website!
In Brazil, people are apparently moving to BlueSky, but in my country, we didn't move platforms, we just to jump over the fence via VPNs.
Regardless of what you think of Musk, where's your outrage over this blatant authoritarianism?
What would be much more productive to discuss is if such law that gives accountability to social media is valid and weather the implementation is of good enough quality to catch abuses without impacting freedom of speech. I suspect it is, since we have similar laws mandating accountability to traditional media for 100s of years by now. Afaik any democratic country has such laws, in fact, the usa used to have strong laws around traditional media accountability until a few decades ago when they were weakened.
I've got you covered then. Before the 2022 elections, this exact same judge did just that.
I witnessed him and his electoral court censor a documentary a priori. Before watching it, before it was even released, they declared it was "fake news" and did not allow it to be published.
To this day that fact shocks me. In my lifetime, I witnessed the exact same a priori censorship that was omnipresent in last century's military dictatorship, the same dictatorship my parents were subjected to and told me stories about.
"Billionaire's toy social media network gets banned after blowing off entire country's judicial system" doesn't exactly sounds like "blatant authoritarianism". When I listen carefully, it sounds closer to "rule of law".
- foreign companies that operate in Brazil must have a representative there.
- all constitutional rights are to be equally protected, meaning that there are no absolute rights, such as freedom of speech.
- websites have to comply with Brazilian regulations and judicial orders, including removing content that has been deemed illegal by the judiciary.
- the blocking of a non-compliant website is explicitly listed as a penalty under the law.
Right now, Brazil’s Supreme Court is made up of judges appointed by various presidents, and there are tons of members of the opposition in Parliament. Anything that the Court does is subject to these checks and balances, and eventual abuses, such as “banning VPNs”, are quickly overturned in most cases.
At the moment, the only thing that Musk might rightfully challenge in court is the blocking of Starlink’s assets — as there is clear dissent about the legality of this measure. In terms of content moderation and blocking, the letter and spirit of the law are being properly followed.
The difference between the US and the rest of the world is that the US has the First Amendment, which it upholds. So, for example, in the US "hate speech" is not banned, and while inciting violence is banned, it must be literal incitement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...
This is important, because freedom of speech was supposedly allowed behind the Iron Curtain as well, as long as it wasn't "going against the socialist order" or "promoting fascism" (with capitalism or social democracy being just light fascism). Various countries found ways to pay lip service to human rights, while being authoritarian.
The enlightenment era gave us two separate definitions of freedom. At its foundation, the US govt is granted whatever rights it has to constrain freedom by wholly autonomous and free individuals, and in the other (French, continental) conception freedom is both defined and granted by the state. Authoritarianism is baked into the definition.
It will take future historians living in more intellectually permissive times to give a full account as to why the first concept of freedom only ever took root in the US and why the majority of countries have adopted the second.
You can say a lot of awful shit, but you really can't openly oppose the State with any real threat of power. I mean, I wouldn't really call the US admitting to assassinating Malcom X, MLK, among others, the pinnacle of free speech... all theses people did was speak out against injustices that they observed... and that's just one incident. This happens everyday.
So the US only upholds 1A when it decides it wants to. In other words, no, it doesn't really uphold it.
(And for the record, I'm mostly fine with that! I'm tired of this idea that absolute free speech is a thing, that people actually have it in large numbers, and that if they did, it would actually be a good thing.)
I don't know what "absolute" means for you, but yes, free speech is good, the more free it is, the better. As to your popularity fallacy, consider that for most of our time on earth, constant war and slavery were normal, and our grand-grandparents knew both.
The judge doesn't care about the morality of his decision. He shouldn't care. He is there to decide what's lawful and unlawful based on the facts and on the law.
They didn't try to seize power for themselves. They wanted the military to seize power so it could rule them instead of the elected president. There's a difference. They thought the military would be better rulers. That's just their political position.
There's simply no way you can convincingly claim that a bunch of people, many of them elderly, equipped with bibles and brazilian flags, tried to seize power in the brazilian capital. This country is pathetic but it can't possibly be so weak that it could suffer a coup by people like that.
Whether the law is right or not is irrelevant. You either comply or leave.
So unless you think every society is totalitarian your point makes no sense.
Rule of Law >-------------< Complete Corruption
How do you think about it?
Not even 10% of his insanity arrives untouched by editorialization in the Northern Hemisphere, you're being fed a polished, low bandwidth version of our affairs here, mostly because Brazil isn't a key enough global player for anyone to care, but also out of typical political bias. Glenn Greenwald has been attempting to bridge that gap, and has done as good of a job as possible so far.
The checks and balances in our jurisdiction are sufficiently tenuous that, with a relatively small group of people in key positions of power, you can gate-keep any viable democratic venues for impeaching him. A new profile on X called "Alexandre Files" is beginning to post his unlawful rulings.
His approval was 37% in March of this year, when most of the centrists were still openly with him, and most of the recent major scandals hadn't come into full play yet. Now that even the moderate part of the left is denouncing the blatant illegalities on his part, moreover after a leak of his whatsapp group, it wouldn't surprise me to be in the low 20s or even 10s now. Even major national left-wing publications are coming against him now, and I believe it's a matter of time before international media catches up.
He essentially used Bolsonaro supporter's rebellion as an excuse to impose a dictatorship of the judiciary in the name of "saving democracy". Those people indeed had to be judged for the crime of violating public property, but being unarmed, it's impossible to characterize a coup. This whole thing is a circus.
On the surface it does not seem to make sense, apart from an emotional Bolsonaro==Trump==Bad argument.
I have watched Greenwald a couple of times on the Moraes topic, but never saw this addressed.
People that point out Brazil's current state of affairs don't seem to realize that eventually, a ban of unmoderated social networks is inevitable from a legislative standpoint.
I wish that X/bluesky/Facebook/etc had something like a clear label next to its users, maybe a robot icon when the post was created via their API or in an automated manner.
That would help people to identify campaigns already a lot.
But on the other hand, these are the paying customers, right? It's always "just advertisement" until it is not anymore.
…
> a ban of unmoderated social networks is inevitable from a legislative standpoint.
I am surprised this even needs to be stated; either 15 or 18 years ago I made the mistake of creating a phpBB forum instance for my shareware, and it was a rounding error from 100% of signups being spammers.
The only difference between spam and disinformation is economic vs political power.
The antidote to disinformation isn't moderation, it is true information.
X has advanced more than any other platform with community notes. Tech is the antidote, not more government regulation and centralized power.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/modi-twitter-bbc-m...
“First I’ve heard,” Musk wrote in response to a question from Canadian lawyer David Freiheit.
“It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things,” he added, referring to the multiple companies where he is CEO.
It's been a year and half.
Lots of pro-censorship people on HN. Remember what happened to Brendan Eich? [2]
At some point we have to come to this realization in the west that absolutism is never the answer. Free speech is good upto certain extent, the way it was at Twitter before the rich and powerful took over. Moreover, it is content moderation and it doesn't have anything to do with free speech.
Up to the extent that you agree with it?
That's the norm in Elon Musk's Twitter. Since his takeover, content like white supremacy, antisemitism, and industrial state-level propaganda operations from fascist and totalitarian regimes is perfectly ok to publish on that platform. Criticism of Elon Musk or fascist regimes, however, is completely different.
Elon Musk's Twitter was also caught hardcoding censorship and throttling of both pro-Ukraine discussions and users who published pro-Ukraine content. Russian bots however have free reign.
More importantly, Elon Musk's Twitter is finding itself in trouble in Brasil not because of censorship, but because Elon Musk made it his point to go to great extents to avoid even appointing a legal representative to handle complains of illegal activity. This isn't even about censorship, but complying with basic legal requirements. It's like bitching that having to pay taxes is persecuting based on free speech just because you refuse to even file a form.
If I were to follow the same logic as these judges, I would call for your comment to be deleted and for your account to be suspended. After all, you committed the crime of spreading "disinformation" and "misinformation". You were wrong on the internet.
Rejoice, for I do not agree with their logic. You can be wrong on the internet all you want, and I will not call for your censorship. For I believe that is a fundamentally immoral thing to do.
Not even that. Brasil requires media companies to appoint legal representatives to handle complains of illegal activity, and instead of complying with the law Elon Musk opted to pull the company out of Brasil.
The funny thing about this shit show was that Twitter's legal representatives were actually complying with the law, but Elon Musk himself was contradicting and undercutting Twitter's representatives in Brasil. Until he simply pulled out of the company from the country, as if that was some kind of legal gotcha. Except that Brasil doesn't fuck around and it's legislation recognizes that there are always real flesh-and-bone people behind corporate structures, this the judge applying the legal consequences of Elon Musk's decisions to Elon Musk's property in Brasil such as Starlink.
If that was the case all millions of sites that operate in Brazil, without having legal representatives in the country, would have to be blocked, which doesn't happen. The truth here is that this Supreme Court "judge", which is more like a de facto dictator at this point, wanted essentially a hostage. Someone who he could jailed to blackmail Musk – as Moraes threaten to do with the previous representative, which was the reason for why Musk shutdown X operation in the country . It's that simple. Them going after Starlink, a totally different legal entity with different investors only proves this mafia-like style and how much of banana republic the whole country became, with zero legal certainty.
You are talking about something you really don't understand, such was what is happening in the country. Nobody outside Brazil is taking the decisions of this judge serious. Not even Interpol, which denied countless Red Notice alerts that this "judge" tried to issue, such as when he tried (and failed) to go after exiled journalist Allan dos Santos living in the USA and Oswaldo Eustáquio living in Spain.
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2021/11/interpol-segura-...
https://revistaoeste.com/brasil/pf-nao-inclui-oswaldo-eustaq...
Again, you are really talking about something you have absolutely no idea.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Brazilian_Congress_atta...
And "this" as in a protest? Like countless others before? Whatever. You're not gonna call it a coup, right? Even the Wikipedia article you cited doesn't call it one.
They call it attack and invasion.
The reason why it isn't called a coup is be cause they failed.
And it's not the ministry of truth but multiple independent sources in and outside Brazil.
At a certain point something is obviously fake. And if it's spreading violence it reached the limit of free speech.
Aren't all protests? I don't remember many protests that didn't involve closing down roads, burning things down and whatnot. Protests that don't do things like that are usually so irrelevant they don't get Wikipedia articles written about them.
> The reason why it isn't called a coup is be cause they failed.
It's not called a coup because it wasn't one. A coup attempt would be the military seizing power by force. You know, the people with guns and tanks. A successful coup would be the military trying and succeeding.
There's simply no way you can claim a bunch of people, many of them elderly, equipped with bibles and flags, amounts to a coup attempt.
> And it's not the ministry of truth but multiple independent sources in and outside Brazil.
None of which have the power to censor anything. As it should be.
> At a certain point something is obviously fake.
If it's so obviously fake, then you don't need any censorship either. The fakeness will be self-evident.
Most protests are peaceful and even the violent one rarely invade government buildings. Whole different level.
>It's not called a coup because it wasn't one. A coup attempt would be the military seizing power by force. You know, the people with guns and tanks. A successful coup would be the military trying and succeeding.
It doesn't have to be the military. Most coups are by the military but it's not a necessity
>There's simply no way you can claim a bunch of people, many of them elderly, equipped with bibles and flags, amounts to a coup attempt.
No, but for a bunch of people who throw pickaxes and hammers at the police I can.
>None of which have the power to censor anything. As it should be.
That's the road to tyranny. Lies spread faster than the truth.
>If it's so obviously fake, then you don't need any censorship either. The fakeness will be self-evident.
Sadly some people fall for obvious fakes. Just look at all the flat earthers.
Nah. Occupying Brasília buildings is basically the standard brazilian protest at this point. Happened in 2016 as well, and they too insisted the country was suffering a coup, Probably more examples I can't remember off the top of my head.
> It doesn't have to be the military. Most coups are by the military but it's not a necessity.
In this case it absolutely needs to be the military. Because there's no way you can convince me that a bunch of people with bibles and flags tried to seize power in the brazilian capital.
> That's the road to tyranny. Lies spread faster than the truth.
Lies according to whom? You? This judge-king? Yeah, I'll decide for myself, thank you very much. I'm gonna look at the stuff and I'll reach my own conclusions. I don't need or want the judge's help.
> Sadly some people fall for obvious fakes. Just look at all the flat earthers.
Yeah, and? What are we supposed to do about it? "Help" them think correctly? Put the "right" thoughts into their heads? Send them to a forced reeducation camp? The mere thought of someone being that self-righteous is offensive to me. Even if they're right.
The existence of flat earthers is literally not an argument. I think it's illogical but if they want to believe it then it's their problem. It would be incredibly presumptuous of me to try to put the "correct" thoughts into their minds. If they can't be convinced by the study of physics, we're just gonna have to leave them alone and move on with our lives.
If someone can be duped by propaganda into becoming violent in favor of some cause, then democracy is justified in defending itself. Not a second before. And you don't get to "prevent" such things by censoring the speech that led to it either. Any government that steps over that line is a dictatorship.
The government in Brazil does not like X because users are critizing the government.
Unfortunately Brazil is barely a democracy and it’s infested with little potentates.
This baseless personal assertion does not pass the smell test. I'm going to explain to you why.
Elon Musk's Twitter is happily censoring opposition of totalitarian dictatorships such as Turkey's Erdogan regime, and the only remark that Elon Musk published regarding censoring Turk opposition parties is that Elon Musk's Twitter would risk being removed from Turkey. Elon Musk, when he caved to Erdogan's demands to censor his opposition, famously said
> “Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors...
So for Turkey's totalitarian dictatorship Elon Musk finds it acceptable to censor opposition by arguing bullshit like "either we show some content or no content", but for Brasil's democratic regime, which barely managed to fend off a fascist military coup, when they request Elon Musk's Twitter to appoint a legal representative to handle requests... That's suddenly unacceptable?
Bullshit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Brazilian_Congress_atta...
It's a bit more, isn't it?
From what I've read, that was not exactly what's happening with Elon Musk's Twitter in Brasil.
From what I've gathered, Brasil informed Elon Musk's Twitter that in order to comply with Brasil's law regarding disinformation, libel, and propaganda, they had to appoint a legal representative to be contacted by Brasil's judicial system to address reports of illegal activity. In response, Elon Musk basically ordered Twitter to dissolve all of its corporate presence in Brasil to retaliate against the demand, thinking that without a legal presence in the country that Twitter would magically become immune to Brasil's jurisdiction.
Except that Brasil's judicial system does have some tools and the means to prosecute uncooperative entities, particularly private individuals who hide behind corporate structures. Consequently, Brasil not only blocked Elon Musk's Twitter from Brasil due to Elon Musk's purposely uncooperative attitude but also has the legal means to go after the private individuals behind the decision to antagonize Brasil. Consequently, they enforced the consequences of Elon Musk's actions to Elon Musk's property in Brasil, such as Starlink.
Overall, this case is only orthogonally related to free speech. At it's core there's only one thing: Elon Musk making ill-advised decisions (reportedly against legal advise from his own legal representatives and in opposition to the actions of his legal representatives) and is now fabricating stories to distract people from the fact that all he is experiencing is the consequences of his own actions, which would be extremely easily avoided if he just listened to his own lawyers.
I am not ignoring anything. The fact is that Brasil has laws to fight disinformation and libel, and those laws are being enforced.
Your personal opinion also glances over the fact that Brasil was recently subjected to a coup attempt to drive the country into a fascist dictatorship, heavily pushed by a massive disinformation campaign in social media services like Elon Musk's Twitter.
What you are trying to glance over is the fact that none of this issue is related to free speech. Elon Musk tried to avoid complying with a nation's laws with a ill-advised stunt of pulling Twitter's corporate presence from Brasil. As expected from any jurisdiction in the world, not cooperating with the judicial system bears consequences.
To drive the point home, I stress the fact that Elon Musk did far worse to support fascist and authoritarian dictatorships attacking free speech, such as his support for Erdogan's regime censoring opposition and non-supoortive posts during the last sham elections. For that, Elon Musk's reaction was claiming that either some messages were boosted or all of them were boosted, and he claimed it's better to have some (only supporting a dictator) than none. But for Brasil, the need to appoint a mere legal representative to process requests was now deemed too much? And enough to pull a dying company from a +200M market? It doesn't pass the smell test.
Justice Moraes had ordered that X accounts accused of spreading disinformation - many supporters of the former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro - must be blocked while they are under investigation.
He said the company's legal representatives would be held liable if any accounts were reactivated.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3rnl5qv3o.amp
They wanted Musk to appoint a legal representative so they could throw them in jail.
Other companies, such as Telegram, also have faced the same and they simply appointed a representative. If you research you'll see that no representative has been jailed, so this whole "they would have jailed the representative" narrative is bs
Until you own speech is banned right? We are the "good ones" after all.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Brazilian_Congress_atta...