X goes offline in Brazil after Elon Musk's refusal to comply with local laws | Hacker News Reader

X goes offline in Brazil after Elon Musk's refusal to comply with local laws

theguardian.com

21 pointsisaacfrond16 comments

It's worst than that. That judge emitted orders that are breaking the local laws in the first place. It's not legislative and yet he did that. The congress should regulate that step beyond the line but is effectively scared. After this Brazil is not a Democratic Republic anymore. It was transformed into a place with a regime.

This is how a democracy ends killed by technocratic juridical maneuvering of lies about defending it. The electronic ballot machines in the next elections, counted by these very same judges, are going to be as useful as the ones in Venezuela. It's Game Over.

Progressive The Guardian conveniently conceals "local laws" actually are "censorship for anyone that doesn't sing and preach by the current Brazilian Government". Shameful.

So the state wanted to block tweets that didn’t align to their ideology And Musk didn’t comply. Doesn’t seem so far from what China has been doing

It was not mere "tweets that didn’t align to their ideology". There was a coup attempt in Brazil, first through attempts to discredit elections and intimidation/obstruction of voters on election day. Some Borsonaro radicalized followers even attempted to blast a fuel truck in the Brasília airport:

https://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2023/01/15/exclusivo...

It culminated in the January 8 violent coup attempt. The ringleaders coordinated through social media too. The order came after Twitter obstructed justice by refusing to cooperate with the investigations on the ringleaders of the coup attempt, and when fined for it, refused to pay, closing its offices.

Exactly. It’s one justice on the Supreme Court, with the support of President Lula, suppressing political speech from the opposition. The Brazilian constitution explicitly says expression is protected without censorship in article 5. But this corrupt justice claims the other court he serves on simultaneously gave himself the power he’s exercising, to unilaterally censor content, ban accounts, and arrest people for protected speech. Twitter (not Musk’s decision but their CEO) would comply if orders were legal. But they’re illegal under Brazil’s own law. And we saw how unhinged the administration has become, with the ban on VPNs and threat to fine VPN users thousands a day. I expect other tech companies to avoid having an office in Brazil given aggressive intimidation tactics like seizing personal assets of Twitter’s lawyer.

By the way, the title of the linked article is misinformation. There is no need to “comply with local laws”, because no such laws were passed. The offending justice, Alexandre de Moraes, himself claims his power from a ruling from the other court that he served as president of. Which makes zero sense.

I fully disagree.

I am free to speak in Brazil.

Freedom of speech must be defined clearly. You can’t scream fire in the theater, so I have proved it’s not absolute.

Is it okay to spread misinformation online? I don’t think so.

It’s as simple as that.

Brazil due to 1/ the penetration of WhatsApp, Twitter and other social media and 2/ low penetration of newspapers and reading in general, is suffering from disinformation more so than any other country.

I just have to read 5 or 6 tweets from X to see that twitter has become the cesspool of the internet.

Freedom of speech is nowhere absolute. Freedom of speech in America is not a model. It’s not free if most media conglomerates are owned by billionaires with their own interest. They buy media companies not because they love them, because they can use them. Assuming otherwise is simply naive. Communication has played a crucial part of politics since forever.

It’s impossible to take Musk seriously. And his stance is too convenient and hypocritical. He played by India’s and China’s very strict laws but is trying to gauge forces as a geopolitical player. This is not about freedom of speech. Pictures of dog scrotum are in my opinion a lowly form of rhetoric.

It’s just too common, nowadays, to see freedom as a lack or constraints and not as the possibility of satisfaction. Freedom comes from Frater in Latin, since freedom in Greece meant to be among your brothers (Fratii in Latin), because when you are with your commons, you can achieve greater things.

Freedom in speech as you say only serves those who can produce tons of bullshit which must be refuted with much more work by whoever’s sane.

You raise some good points and it’s clear that it’s not a simple problem. However, I disagree with the idea of trusting the state to decide what is “good” or “bad” speech, and censoring it without transparency. This could lead to very bad patterns that can over time kill a democracy. I agree that corporations are not great either, but at least there’s competition there, and more checks and balances.

Yes, some has to call some shots. The state as body politic of the society looks like the right institution to work.

Why are you downvoted? You're correct.

> There is no need to “comply with local laws”, because no such laws were passed.

This is the key point. A "fake news" law was proposed. Google even campaigned against it -- and this judge slapped them with arbitrary fines for "abuse of economic power", whatever that is. The law was ultimately rejected by our representatives. And this judge rammed the laws through anyway via "resolutions".

It makes no sense to talk about "laws" at this point. There are no laws here, only the whims of this judge. Whatever he writes on a piece of paper becomes law.

You see, you are a victim of misinformation. You are reaching at an immaterial argument that doesn’t advance the question really. Twitter has not been good to any society, or we would to go throug heaps of evidence on the bad effects social media has on society.

Let’s argue over whether social media is beneficial or not, because unless you are a lawyer specialized in constitutional law and individual rights, there’s no lawyer here to really argue over fine points of the law.

I'm a victim of nothing but constant gaslighting from people like you.

I'm not hallucinating the fact that the "fake news" law was rejected by our representatives, or the fact that these same judges rammed them through anyway via electoral court "resolutions". I know what I saw and I won't have people denying it or calling it "fake news". You don't need to be a lawyer to understand this.

Whether Twitter is good or bad for society is completely irrelevant and I will not argue with you over it.

If the good of the society is irrelevant to you, you are by definition a sociopath.

The fate of Twitter is completely irrelevant. The circumstances that led to Twitter being blocked by our ISPs is the only reason it is being discussed at all.

If you cared one bit about what's good for this society, you would not be trying to divert attention from this omnipotent judge-king's actions.

If you have determined you already know what is good for society, you should campaign to be the global dictator. Like seriously by your logic a person in power can decide they know "what is good for society" and ignore all rules/laws anything and gave them any power they need. And before you say "Court interprets the constitution" by that absurd logic the court can say the Constitution made them supreme monarchs and you will defend it. The other commenter is making valid points and answering your queries in good faith, and you are engaging in void bad faith arguments.

By your absurd logic, "good of society" is supreme and some judge knows it best, why on earth hold elections? Why not let the judge anoint himself or his cronies for "the greater good"?

Social media has significant adverse effects (along with beneficial effects) on society, and the adverse effects are worse outside the US because although the media corporations do try to make their service less toxic, they focus those efforts on US society (because US politicians can hurt them worse than politicians in other countries). The former head of Facebook's effort said that the majority of the effort at reduction of social harm at Facebook were directed at US users and US-based conversations. (I looked for a bookmark documenting that, but could not find one.)

I am using a VPN exit node in Brazil now and X is visible.

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