Comment by riverrunn01 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by riverrunn01 | Hacker News Reader

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Nope Im Brazilian. And all of this started way before. These orders were not imbalanced -- the blocking of X accounts -- (Ok VPN now is). Musk after several court decisions decided to not comply, even after all involved received due process. It's not, in the slightest, censorship at all. What really happened was violation of ellection rules on daily basis, specially on X but many other social also were fined. META, Tik Tok also had to remove content by court decision and they did comply it. Alexandre de Moraes at election's time was the judge of our TSE -- a branch of supreme court‬ which deals specifically with the electoral process. Many of these accounts participated in January 8, including promoting violence against institutions, some calling for a coup d'état. The continuous disregard of Brazilian laws meant that Musk, which in addition do not paid the fines, also removed his legal representatives from the country, which is not permitted by our legislation.

Nope, I'm Brazilian and this is "censorship at all"!

Also brazilian here. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from the consequences of illegal speech. One is allowed to go public and speak their minds, but if their speech is illegal (hate speech, conspiracy to overthrow the government, political campaigning during embargo periods), there will be consequences for those, and that does not constitute censorship.

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.

> Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from the consequences of illegal speech.

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.

Civil disobedience means breaking a law in order to argue in court that the law is bad, thereby deliberately putting yourself at risk of serious consequences. This is not civil disobedience, because Elon Musk is not in Brazil, nor a citizen of Brazil, and is not personally at any risk.

"Freedom of speech" can't coexist with "illegal speech".

The moment that something is deemed "illegal" to express, there inherently is no more free expression present.

No.

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.

What people don't get is that mild "censorship" is desirable even under common Libertarian ideologies.

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.

Thank you for the context.

I honestly am more apt to believe what an anon on HN says than Musk's verified Twitter account. The guy only knows how to lie.

A court ordering for social media accounts to be blocked is censorship, no question about that.

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.

> A court ordering for social media accounts to be blocked is censorship, no question about that

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.

> Brazil's constitution guarantees freedom of speech without censorship

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.

You are down voted by people who don't understand what the word censorship means. The problem is that the censors don't call it "censorship" anymore, for vanity reasons. Leading us into this dumb modern discourse. The same thing with the word "propaganda", that is misinterpreted to always mean something bad.

Each day the popular vocabulary shrinks more and more, until we're back at cave man levels. Tower of Babylon.

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