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Comment by cjpearson | Hacker News Reader

Is this a principled defense of free speech or a case of a man treating ostensibly independent companies as divisions of his personal conglomerate?

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> Is this a principled defense of free speech or a case of a man treating ostensibly independent companies as divisions of his personal conglomerate?

Musk was happy to block Twitter content for Erdoğan before the 2023 Turkish election,[0][1] and block Ukraine from using it to hit the Russian navy.[2]

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/musk-defends-ena...

[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/musk-stopped-ukraine-atta...

Ukrainians used twitter to hit the russian navy?

Previous poster meant Starlink usage by Ukraine.

You will find Musk's pretend "free-speech absolutism" is highly selective, and only applies to far-right voices. He's repeatedly censored his critics and journalists on his platform.

Example?

https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...

X and US law both have rules against incitement of imminent violence. It's one of the only exceptions to the First Amendment. X extends that to making violent threats in general. Those accounts were doing the latter and sometimes the former.

The @vps_reports account named in the first tweet in your story is a good example. The Intercept claims they were suspended for engaging in "journalism", "organizing" and "documenting extremism". X claims they were suspended for making violent threats.

If we follow links a bit further we see what sort of tweets @vps_reports was making:

https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1596074770193604609/pho...

> "One last thing. ChayaRaichik10 should live in fear for the rest of her days. It's only fair. Put the PHOBIA in her transphobia."

(there are several more examples like that)

It's not surprising that such people would fall afoul of an anti-threat rule if enforced fairly. Pre-Musk, people like that could make violent threats on Twitter, or even coordinate mob violence there, as long as they were threatening right wing people. Musk fixed that. The Intercept is being dishonest.

It's one thing leading to the other. It is what it is.

Are the judge's (possibly illegal) moves motivated by interpretation of the law or by personal vendetta?

Hard to tell , but i'm glad for less censorship.

As the past two years of Twitter's evolution have shown, more power to Elon Musk actually leads to more censorship.

He's running the social media service like a kingdom where lèse-majesté is the gravest offense, promoting himself and blocking any topics that he doesn't personally like (including the existence of his own daughter who posts on Threads now).

Old Twitter had flawed content moderation processes, but at least there was a process.

In what way does taking X off Brazil decrease the censorship in Brazil?

It certainly makes whatever censorship might be taking place less skewed by Musk's personal whims.

No, because that speech could (presumably, can never be sure what’s allowed in a quasi-democracy) take place on another website.

Yes but it wouldn't be subjected to Musk's censorship on Random Website, whereas on Twitter it is.

Yes, but if the government censors it, it’s forbidden on both. Surely you muse see the difference?

Yes, I do. That's precisely my point. It's based on law. Brazil is a democratic country. The law is the will of the people, or at least it is as much as bullshit USA-based representative democracy goes. Still much closer to the will of the people than Musk's personal opinions and whims.

Sorry, but you are completely missing the point.

Have a nice day.

I don't think I am. I think you're having a hard time understanding that people may see your point and still disagree with it.

Have a nice day yourself!

It removes the censor that is Musk.

I mean he paid 40 billion. He can run it any way he pleases.

I thought he borrowed it? In which case he definitely can't run it any way he pleases.

Debtors generally have no direct authority over management decisions unless the borrower defaults. So legally speaking, someone with majority voting control over a company can pretty much run it any way he pleases. (I am clarifying corporate governance rules here, not taking a position on recent management decisions.)

> lèse-majesté

TIL:

> Lèse-majesté or lese-majesty (UK: /ˌliːz ˈmædʒɪsti/ leez MAJ-ist-ee, US: /ˌleɪz -/ layz - )[1][2][3] is an offence or defamation against the dignity of a ruling head of state (traditionally a monarch but now more often a president) or of the state itself. The English name for this crime is a modernised borrowing from the medieval French, where the phrase meant 'a crime against the Crown'. In classical Latin, laesa māiestās meant 'hurt/violated majesty' or 'injured sovereignty' (originally with reference to the majesty of the sovereign people, in post-classical Latin also of the monarch).[2][3]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lèse-majesté

What illegal actions? I did some research instead of blindly following our so-called genius who claims it's against Brazilian constitutional law because Starlink is a separate entity. It actually appears to be perfectly legal and in line with the law.

"However, Brazilian law, specifically the Civil Code and the Consumer Defense Code, includes a mechanism known as "desconsideração da personalidade jurídica" (piercing the corporate veil). This legal principle allows courts to disregard the separate legal personality of a company in cases where there is evidence of fraud, misuse of the corporate form, or abuse of rights.

If an owner uses multiple companies in a way that is fraudulent or meant to evade the law, the courts can "pierce the corporate veil" and hold the owner and their other companies liable. This means that if there is a proven link between the misconduct in Company A and other companies owned by the same person, those other companies could potentially be affected."

And where is the proven link between X and Starlink?

Edit: My comment may have sounded stupid because obviously Musk ownership is a link between both companies though this isn't by itself a valid reason to pierce the corporate veil in Brazilian law. The fundamental criteria is patrimonial confusion and so far I've not seem evidence that X operation was intertwined with Starlink. The only thing is the self-fulfilling hypothesis that people will use Starlink to circumvent the blocking of X.

The only speech this man wants to be free is his own.

Do you have any examples where he blocks other people's speech?

For example: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65609123

Opposition parties and activists in India and Turkey - both at the request of the governments there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41387061

There are other examples, those two should suffice.

He's selective wrt which governments he is giving into, he's not blocking anything himself.

Would you rather: He obeys all governments? Obeys no governments?

You asked for examples where he has blocked peoples speech. I provided examples of where he has blocked peoples speech.

Sorry, I was asking in context of OP "The only speech this man wants to be free is his own.", seems like there is no evidence of him bringing this statement into effect, I was looking for such evidence, as in: He blocked someone by himself for himself.

It appears that Musk is currently aligned with more extreme right wing conservative voices, he appears to tweet and retweet in their support, he blocks the oposition of such governments in Turkey and India, he more recently seems to support both Trump and Bolsonaro, both right wing election deniers who encouraged attempts to overthrow elections.

I have no particular insight into Musk, I speak only to the observation that he appears to support some voices over others and as such that is "his voice" - those who say things he supports and whose opponents he blocks.

I think the point is that he shouldn’t lie about selective “free speech” in Brazil he seems all for it to the point of getting kicked out of the country. With more friendly regimes he is happy to censor other voices than the official “state”voice. I think people are looking for consistency and honesty rather than the charade his currently projecting.

So he's a hypocrite. Like most people are. Doesn't change the fact that in this case he happens to be fighting a good fight.

How about this? https://newrepublic.com/post/177936/twitter-suspends-account...

"This is at least the fifth time that X, under Musk, has purged accounts that are the slightest bit critical of him, his friends, or causes he supports"

Ok yeah, that's pretty bad indeed.

That article says the suspensions lasted only a few hours. In no way were they "purged", and the first three named accounts all are highly active.

MintPress News journalist: https://twitter.com/alanrmacleod (active, posted in the last hour)

Intercept journalist: https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein (active, posted 46 minutes ago)

Texas Observer journalist: https://x.com/stevanzetti (active, posted 2 hours ago)

If these are the best examples of Musk engaging in censorship then he must be doing a very fair job indeed!

A more likely explanation is that the suspensions were related to anti-botting activity, as they came back from suspension with fewer followers than before. Journalists buying Twitter followers is not unheard of, unfortunately:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/journalists-struggle-ex...

https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/elo...

https://electrek.co/2022/12/20/tesla-wont-tolerate-dissent-a...

https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-staff-slam-elon-musk...

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/former-ceo-tesla-criticized-m...

Oh wait, you mean suppress people ON TWITTER? This is an entirely different search query.

Looks to me like Brazil is treating ostensibly independent companies as divisions of Musks personal conglomerate.

They blocked the funds of Starlink because of X related business. So why are you saying this?

Wasn’t it because Starlink refused to implement the court ordered ban of X?

The court orders for Twitter in Brazil were way more tame and based on judicial procedures than orders that Elon followed from Turkey and other less democratic countries.

There's no visible rhyme or reason why he's fighting the Brazilian courts much harder than orders from other less democratic countries, something else is happening unrelated to free speech or any lip service he pays to.

> other less democratic countries

That's your rhyme and reason if you ask me, he just loooooves (wannabe) dictators

He may be doing it for personal ego reasons.

But OTOH it is pointless to 'fight' the judicial system of e.g. Russia, or flawed democracies like Turkey which stage a coup. OTOH brazil is somewhat more democratic and it makes sense to appeal to their democratic institutions.

> But OTOH it is pointless to 'fight' the judicial system of e.g. Russia, or flawed democracies like Turkey which stage a coup. OTOH brazil is somewhat more democratic and it makes sense to appeal to their democratic institutions.

Even when giving Elon some leeway to have reasonable doubt I still believe the argument falls flat when he attempts to coat it with his "free speech defender" persona against Brazil but not against dictatorships.

If he's willing to challenge Brazilian courts to the point where Twitter becomes unavailable to the public why wouldn't he do the same in places with much less freedom of speech?

It simply doesn't make sense using his public rationale, if he was a free speech absolutist he wouldn't allow Twitter to exist in places where free speech is impossible and is gagged by dictators' court orders. He's fighting Brazilian courts way too hard given his stance on Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Is he a puppet? Has he ulterior motives in Brazil? We can't really know from public information but that there's something fishy and wrong going under wraps, it is.

> There's no visible rhyme or reason why ..

Somebody made a case in an earlier thread (that I haven't had time to pursue) that Brazil has the largest lithium mining company (not fields or mines) with standing contracts in South America .. and they claimed that Musk wants to seed unrest | see Bolsonaro (or his party) back in to get a better deal on raw materials for his battery factories in Texas.

That has a plausible ring to it (but, again, I stress I haven't chased the details).

Australians already own those lithium mines. The largest here in Brazil is very close to my hometown.

Latin america have the world largest Lithium reserves, specially accross Argentina, Bolivia and Chile being the three largest and Brazil being the 7th..

The largest lithium mining company in the region is Sigma Lithium..

Tesla was negotiating to buy the Sigma Lithium but now the Chinese BYD is the favorite.. [0] [1]

China companies are currently owning the EV market in Brazil , and many other developing contries, and they have plans for both cars and batteries factories in Brazil, but they need access to lithium for that and so they are going for the lithium mining companies as well..

Musk not only need the lithium but he also want to block the grow of Chinese companies that are owning the market in many developing countries where Tesla is not present and are even growing fast in Europe..

Musk expect that a right wing government will align with him, and be in favor of blocking China and that would open the door for him to buy the mining companies instead..

[0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-considering-bid-sig...

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/3c55d69b-6932-4255-ad79-daeced372...

> Musk expect that a right wing government will align with him, and be in favor of blocking China and that would open the door for him to buy the mining companies instead..

Things in Brazil are not simple as that. Bolsonaro, the latest right wing president, did more business with china and russia than expected. He was one of the first chief of state to fly to Moscou when Russia invade Ukraine, to reinsure brazil would be neutral on this war. (same position of Lula).

Unfortunately Lula isn't quite neutral as he likes to parrot Putin's propaganda narratives, particularly as to the root "cause" of the war:

  But it’s not just Putin who is guilty. The U.S. and the E.U. are also guilty. What was the reason for the Ukraine invasion? NATO? Then the U.S. and Europe should have said: “Ukraine won’t join NATO.” That would have solved the problem.

https://time.com/6173232/lula-da-silva-transcript/

This doesn't make him stooge or ally of course. More likely it's the toxic side effect from decades of ingesting his movement's own kool-aid as far as geopolitics goes ("The enemy of my enemy can't be half bad", that sort of thing).

Lula being aligned with Russia is not news..

But Lula will not move to prevent BYD from buying Sigma Lithium or to help Elon buy it instead.

While a right wing government is not guarantied they will help Elon there is a much higher chance of it..

He did more business then expected but he did not miss an opportunity to speak ill of china.

There were even multiple letters from the Chinese embassy complaining about stuff he said..

China even blocked buying meat from Brazil for a while with the excuse of mad cow disease..

So regardless of how much business Bolsonaro did with China, he would be more inclined to help Elon in blocking China then the current left wing goverment is..

nah, Bolsonaro criticizing China is the same as Lula criticizing the US: they are sending signals to their supporters.

Both know that Brazil is not in a position to refuse to do business with China and the US.

Who said anything about stopping doing business with china??

What i said is that Elon expect that a right wing government would block, difficult or delay this single Chinese company from buying Sigma Lithium to help him to buy it instead..

Australia is doing the same think right now.. Australia is currently the largest exporter of Lithium in the world and Chinese companies tried to buy some mining companies there but the Australian government prohibited.. They said the Lithium mining is too important to the country and that they do not want China to control it..

There is some investigation going that China might have went ahead and acquired the mining companies in Australia indirectly via third-party companies and last i have seen Australia government had ordered those companies to sell their share or else they will seize then..

China is still one of the largest Australia trade partners, that did not stopped it from blocking the mining company acquisition..

> What i said is that Elon expect that a right wing government would block, difficult or delay this single Chinese company from buying Sigma Lithium to help him to buy it instead..

My point is about this: Musk's expectations will most likely not be met, even with a right wing president. Brazil and China are strong trading partners (and friends nowadays, with Brics became a reality).

And what i am saying is that i do not agree with that take..

While a right wing government is not guarantied that Elon will be able to buy Sigma Lithium, i am 100% sure that a right wing government will work to try block or at least delay as much as possible the acquisition by BYD..

Specially in the unlikely case that Trump win the US election, remembering that Elon is supporting him.. US will not only support blocking China from increasing their foothold in the region, they would likely pressure Brazil for it..

It might even happen with Kamala but to a smaller degree..

I'm not across the current ownership breakdowns and state partnerships in South America (once upon a time I'd have quoted such things down to share percentages and layered subsidiary's) - the comment intrigued me as it's plausible there is some resource advantage to be gained by siding with one side of politics in Brazil, it's certainly the case that many large scale international dramas have at their core something that tracks back to resources and potential profits.

Controlling percentages can change, as can state restrictions on a number of conditions.

As I said it's not something I've dug into the details of.

Bolsonaro wanted to remove environmental protections and exploit mining resources in the Amazon, I feel this to be the only real reason why Elon has started to pushback hard against a Lula government who is driving Brazil back into protecting the Amazon (at least somewhat, still much more than openly supporting illegal mining as Bolsonaro's government did).

Not only that..

Both Tesla and BYD had negotiations to buy Sigma Lithium, the largest lithium mining company in Latam, where the world largest lithium reserves are..

Bolsonaro, and the right in general, is known to be anti-china and could help blocking BYD acquisition, that would favor Tesla that would be able to buy it cheaper then if he has to outbid BYD...

Cutting the Chinese access to latam lithium would also harm their expansion plans and slow their grow.. That would also favor Tesla as the Chinese is owning the market in many developing contries and are growing fast even in Europe..

Even in the US the Chinese EV are a problem to Tesla, to the point the government quadrupled the import taxes on Chinese EV..

What's happening is clear: Elon doesn't like Lula, the Brazilian president. Lula is left wing: his predecessor was a Trump-esque idiot. I'd guess many of Lula's actual policies harm the Musk's material interests in some way, or are just things he doesn't like. It might literally just be that Musk has heard Lula is left wing and therefore wants to make life as hard as possible.

Thats where we are now. You also couldn't refrain from calling a political oponent "Trump-esque idiot". Imagine what you would do to them if you had enough money to actually go out for a fight?

Call him a Trumpesque Idiot from my personal social media platform?

Not all political opponents are idiots or Trump-esque

Judge Moraes has had his share of run-ins with Lula, and can hardly be described as a stooge for the Left. What he has been doing is go after Brazil's version of the Jan 6th insurrectionists, whom Musk is congenial to along with other far-right causes. As Germany showed, if you don't go after thugs when they are still in their inept beer-hall putsch phase, it is too late afterwards.

The process that makes X be blocked here in Brazil started in 2019, way before Jan 6th.

No, the judge's very first action after getting censorship super powers was to censor "fake news" about the official that gave him those powers, which later turned to be "true news".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41425086

> There's no visible rhyme or reason why he's fighting the Brazilian courts much harder than orders from other less democratic countries

I've read speculation that he's after our lithium mines. Not sure how true that is yet but I don't doubt it.

I think it’s probably both.

The former

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