Starlink Backtracks and Will Comply with Judge's Order to Block X in Brazil | Hacker News Reader

Starlink Backtracks and Will Comply with Judge's Order to Block X in Brazil

usnews.com

26 pointsivewonyoung9 comments

From the article:

> X has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to block users — mostly far-right activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy and allies of former President Jair Bolsonaro — and has alleged that de Moraes wants an in-country legal representative so that Brazilian authorities can exert leverage over the company by having someone to arrest. And Musk has been relentlessly posting in recent days, lambasting de Moraes as a criminal.

What a colossal amount of doublethink. Why would a court require a corporation to provide a legal representative as a requirement to operate in a country? Why would the court have a need to contact your company? Why would a court have any motivation to arrest a legal representative of a corporation after reaching out to said corporation through the designated chanel to send a legal request?

It's unbelievable how these guys omit themselves from even being an active participant in the ordeal when they are in fact the whole instigators.

Since this drama keeps showing up, I looked into it.

This all started because Elon Musk actively chose to give voice to specific known terrorists. This really isn't about political speech, there was actual violence involved (that's the definition of a terrorist).

The way the judge is mingling assets stored in different companies (just because they have some common ownership) isn't how things usually work in America, but we shouldn't expect such paper shields to hold up so easily everywhere.

As for the much-quoted "threatened to arrest the legal representative [note: I'm pretty sure it's not 'someone acting as a lawyer', but more like 'regional representative of the company']" - what do you expect when you refuse to obey a court order? Arrests happen for that in America too.

I don't speak enough Portuguese to read all the original sources without machine translation, but I saw enough that I'm pretty sure I got the gist of it, even if I didn't go through all the procedural details.

> This all started because Elon Musk actively chose to give voice to specific known terrorists

Source? They appear to be public figures, including a sitting senator. If they were terrorists why weren't they arrested and their phones taken away? Instead we get secret orders to censor. Curious to see your research on this.

The judge seems to have a history of calling things fake news because he's corrupt, there's no due process, he's the censorship czar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41424539

> what do you expect when you refuse to obey a court order? Arrests happen for that in America too

When Iran or China does things like this, it's because Iran and China are bad. When Twitter stands up for censorship, it's "shut up and obey the local authority, just follow the orders".

Recent example of Iran where the tone of the comments is not "you deserve what you get for not following the law"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41429245

I really can't speak of Iran or China. Every situation needs to be considered separately, and I only looked into Brazil.

"Sitting senator" is no disqualifier; from what we've seen in America, we should even expect to see some politicians such behind calls for political violence. I'll admit I didn't try to go through every single account that was ordered to be banned; I stopped when I found clear calls for violence (even Musk himself does that with a very minimal veneer of deniability).

If "don't organize political violence" counts as censorship, then I embrace censorship as a virtue.

Thank you for looking into Brazil. I’m currently looking into Iran. If someone else can look into China, we can wrap this up by lunchtime.

So no terrorists then.

> Justice Moraes blocked X in Brazil because Mr. Musk has refused to comply with court orders to remove certain accounts on the social network, and then closed X’s office in the country. Mr. Musk has criticized Justice Moraes for months, accusing him of illegally censoring free speech. The justice has said Mr. Musk is obstructing his work of removing hate speech and attacks on democracy from the Brazilian internet.

Rightful or not, a private company has no authority over a foreign government, and Brazil government has all the rights to do whatever they want within their country's borders.

Musk is no information robin hood, he's just an arrogant rich infant.

Sure, Brazil is widely known for football, samba, and terrorism.

terrorists: noum. 1. People that disagree me. 2. People I dislike.

> I don't speak enough Portuguese to read all the original sources without machine translation, but I saw enough that I'm pretty sure I got the gist of it, even if I didn't go through all the procedural details.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/world/americas/brazil-sta...

> The move was the first sign of any backing down by Mr. Musk in Brazil since he began battling with the authorities there last month. X has been blacked out across the nation of 200 million since Saturday because of a dispute between Mr. Musk and Brazil’s Supreme Court over what can be said online. Starlink escalated the fight on Sunday when, according to Brazilian regulators, the company declared it would continue allowing its 250,000 customers in Brazil to log on to X, defying the government.

I don't know if Musk really thinks to be above the law or someting, but sure he has shown the maturity of an 11yo.

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