Brazil Supreme Court unfreezes X, Starlink's bank accounts after taking $3.3M | Hacker News Reader

Brazil Supreme Court unfreezes X, Starlink's bank accounts after taking $3.3M

thehill.com

48 pointsivewonyoung67 comments

> The platform has been blocked in the country of 220 million since the end of last month.

Actually, 203 million. The 2018 estimate was 214 million, which was corrected in the 2022 census. Kinda crazy that it was overestimated by 11M.

Well... the estimation for 2024 [1] is 212 million...

So it seems very likely that the 2022 census was also wrong (there was budget cuts on the institute who do the census, and it had several problems on doing it).

This was a big discussion here...

¹https://agenciadenoticias.ibge.gov.br/agencia-noticias/2012-...

2022 census had lots of issues, IBGE (Brazil's statistics institute) was underfunded due to Bolsonaro's policies.

The original title is more obvious. The current title should be modified

> "Brazil unfreezes Starlink, X assets after $3.3M transfer"

I don't know why we need to use taking or transfer, that doesn't make it clear what the taking/transfer was - just say "payment of $3.3M fines".

This seems more like a confiscation than a payment; you might argue that’s a semantic difference, but it’s more clear.

That's what happens when you refuse to pay fines. Try not paying the IRS see what happens.

Well in the old days and most part of the world I wouldn't expect Government to take money directly from my account.

But is that the case with IRS in US?

Generally the way it works for IRS is:

(1) IRS warns you a lot

(2) You ignore

(3) IRS takes money from the bank

(4) you can prob take them to court, but court isn't required for them to pull your money

Any time you owe someone money it works similar

(1) you owe someone money

(2) you never pay them

(3) they are angry/rich enough to sue you for that money

(4) the court orders you to pay them

(5) you still never pay them

(6) they are angry/rich enough to go back to the court, show all the times you demanded payment and never got paid

(7) court may or may not order the money forcefully returned

No, I'd expect the Government to seize my physical assets and auction them off. Not sure it's very different.

They can, yes.

I am not disputing the propriety of the confiscation (in the parent comment); that is a separate matter.

Native English speaker here. Aren't they roughly identical, other than the passive voice?

Maybe it’s more obvious they didn’t unblock X, only their assets

That part of the sentence is literally the same.

It's absolutely amazing to see a large fraction of of otherwise reasonable people supporting censorship by fairly problematic governments because 'musk bad'.

Is there a name for this phenomenon? Kind of seems like a reverse ad hominem.

It's called human nature. Everything i like is good, everything i don't is bad.

It seems more nuanced.

X (government abuse of online censorship, not Twitter) is bad. Bad person Y says X is bad. Now suddenly X is good.

The irony being that everyone equated Y with batman a year or two ago.

There is zero possibility in your mind not that the Brazilian government is indeed correct, but that Elon Musk is a huge hypocrite and that how he navigates this bad situation displays how dangerous he is?

Elon Musk being a huge hypocrite/ dangerous/etc doesn't have any bearing on whether governments should have the power to snoop on private conversations online and block out voices they disagree with on a case by case basis.

Well, tell that to Elon Musk, who folded to the Turkish and Indian governments (both right-wing and aligned towards Musk I might add) and removed content worldwide on orders from the Indian government.

Suddenly when Brazil wants censorship, who's not bending the knee to Musk, it's a whole problem for him?

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/4/24235213/x-brazil-suppress...

I'm not sure if you are getting the point.

Your opinion about censorship should not depend on whether Elon Musk is a hypocrite.

Maybe it'll help to think in terms of fictional characters to get over your Elon Musk obsession.

If Voldemort suddenly started criticizing Umbridge, it doesn't automatically make Umbridge a great character, no matter how much you hate Voldemort.

You don't realize what is actually going on. Are you familiar with super injunctions and the associated issues?

I don't get it. Why is Starlink paying for X's problems? Aren't the two separate corporate entities?

Yes they are each separate entities with a different mix of owners and investors. This is happening because this judge is waging a corrupt personal war against Musk instead of acting professionally.

Because Starlink is an ISP and refused to follow the judges order to block x.

No, they eventually decided to block X. This freezing was done even before the ban on X because the judge wants to put Starlink at peril.

Does this also mean X complied with the order to ban those accounts?

The title is poorly edited by the poster.

They didn't unblock Twitter, they unblocked their assets held in the country.

No. X/Starlink didn't pay any fine, either. The accounts were locked by Justice order, and now transferred to the Federal Government.

They are just unfreezing because they already got the fines.

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