X capitulates to Brazil's Supreme Court | Hacker News Reader

X capitulates to Brazil's Supreme Court

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86 pointsanigbrowl165 comments

I mentioned before that I don't agree with how Brazil is going about this situation if you believe Musk's telling of the events but it is also impossible to believe that Musk is some free speech warrior given how readily he complies with the demands of countries like Turkey and India so I'm still trying to understand what exactly is the straw that broke the camel's back for Musk. Was it that he just didn't like his representation being allegedly threatened with jail?

> but it is also impossible to believe that Musk is some free speech warrior given how readily he complies with the demands of countries like Turkey and India

He didn't give up readily, those countries passed laws and even then Twitter sued the Indian government.

"India calls X a 'habitual non-compliant platform'" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66805347

People only think he gave up readily in India because of the all the echo chamber comments repeating misinformation to make Musk look bad.

> I'm still trying to understand what exactly is the straw that broke the camel's back for Musk. Was it that he just didn't like his representation being allegedly threatened with jail

He felt that the judge's secret orders weren't lawful in Brazil, unlike in other countries.

> Twitter sued the Indian government.

That happened before Musk bought Twitter.

I think Musk is just selective in the causes he finds himself wanting to be a free speech warrior for.

Free speech for me and mine, all others pay cash

Have you tried thinking of his actions through a more than black and white perspective, from a military strategic perspective? E.g. Is it better for all Brazilians if there's a platform they are all already organized/organizing on to still have access to it, or none of them have access to it?

Politely… what the hell are you talking about?

You think Twitter is some tool of the revolution of Brazil because they had a legal ruling against Elon. Surely I must be misinterpreting what you’re saying here.

They’re saying Musk may be acting pragmatically in caving. By standing his ground he denies Brazilians a platform on which to organise.

I think it’s bunk to think Musk cares about ordinary Brazilians. But it’s a coherent argument.

Thinking there is going to be some kind of revolution because of Elon though is just underpants on the head kind of crazy to even suggest.

What about what the Twitter Files exposed?

It's also bunk in that Twitter is not the only social media platform in Brazil.

That are willing to take at least an initial stand against government's overreach/alleged censorship attempts?

250,000 Starlink customers in Brazil.

Contrary I do believe Elon cares about ordinary Brazilians, and ordinary people globally; and what a neat mechanism that him creating highly competitive products and services, allows people to vote for him with their dollars, feeding him, his organizations, and arguably his missions.

Also, do you fully consciously notice your own bias when it comes to Musk? Did you notice using the word "caving" and some other options came to mind, or that is exactly and only what came to mind?

You're simplifying the situation down to "had a legal ruling against Elon" eh?

It's because the ones in trouble are right wing extremists. He's extremely consistent in his support and decisions on this.

Not true. He tried hard to protect left wing and left wing extremist free speech too.

"India calls X a 'habitual non-compliant platform'"

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66805347

He got fined by India and lost money for trying to protect anti-right wing free speech.

> He tried hard to protect left wing and left wing extremist free speech too.

Can you give concrete examples of this?

Modi tried to censor left wingers' speech, Twitter refused and sued the Indian government. It's in the linked BBC article.

"The instances cited by the government took place before X was acquired by billionaire Elon Musk in 2022. Under Musk's leadership, the company has complied with takedown orders."

Twitter refused pre-Musk, X doesn't seem to have a problem doing what Modi says as far as I can tell.

No, the Twitter lawsuit continued under Musk. The court fine was under Musk.

Continuing a lawsuit is not the same as agreeing with the initial claim.

Sometimes, new leadership of a company continues lawsuits because stopping them will incur a huge penalty (in fines, restrictions, control, ...). But that does not mean they will have it started to begin with.

I love how you yourself haven’t even read the article. Your timing is all wrong here and your larger point is laughably wrong.

The article is from September 2023, like a year after Musk's takeover of Twitter, and it talks about Twitter not complying with the Indian govt orders in 2023.

> I'm still trying to understand what exactly is the straw that broke the camel's back for Musk

Moraes finding Starlink and Twitter under common control, which they technically are, may have been it. The unspoken threat being sanctions on Tesla, Musk’s dominant source of liquidity and a levered position, both for sales and raw materials exports.

More than its direct effects, the contagion risks of that strategy could constrain Musk if e.g. the EU played hardball.

Musk has long enjoyed the benefits of treating his empire as a conglomerate, without the costs of things like shared liability, doing things like casually reusing Tesla engineers in Twitter or sending Twitter's GPUs to X.ai, and daring shareholders to do anything about it. Now that he's gone to war with the establishment, he may find that the blind eye turned to these sorts of things in the past is no longer going to be so blind; it's not like that sort of bait-and-switch or diffusion of responsibility is novel, and the legal system is well-equipped to attack it in more criminal settings.

And Moraes seems to be showing that it works: similar to how Musk is deathly silent about the CCP, even Brazil has enough muscle to bring him to heel, so you can bet the EU is watching with great interest indeed.

Picking a fight he couldn't win with Moraes, and showing everyone else the way to deal with him, may turn out to have been his biggest mistake since perhaps signing the iron-clad deal to buy Twitter itself.

> sending Twitter's GPUs to X.ai, and daring shareholders to do anything about it

Or lenders.

It was actually worse than that. It was Tesla’s GPUs and the board refused to even address it. I was actually a bit surprised that something hasn’t come of that yet.

AFAIK from friends who have worked for him, he has a habit of quickly firing people who disagree with him which can cause all sorts of problems. No-one left to tell you that something might in fact be a bad idea.

Running a company entirely populated by sycophants and yes-men doesn't seem like a viable long term strategy, but then, I'm no rocket scientist.

Neither is Elon.

X isn't a subsidiary of Starlink (or vice versa) so I genuinely don't understand the 'common control' argument you're making. Then again I'm not a corporate lawyer so what do I know.

It would be like Clayton Homes becoming legally liable for Fruit of the Loom because both are owned by by Berkshire Hathaway. It makes no sense.

> X isn't a subsidiary of Starlink (or vice versa) so I genuinely don't understand the 'common control' argument

“A ‘controlling financial interest’ is generally defined as ownership of a majority voting interest by one entity, directly or indirectly, of more than 50% of the outstanding voting shares of another entity” [1]. When a person has a controlling financial interest in multiple entities, those entities are under common control. The textbook example is “an individual or enterprise holds more than 50% of the voting ownership interest of each entity” [2].

Musk controls SpaceX [3], which in turn controls Starlink. Musk controls X. X and Starlink are under common control.

Whether that means Starlink is liable for X’s liabilities is a separate question. But it’s precedented in practically every jurisdiction for there to be a point at which entities under common control are jointly liable, at least to the degree to which they’re commonly controlled. (SpaceX’s non-controlling interests may have a separate claim on Musk.)

Side note: the comment I’m responding to doesn’t deserve to be downvoted.

[1] https://viewpoint.pwc.com/dt/us/en/pwc/accounting_guides/bus...

[2] https://www.fasb.org/page/ShowPdf?path=abs02-5.pdf&title=EIT... § 3(a)

[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-spacex-stake-moves-l...

> Whether that means Starlink is liable for X’s liabilities is a separate question.

But that is my question.

> that is my question

Not a lawyer. But X blew off a court. That’s wilful contempt.

Under U.S. civil securities law, Warren Buffett ordering Clayton Homes to break the law could lead to control person liability [1]. If there were no way to hold Clayton Homes, Berkshire Hathaway or Warren Buffett personally liable, the next step would be enforcement against Fruit of the Loom.

Contempt of court is incredibly serious. Contempt pierces the corporate veil under U.S. law [2]. X acted in blatant contempt of Brazil’s courts. Musk publicly admitted to directing it to. There isn’t a competent jurisdiction, almost to the point of defining competence, in which this wouldn’t pierce the corporate veil.

[1] https://www.skadden.com/-/media/files/publications/2022/11/c...

[2] https://www.floydlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/the-corporation-... Ref. Wilson v. United States

Note that the judge (de Moraes), not the op, has made this argument, and it is certainly being treated as contentious. In the general case, the judge would need to show that he thought the corporate veil had been pierced here, but who knows what Brazilian law says, or what the Supreme Court will rule.

Discussion: https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/09/04/musks-starlink-u-tu...

> the judge would need to show

That's funny. This is an unelected supreme court judge-god-king who is being actively protested for unconstitutional censorship, and he laughs at the people protesting him.

It doesn't matter what brazilian law says. He does what he wants. You don't get to appeal because there's no court above him. Even if you somehow appeal anyway, he judges the appeals to his own judgements. I've seen news of him handling accusations against himself.

If I were the US I'd sanction Brazil for illegally stealing millions from US companies via completely arbitrary and illegal "fines". US Trade Representative already sanctions us over the copyright infringement situation, and this is much worse. There's basically no limit to how many dollars this guy can steal from the american economy if the US doesn't put a stop to him. It's not even the first time, and Twitter is not the only victim. Google tried to campaign against the "fake news" laws by committing the grave crime of putting up a link on their web page. He slapped them with an arbitrary hourly fine too until the link was gone. "Abuse of economic power and market position", they called it.

USA is already making some moves. I saw some US politicians call for the cancellation of the passports of these judges, denying them entry to the USA. Today I saw news of one judge's reaction to that: basically threw a temper tantrum and called the actions of the US politicians "unacceptable" as if there was anything he could do about it. Hilarious. I can only hope it escalates further and that it leads to their downfall.

It's pretty simple; he doesn't really have a chance against strong, authoritarianism governments which doesn't accept any sort of challenges so he typically complies to them without any questions. In Brazil, He initially seem to think that there's a good chance to win if he escalates it to a political fight but now he's slowly realizing that there's no solid political ground for him (especially as a foreigner) when he crossed the line against the Supreme Court, the highest constitutional authority.

>he doesn't really have a chance against strong, authoritarianism governments

I think Musk just realized Brazil was one those governments.

Honestly, to any foreigner wanting to learn what is going in the country, take a look at Glenn Greenwald coverage on Twitter, Gleen lives in Brazil and is one of the few journalists talking about what is happening in the country. The amount of crimes the Supreme Court is committing every single day is unbelievable. There is no due process.

The only democratic way for a foreign agent to meddle in another country's politics is by being elected.

Everything else is just bullshit.

What you are saying is that anyone can buy a media platform, whatever platform it is, and play 'arbiter' of truth? Because that's he is doing. He has no right to defy a judge's ruling. He's not a Brazilian citizen. He has no legal representation there. His company has no legal representation there.

His only standing is his ego, which is pretty fragile, given how much of a cry-baby he is.

Many people suffer from some sort of Musk derangement syndrome and put way too much focused on him to avoid discussing the facts of this case. Because they know the facts aren't on their side.

They make this to avoid discussing that the actions of the Brazilian Supreme Court were actually illegal. It's not him "playing arbiter of truth", you will find countless brazilian legal experts, such as Sebastião Coelho da Silva, saying that what the court has been doing in the last 4 or 5 years is totally illegal.

For instance, they have no power to open an investigation where they are the victim, the investigator, and judge, all in the same time and figure to go after random people around the country. Brazilian constitution doesn't allow prior censorship (which is what happens when you block someone's profile on social media, you block the things they would say in the future). The 8/1 rioters shouldn't been tried by the highest court because they have no legislative immunity, etc, etc. Crimes and more crimes.

Regardless of anything, refusing to obey those censorship orders coming from Brazilian Supreme Court were the morally right thing to do.

This is not a democracy.

Who voted for these judges? Not a single person. Why do they get to ignore the laws put in place by our actual representatives?

Our constitution is ABSOLUTELY clear on this matter.

> Any and all censorship of a political, ideological and artistic nature is forbidden

1. The accounts that this judge is after were engaging in political speech.

2. A government official ordering these political accounts blocked and their political posts deleted matches the "any and all censorship of political nature" clause.

3. The order is therefore unconstitutional.

As you can see, it's a very simple argument. There should have never have been an order for Musk to defy to begin with.

Why do they keep getting away with it? How do you explain this?

Our representatives move to impeach this guy as demanded by the citizens they represent, then they back out at the last second. Their lawyers advised them to back out due to the risk of retaliation by the supreme court. How can you call this a democracy, when our elected representatives are clearly cowering in fear of an unelected judiciary?

Does that mean the US is also not a democracy because the supreme court judges are also appointed by the president, just like in Brazil?

> Our representatives move to impeach this guy as demanded by the citizens they represent, then they back out at the last second. Their lawyers advised them to back out due to the risk of retaliation by the supreme court. How can you call this a democracy, when our elected representatives are clearly cowering in fear of an unelected judiciary?

If that is true, he should definitely be removed. I definitely concede that he is overreaching in some decisions. I don't always agree with them. However, if a political actor says they are going to invade Planalto to overturn the government, that is an attack to democracy, and protecting the constitution is exactly the attribution of the supreme court.

Freedom of speech in Brazil, as far as I know, ends when you attack democracy. Democracy is the most valued thing in the constitution.

However, the noisy far right-wing in Brazil is very dramatic and will create arguments that are not falsifiable just to pretend they have an argument.

Source: I'm Brazilian.

There is potential for that, yes. Fortunately the supreme court has not yet decided to ignore the other branches of government like the brazilian one has.

> Does that mean the US is also not a democracy because the supreme court judges are also appointed by the president, just like in Brazil?

Major SCOTUS decisions are often posted and debated here on HN. I've never seen a case where they monocratically violated the letter and the spirit of the law. Not once.

The judges there apparently respect the laws enacted by the elected representatives of the american people. This is evidence of a working democracy. So I don't have any reason to believe the USA is a dictatorship of the judiciary. I suppose it has the potential to become one but it sure as hell isn't one right now.

> I definitely concede that he is overreaching in some decisions. I don't always agree with them.

I'm happy we agree on at least that. Really. This matter is so polarized. It's been extremely difficult to find any common ground at all with my fellow brazilians.

> However, if a political actor says they are going to invade Planalto to overturn the government, that is an attack to democracy

The supreme court and electoral court have been violating the constitution since before the elections. I saw them disproportionally censor Bolsonaro and his supporters for "fake news".

Even that was a pitiful excuse. They censored people associating Lula with communism and socialism, for example. That's not even close to "fake news", the man is a self-admitted socialist. They censored people claiming he was a friend of the venezuelan dictator as "fake news", despite the fact he is clearly associated with him. They said it was "fake news" and we had to watch Lula roll out the red carpet for the guy months into his mandate. It was a nationwide gaslighting campaign.

So not only did they censor political speech which is already unconstitutional, the excuse they used was completely false too. And they got away with it.

I witnessed them censor a political documentary a priori. Before they even watched the thing, they decided it was "fake news" and blocked its publication. An obviously biased documentary whose contents only a fool would believe to begin with. Their censorship of it is one of the most notable facts in the history of our democracy. A priori censorship is something that hasn't been seen in this country since last century's military dictatorship. That was the moment I woke up and started paying attention to all this.

What are we supposed to do? Who are we supposed to turn to when the judiciary and the supreme court usurps all power? Who do we call upon when the guys supposed to enforce the constitution start violating it with complete impunity? Nobody does anything about it.

One answer to that is what happened on January 8th. These guys decided to turn to the brazilian military. They asked the military to bring order to this mess. Military said no. We all know the aftermath of it.

So I don't believe there was even an attempt at a coup. They did not try to seize power for themselves. It was just a standard protest that ended with vandalism, like most of the others. Had the military actually tried something, then it'd make sense to call it an attack on democracy, a coup attempt.

> protecting the constitution is exactly the attribution of the supreme court

I agree. I just don't believe they are doing that. They cannot protect the constitution by repeatedly violating it.

> Freedom of speech in Brazil, as far as I know, ends when you attack democracy. Democracy is the most valued thing in the constitution.

I believe it ends when someone picks up weapons and actually tries to seize power by force. That's the only moment where democracy is justified in defending itself. Not one second before.

The constitution even mentions that: paramilitary assembly is prohibited.

I have yet to find the article that says censorship of anti-democratic ideas is allowed. Those are all valid political positions as far as I know. And censorship of political positions is prohibited. There's nothing in there that says censorship of "fake news" is allowed either.

> However, the noisy far right-wing in Brazil is very dramatic and will create arguments that are not falsifiable just to pretend they have an argument.

Well, I am not really a representative of the brazilian right wing. I am often accused of being one but I'm not.

Do you disagree with the argument that I made above? It's not some prepared discourse. It's a good faith argument based on what I believe as a brazilian citizen, and was influenced by the many discussions I've engaged in about this topic here on HN.

I've never seen another brazilian refute it. I've had people argue those points with me by citing laws lesser than the constitution, by getting into pedantic arguments over the definition of censorship as if banning the brazilian right from social media and deleting their posts wasn't a clear case of it, by arguing about "isonomy" which is completely irrelevant, by straight up calling me a moron for presuming to do the judge's job as if the contradictions weren't there in plain sight for all to see. I've yet to see a single convincing argument that proves that what these judges are doing is not censorship.

Elon has been very clear about this: he follows the laws of each country. That is, if the government wants to restrict free speech, they must pass laws (or the equivalent in court) to do so and Twitter will follow their laws.

If their government wants to act in contrast to its own laws, then Elon will fight them.

He’s not trying to uphold some universal free speech liberty.

This doesn't track with how he arbitrarily bans people he doesn't like on Twitter. ElonJet, journalist, and people who campaign for Harris all come to mind. Nothing they did was against the law.

He himself is not a government so he does not hold himself accountable to the same free speech laws.

But he holds governments to their own laws. That is, he will comply with government censorship requests if they are within the bounds of their own laws.

Yet he is always talking about how Twitter is a bastion of free speech. Sounds like he's a liar.

Did Brazil change its own laws in the last few weeks?

A rouge billionaire with a popular social media platform might just be what is needed to get governments to properly regulate these sites that are the modern equivalent old school media companies, but are held to much lower standards.

There was no laws change since the block have been made.

Brazil decided the law of its land via its Supreme Court ruling.

I'm not arguing about that (I don't buy that either).

I'm saying that there was no change in laws or even in Supreme Court ruling since the block.

Elon Musk though it was unfair the decisions to block the accounts, and now he thinks it's fair. The only person who changed the opinion or ruling here is X.

If the Brazilian court had ordered a ban of far-left users, the reporting on this would have been very different.

Because he wouldn't have fought it?

This is a not very useful breakdown of the political situation. There is only one thing that is required to have a democracy, and that is the peaceful transition of power. And that requires that people have to accept the results of elections. Elections don't have to be fair. They don't have to be free from corruption. They don't have to be accurate, lord knows the elections in the United States are horribly skewed due to the fact that we have such low voter turnout. If you wanted to accurately assess who would be the best elected official in a given position you could do a lot better by just getting a board of statisticians and sampling the hell out of your electorate. But the thing that is important is that we go through a process, that process terminates, and we go with whatever it says the winner was. If it was a bad choice c'est la vie I'll see you again next election and if there was shady shit that happened, we can address that in the interim.

I don't give a shit what the far right views on like immigration or abortion or taxes are. I can disagree with them, but that's not like an existential threat to the country. What is in the US is the fact that we have a candidate for president who was still not conceded his loss in the 2020 election and is running again on the same premise that the elections are rigged. Like the bar is so low here.

It’s completely legal within a democracy not to accept the results of an election. Right now the sitting president of the US is refusing to accept the results of an election which Lula accepts.

>What is in the US is the fact that we have a candidate for president who was still not conceded his loss in the 2020 election and is running again on the same premise that the elections are rigged.

I was thinking I had heard he conceded recently, but when I looked it up I found that he conceded before the inauguration:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/politics/trump-biden-us-capit...

He only conceded his loss in the immediate wake of the failed January 6 insurrection.

More recently, in the presidential debate, he has essentially recanted his concession.

> There is only one thing that is required to have a democracy, and that is the peaceful transition of power. And that requires that people have to accept the results of elections. Elections don't have to be fair. They don't have to be free from corruption. They don't have to be accurate

"Democracy" means "rule by the people".

If the people are told who their new rulers are rather than choosing who their new rulers are (or even ruling directly, I think there are a couple places that still have direct democracies), then it's not a democracy regardless of how orderly the transitions are.

An important part of democracy is that it proves its legitimacy to the citizens. Threatening citizens who are skeptical or critical of the process (whether reasonably or not) is the only thing here which is a threat to democracy

> Threatening citizens who are skeptical or critical of the process (whether reasonably or not) is the only thing here which is a threat to democracy

Yet another thing the supreme court judge involved in this Twitter debacle is guilty of.

He opposed all attempts to add an auditable, anonymous paper trail to our electronic voting machines. At some point, he straight up declared that they were unquestionable. It's all "fake news", he claims. Then he started censoring and fining and persecuting anyone who questioned them. Out of all the stupid things our former president said and did, they banned him from politics over his perfectly reasonable criticism of the brazilian voting machines.

Does he have the balls, the sheer audacity to bring his unquestionable machines to defcon and offer them a billion dollars if they can subvert our elections? No. Oh you can audit the machines and the software... By appointment. You're allowed to bring a pen and a piece of paper. The thing runs Linux, good luck with that. Before the elections when I was really engaged with this, I read a report that said the software's makefile downloaded some libraries off the network and linked them right in. Yeah... Normal people protested the elections by actually asking for source code. It wouldn't have helped.

Yes, but the time to do this is not directly after an election in which your preferred candidate lost.

Okay :: "I think our electoral process needs improvement and changes to make it fair, secure, and auditable."

Not Okay :: "I think our electoral process needs improvement and changes to make it fair, secure, and auditable… and therefore I reject the results of the last election and believe $other_guy to be the rightful president."

100% just look at Lula's acceptance of the Venezuelan elections, is Brazil doing anything to clamp down on far left support for Venezuela?

Could you share references for this claim? As far as I could find, Brazil haven’t recognized the results of the elections.

[1] https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/blogs/americo-martins/internaci...

[2] https://g1.globo.com/google/amp/jornal-nacional/noticia/2024...

[3] https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/blogs/americo-martins/internaci...

Lula recognized the equally bs 2018 elections, it’s not like Maduro won that election either.

https://elpais.com/america/2024-03-02/nicolas-maduro-asegura...

Lula rolled out the red carpet for the venezuelan dictator months into his mandate, welcomed him onto our soil with full military honors. Everybody knows he's a friend of Maduro and many other communist dictators. Despite this, the judge involved in the Twitter case used to censor any speech associating him with dictators as "fake news".

If he hasn't recognized the results by now, it's because the situation there must be so bad the political repercussions of doing so will be too great even for him. Notably, he hasn't condemned his dictator buddy either. He's not saying much of anything and letting it play out. His silence on the matter also speaks volumes.

"is Brazil doing anything to clamp down on far left support for Venezuela?"

They don't get to do anything. As much as one may dislike another country's political system, all they get to do is carry on with life.

No country has the right to meddle with another's politics. No foreign person has to right meddle with another's politics.

That's the imperialist view of the world. That's not how it should be.

https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Vel%C3%A1zquez NATO members regularly interfere in other countries elections, and have a long history of doing so especially in South America.

It’s widely accepted as an international norm, dating back to at least to the agreement of the Monroe doctrine with the UK, and continuing to at least 2022 with respect to Paraguay.

The fact they do doesn't give any legitimacy to their actions.

South America is not the NATO's (or anyone's) political experiment playground.

This is an interesting thought. If a completely different thing had happened then the conversation might be different. People are too often focused on what did happen and miss the importance of things that did not happen at all

The things that didn’t happen often say more than the things that did.

Exactly. This is why it is very upsetting when anyone brings up the people that died in the Challenger explosion but fail to mention Big Bird, who did not, as if there is something that makes those astronauts more important to the story.

https://www.history.com/news/big-bird-challenger-disaster-na...

How would it be completely different? You're confirming that you see the left as more deserving of speech than the right

> You're confirming that you see the left as more deserving of speech than the right

No I’m not.

In that case the situations would be very similar, and the reporting should be essentially the same, with some word substitutions. If not, this would be indicative of double standards, which I'm glad you oppose

This is a good point. When we envision a scenario we are tasked to either imagine it playing out in a way that supports our sensibilities about fairness and justice or we picture it playing out in a way that offends and repels us. Heavy weighs the head of those that take up the task of contemplating the infinite minutiae of the multiverse

Could you stop with the airy condescension and make actual comments please

I have been concrete and straightforward in our conversation about the power and responsibilities arising from exercising imagination.

Likewise, this contrasts with the (rightful) criticism of Google and other companies censoring anti-government material in China - which could also be described as "company complies with local laws"

Is there any point to this comment other than rage bait?

Fun fact: Brazilian court did. PCO (Communist party) was banned from Twitter in 2022.

I wonder how many will remain on Bluesky. I've heard of a few key differences between Bluesky and Twitter that could be a deal breaker for many.

1. No trending topics, although there is a recommendation algorithm, so trending topics should be possible in the future.

2. No private profiles. This seems important to many, but it's probably not doable in federated social media. Other privacy problems include your followers, whom you follow, your likes, etc., being public information.

3. No way to make someone that follows you unfollow you. I don't get it either, but it seems in other platforms blocking makes them unfollow you whereas in Bluesky it just stops your posts from appearing. To be honest I'm not really sure how this even works since there are no private posts and you could just access it without being logged in, but I guess the average user is just going to use the main instance anyway.

4. No way to bookmark posts yet. This should be easy to implement.

While using the web version, I found several usability problems, like being unable to right click hashtags and posts to open them in a new tab. Clicking on a post lets you reply without seeing existing replies, which seems like a bad idea, too. There are advanced search operators, but no interface to access them.

If you search for "how to do" anything in Bluesky you get the API documentation for the AT Protocol. The only user facing documentation at the moment seems to be a FAQ page.

Despite its influx of Brazilian users, parts of the interface are still missing translations, e.g. the "Discover" and "Following" tabs in the homepage weren't translated to Portuguese even though the sidebar was.

Personally, I think just the fact that Bluesky has a recommendation feed already makes it better than Mastodon for most people, but it's still in development. I haven't used the app, so maybe things are better there.

> No way to bookmark posts yet. This should be easy to implement.

Seems to be doable? Right-click & copy link on the time of a post, e.g. https://bsky.app/profile/brainnotonyet.bsky.social/post/3l4o...

Bookmarking in Twitter, Mastodon, and TikTok means to click a bookmark button in the post to save it to your bookmarks in your account, not to bookmark it in the browser.

I see, got it.

This is pretty accurate. We have some proposals in development for 2 and 3 but it won't be soon. 1 and 4 are straightforward. The rest take QoL hours. Probably an unnamed 5th bullet point is finding experience novelty which make the other 4 less important. We did novel things with algorithms and moderation, but we'd be smart to do novel things with the core product loop.

Is there going to be a "for you" feed like twitter that algorithmically finds post you are interested based on what you search or browse ?

I thought this community was against algorithmic feeds? Shows what I know about Hacker News commenters.

Thinking HN commenters are a singular monolithic group with one shared opinion, in unison, is probably your first mistake.

In my opinion people don't like algorithmic feeds because they're used to feeds with bias to politics, drama, and clickbait. When the algorithm can find you more cute cat pictures, it's a godsend.

You want a novel feature? Consider this.

Right now, only Tumblr and Youtube allow you to create separate profiles with a single account.

If I follow this guy who posts his comics in his account, unless he's exceptionally good at social media (they aren't), he'll use the same account to blog, and 9/10 of his posts will be blog posts.

I was trying to build a list of photographers and I had to repeatedly use the "Media" tab to figure out if a guy who says he's a photographer in his bio actually posts any photos on his profile or it's all just hot takes. Why can't I have a "Media" tab for "Photos I took myself"?

Over a decade ago DeviantArt had folders. Most of the posts I see don't even have hashtags.

I think if you let users define something like "my hashtags" where you could quickly find all their posts by a hashtag, and also let users follow only posts of a user that contains a hashtag, you would make hashtags actually relevant in a platform that lets you do full text search.

To explain better: the photographer would set "#photography" in their "My Hashtags" settings, for example, and this would show on the top of their profile so visitors could quickly find their photos. This would incentivize the use of hashtags (even generic ones) that is noticeable for less savvy users. So the photographer would have a reason to use #photography in their posts because now it has an obvious effect: it lets visitors see their portfolio. You may see someone that has these "My Hashtags" in their profile and think "wait, how do I add something like this to my profile?" and boom, now everyone discovers the feature and everyone uses them, and everyone is happy. Novel feature achieved. Bluesky becomes better than Twitter overnight.

I am gonna keep nagging you about trending topics, because without them the hashtag feature is sorta useless. There isn't a way to browse hashtags and so it's hard for people to see what other people are converging on.

Elon was defending free speech in Brazil under Brazil's own laws. If this article is true (many from the verge are false in my opinion), then this is a sad day.

[dupe]

Earlier, as referenced:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41610745

X follows the law of a country it's operating in*

And to Turkey, India and...

Musk claimed on the All In podcast, that he was merely trying to abide by the law, and that the situation that arose was that the government was requesting action that went against the laws of the same country. I don't know how true that is, but it sounds plausible. He also made it clear that the policy was not "free speech by US standards" but rather allowing speech up till what is permitted by every respective country. That sounded way more reasonable to me than what I have heard before on the issue.

> the situation that arose was that the government was requesting action that went against the laws of the same country

There is no jurisdiction in which blowing off a court is a legitimate reaction to perceived lawlessness. Or more accurately, there is no jurisdiction where doing so doesn’t legitimately bring down on you the full force of the state. To do anything else is to cede the rule of law.

I'm not an expert on this topic. But I can conceive of a situation where the judiciary and the executive branches are butting head against each other and one finds it hard to figure out who to listen to. Didn't this exact situation arise in the US during the Trump administration?

> can conceive of a situation where the judiciary and the executive branches are butting head against each other and one finds it hard to figure out who to listen to

Sure. You still show up.

If the executive orders you not to show, you have a constitutional crisis and the rule of law has broken down. But that didn’t happen here. (Note: the court’s orders may be illegal. But not showing up and then complaining about sanctions is incoherent.)

There's lot of jurisdictions, United States has great jurisprudence on this dating back to July 4th, 1776. France, Great Britain, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, all of latin america in fact, have examples of using this legal strategy effectively.

Venezuela may overrule the courts later this year.

Judge not lest ye be judged yourself.

> United States has great jurisprudence on this dating back to July 4th, 1776

Revolution isn’t a legal strategy. (It’s a political one.)

There is political precedent of blowing off courts. But that is almost always a unilateral challenge to a system’s rule of law. That’s what Musk alleged. But complaining about sanctions when engaging in ersatz revolution is like complaining about arrest when engaging in civil disobedience—it’s the expected result. (See: Google in China.)

Under UK law, and court rulings dating back to the trial of King Charles, parliament is supreme and authorized the revolution, it’s a legal strategy.

> parliament is supreme and authorized the revolution, it’s a legal strategy

You’re referring to the Trial of King Charles I? That legally wasn’t a revolution, but an act of the sovereign Parliament. (It also didn’t happen in America or in 1776.)

It’s actually quite relevant, given Charles I refused to acknowledge the Commons’ legitimacy. He was executed. And the entire thing is deemed legal.

Yup that’s what I was referring to

Sure. Musk is playing Charles I. The English king who took up arms at the head of a foreign army against his own people and didn’t recognise the legitimacy of an elected government because god said he shouldn’t have to.

bs, doxxing campaign happening in twitter against government officers is not freespech

Yesterday, E. Musk quoted a Tweet that said if X capitulated to Brazil, we are all slaves. So I guess we are slaves now. I didn't make the rules.

The entire affair was pursued by Musk solely as a way to turn the handle on the vast right-wing noise machine, to give Shellenberger something to do.

Ad hominem is ad hominem even if you think it's clever.

lol, I know they’re just doing their job, but “in a surprising move” is funny commentary for this. Elon never had a plan at all other than vaguely rile people up — Brazil is a huge market, and despite his “go fuck yourselves” rhetoric, he’s still legally beholden to investors to try to make some of their money back. The only way he wouldn’t “capitulate” would be if Twitter folded before he could.

This of course doesn’t help his election-time rhetoric, but eh I don’t think facts matter that much for that, anyway. He still gets to shout about being silenced by evil socialist Brazil, even if he’s capitulated.

Hopefully Bluesky/the fediverse doesn’t lose the momentum they’ve gained there! I’m only familiar with Spanish-speaking South America, but I’m guessing Brazil still has a considerable anti-“imperialist west” (cough cough America) sentiment in the bedrock of its culture; intentionally and condescendingly flaunting their laws is not a good look, at all.

> he’s still legally beholden to investors

Unless you have seen the contracts signed you can't know that. Xitter is no longer a public company and as a private company has absolutely no such requirement.

While Burwell v. Hobby Lobby might be controversial it is still remarkable coming from such a high court to include this:

> While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so.

> Unless you have seen the contracts signed you can't know that

that's right, this is in fact a clever 4d chess move by Elon, who totally doesn't behave like a crack-addled loser, and he clearly won this round!

You sound like the worst of twitter, here.

Elon Musk doesn't talk like that.

he wouldn't want people deadnaming shitter, he reserves that honour for his own kid.

I think that quote is common sense, or should be. It’s only news for people who subscribe to certain myths widely circulated on social media about what for-profit companies are legally required to do.

> Unless you have seen the contracts signed you can't know that. Xitter is no longer a public company and as a private company has absolutely no such requirement.

Have you seen the contracts? How do you know there is _absolutely no such requirement_? Perhaps it’s not standard but private investment is private.

Some of his business partners chop up journalists which is another form of business incentive.

What I meant is that in general private companies have no requirements of making profit and I even have shown the SCOTUS stating so.

> anti-“imperialist west” (cough cough America) sentiment

There's a difference between fringe rhetoric and actions.

The only countries more pro-American than Brazil in polls are America and India [0], and ironically, the Anti-American rate is higher in America than in Brazil (where there's a large neutral/indifferent cohort in polls). In general, pro-American sentiment is somewhere between 63-73% in Brazil [0][1]

Most political "anti-American" rhetoric in Brazil is due to agrarian protectionism - the same as India - as regional BigAg are major political player in both countries.

Most Brazilians in the diaspora who can immigrate will immigrate to the US.

American companies and Brazilian companies have very close relations with each other (ever had a Budwesier, Blue Moon, Burger King, or Popeye's? They're majority owned by Brazilian PE funds).

Finally, most of the underlying support for Lula comes from his "Bolsa Familia" program in the 2000s.

This lie of Brazilian or Indian anti-Americanism only went into overdrive on Reddit and then HN because of their indifference to the Russia-Ukraine war, as they have investments in both sides.

[0] - https://pro.morningconsult.com/articles/united-states-favora...

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/11/06/comparing-view...

Anti imperialist but if they had any chance they’d migrate to the great satan… oh people, such hypocrites.

Made it would be to vote and form a more perfect union.

Yup, they’d make it in the image of the countries they come from because it’s they what they know and like.

It’s hard to teach a dog new tricks. People don’t change in the face of a new environment. This is illustrated by the fact emigrants tend to preserve their home culture with less change than the home country itself.

I guess we disagree because my grandfather is from somewhere else and I was raised wrong.

> anti-“imperialist west” America helped install the Brazilian military dictatorship, helped to train them in the use of torture against it's civilian population. You either are ignorant in not knowing the role the US has played around the world, in which case you need to be educated, or you support it, in which case you need to be fought.

63-73% of Brazilians are pro-American [0][1] based on recent polls.

This myth of the "Anti-American Global South" that seems to have originated on Reddit as well as selective interpretation of political rhetoric needs to end.

[0] - https://pro.morningconsult.com/articles/united-states-favora...

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/11/06/comparing-view...

I think it's far more engrained and fundamental than can be captured in a simple poll. I can at least vouch first hand that it's a common sentiment in Spanish literature from the area and at least some people on the ground. I mean, they're still mad about Victor Jara, for good reason...

Brazil ain't Chile, let alone a more anti-American South American countries like Bolivia.

And in general, most polls over the last several years using various different methodologies have shown how Brazil tends to have a stronger pro-American sentiment unlike the rest of South America.

Spanish language literature and media might have had a stronger impact on building those views in the Hispanoblante world compared to Brazil's relative isolation.

lol. It's the former. Specifically, I was hedging my words, because I was too lazy to Kagi "Brazil wiki" and wasn't entirely sure that they suffered at the hands of the US. To be fair to little ol' me, I doubt the word "Brazil" was said once during the one World History class I took ever, 9-10 years ago. I guess I should just memorize the list of south american countries that we didn't get around to couping, if there are any...

> He still gets to shout about being silenced by evil socialist Brazil, even if he’s capitulated.

Socialist? This victim narrative is bizarre. There is almost no one outside of Brazil who supports what Moraes is doing, most people inside Brazil are against it (even on the face of it, Lula only won by a hair and half of the population are Bolsonaristas, and a significant number of the rest have free speech as a principle), and more than twice as many Senators in Brazil are for impeachment than are against*.

Pretending that this is some crusade by the evil right wing of the world directed by their leader Elon Musk against the socialism is bizarre, bad faith, and encouraged by anyone who supports the ban.

> He still gets to shout about being silenced by evil socialist Brazil, even if he’s capitulated.

Brazil didn't silence Musk, who can speak and be heard wherever he wants, whenever he wants. Brazil silenced Brazilians, and cut them off from the world. Musk is just some dickhead whose business has been going extremely well over the past decade or two, and is not the world representative of free speech. He's a pretense whose use by antidemocratic forces almost managed the achievement of banning all VPN usage in Brazil.

I wonder who is going to get the contract to build the Great Brazilian Firewall, seeing as the twitter ban was spotty and VPNs were still a way around it? Will it be a US company?

[*] https://veja.abril.com.br/coluna/marcela-rahal/qual-placar-s...

10 million Brazilians flocking away from Twitter into BlueSky is an argument that even Elon can understand.

In case anyone believes this is about "free speech": the jurisprudence for the Brazilian Supreme Court decision is American, in fact. It is a doctrine known as "clear and present danger" and was established by the SCOTUS in 1919, by Oliver Wendel Holmes Jr in "Schenk vs. United States"[1].

The U.S. Supreme Court already applied it a couple of times.

De Moraes argued (correctly, IMO) that Musk's non-compliance was a "clear and present danger" to Brazilian democracy.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/clear_and_present_danger

> De Moraes argued (correctly, IMO) that Musk's non-compliance was a "clear and present danger" to Brazilian democracy.

Democracy is when the government censors free speech, got it.

as opposed to elon banning cisgender?

It's just a word

you'd think as a free speech absolutist, he'd value the freedom behind each and every word. today it's just one word, tomorrow who knows?

Elon Musk is not the government.

Do you think there is any speech that can be dangerous to democracy?

Do you think such speech should be allowed to exist?

Absolutely. We need more such speech.

Can you elaborate who “we” is and why you think more such speech js good?

> Do you think there is any speech that can be dangerous to democracy?

No.

> Do you think such speech should be allowed to exist?

I don't trust anyone who claims to be an arbiter of what people can and cannot say.

I'm sorry for assuming this, but I think this could only come from someone that never felt like they're part of a threatened group. If people are marching the streets shouting "kill all the ${x}!", I very much feel like that's dangerous to democracy.

Does it apply when x = 'cops' ?

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/eric-garner-manhattan-...

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/black-lives-matter-ch...

Yes, why not? I could imagine calls like these leading to hurting police personals. These personals are not only people (and therefore part of society, that democracy should protect), but they're also part of the law enforcement system, which is kinda crucial for, well, any society. Do we disagree?

Are you familiar with the story of why the ACLU used to be so very respected? Or why they lost that status over things that would have been perfectly expected for other groups to do?

I'm not from the US, so I might be missing your point, but if you're referring to neutrality around free speech then I guess the answer is yes? I'm not sure where you're heading though. I do think this is a very complicated issue, and drawing the line is hard and often contextual. But at the same time I feel quite certain that a line must be drawn.

Would prohibiting such speech make the hate go away, or would it actually embolden the hate while allowing it to fester clandestinely, making it harder to prepare for if it comes to a head?

Would make the hate go away - probably not. But in the country I grew up, for example, we had a prime minister assassinated in the 90s, and I think that many would agree that it was the calls in protests and the kind of symbols that were used that created the ground on which a political assassination could happen.

That's a good example actually - should criticism of Trump now be subject to restrictions due to the two attempts on his life? "Stochastic terrorism" must be applied equally in both directions

Seems like he was targeted by people of his own political persuasion in both cases. So, yeah, maybe Trump should in fact tone down his violent rhetoric.

Not true. It's like if a US Supreme Court justice got appointed the internet czar and started investigating, prosecuting and taking down things on the internet in secret without checks and balances.

That would never fly in the US.

Here's from an earlier comment:

Here's a good explanation of how the Brazilian Supreme Court did a creative and novel interpretation of the law to give itself powers to investigate and regulate the internet without law enforcement or legislative/executive involvement.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

That's not enforcing the law.

As documented by the New York Times, the first thing the judge did after getting powers to censor was to call a Brazilian magazine article about the person that gave him those powers 'fake news' and got it removed. It later turned out that article was true so he had egg on his face and had to retract his censorship order.

> To run the investigation, Mr. Toffoli tapped Mr. Moraes, 53, an intense former federal justice minister and constitutional law professor who had joined the court in 2017.

> In his first action, Mr. Moraes ordered a Brazilian magazine, Crusoé, to remove an online article that showed links between Mr. Toffoli and a corruption investigation. Mr. Moraes called it “fake news.”

> Mr. Moraes later lifted the order after legal documents proved the article was accurate.

NYTimes article: https://archive.is/plQFT

How is the above 'clear and present danger' ? It's clear cut corruption.

How was it a clear and present danger? I don’t see it.

If we’d considered subversive opinions clear and present danger and it was held up in court we may not have had a civil rights movement or a women’s suffrage movement, etc.

It’s like they like protests unless they disagree with the protests and then they label them threats to democracy.

It may be of note that Schenck was used by the government to argue that speech exhorting people to burn their draft cards was not protected speech. Spare me the "clear and present danger to democracy" nonsense.

ETA: It has also been essentially superseded in the US. See Brandenburg v. Ohio.

Also of note, Schenck is where the (in)famous "fire in a crowded theater" line comes from. So any time that gets brought up in a debate about free speech, the only appropriate response is "Wait, you think protesting against the draft should be illegal?"

I don't know much about the Brazil case, but I think it's pretty clear it's not about "free speech" because he seems to treat countries very differently, depending on his personal opinion of the government in power (and who knows about any non-public deals).

Here's one article about blocking Modi critics in India: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/05/twitter-accuse...

Here's another, more severe case, "Saudi Crown Prince Confirms Death Sentence for Tweets". And remember, one of the biggest X investors is a prominent Saudi.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/09/22/saudi-crown-prince-confi...

Musk's "commitment" to free speech is a joke.

Edit: This is a bit different of case - it's not X doing content moderation at behest of a government. One could claim Musk doesn't have control over what other countries do. But, he's constantly criticizing and calling-out politicians around the world. But, not a peep about Saudi Arabia. (as far as I know).

Has nothing to do with Musk. The issue with Saudis in Twitter predates him

The article says this:

> Twitter sued the government in July over takedown orders, after the government introduced legislation in 2021 aimed at regulating every form of digital content, including online news, social media, and streaming platforms and empowering itself to remove content it deemed “objectionable”.

Looks like they tried but India and Turkey passed laws. In Brazil they believe the judge's actions were not lawful.

cough China

It’s about each country’s own laws about free speech, not a universal free speech. He says countries have to pass laws if they want to restrict free speech and he will comply with those laws

Gag orders and compelled speech.

wonder why a known corrupt judge doesn't want to make orders in his name. And is hiding rulings from those subject to the rulings.

Clearly improper.

Also worth noting that Twitter's terms of use themselves also prohibit the very same sort of content that motivated the Supreme Court order.

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