X reinstated in Brazil after complying with court demands | Hacker News Reader

X reinstated in Brazil after complying with court demands

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79 pointsanigbrowl86 comments

>“Although X may not be a top priority for most advertisers in Brazil, the platform needs them more than they need it.”

Really does seem like it came down to this point. Musk hoped Brazilian users would get angry with the government, and they just downloaded bluesky instead. Musk lost a month of Brazilian revenue and gained nothing.

I followed some Brazilians on my (mostly unused) bluesky account. Will be interesting to see if they stick around there, return to twitter, or use both.

This shows the true value of the platform to end users is near zero. If it goes away the world keeps turning.

Is that really true? I think platforms have strong network effects that make migrations to alternatives (like Bluesky) very difficult. However, a government shutdown of that platform, with the power/threat of violence, can break through that network effect by making the platform inaccessible to both sides (the people making tweets and their audience).

This shows the true value of the platform to end users is near zero.

Is that really true? I think platforms have strong network effects that make migrations to alternatives (like Bluesky) very difficult.

The network effect has negative value to the user; if the platform went away, everyone would migrate to a better platform, and everyone would be better off. The network effect is an artificial barrier to competition that only benefits the owner of said network, and it only works because collective action is harder than collective inaction.

what does artificial mean here

There’s no technical reason different social media networks couldn’t be made to interoperate. The barriers that keep other platforms from building off of a successful network are largely legal, not natural.

I’m also equating these kinds of network effects with other artificial barriers to competition, like price fixing or mandatory non-compete agreements.

Migrations are indeed difficult but not at all impossible it seems. It feels like a tipping point has been reached and activity of what I would call high quality posters is now at such a level on bluesky that I can’t read it all from the relatively few people I follow. Even my own posts are getting traction that they didn’t until very recently. And people seem to be joining now not only because Musk drove them away but because it’s worth it on its own merits.

Time and again Musk has made money based on the quality of the people around him. He seems to have chased those people off.

> Musk lost a month of Brazilian revenue and gained nothing.

Oh, he lost more than that.

Twitter is big because of the network effect, and the network just got smaller.

> Musk hoped Brazilian users would get angry with the government

It’s like when he claimed he’d “document in great detail” how the boycotting advertisers would kill Twitter, and was smugly confident “Earth” would care. Absolutely delusional. The interviewer even understandably struggled with that line of reasoning.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=U_M_uvDChJQ&t=1m39s

> Musk hoped Brazilian users would get angry with the government, and they just downloaded bluesky instead.

Those are not mutually exclusive. Brazilians straight up protested this judge and his actions.

here we go again: criminal speech != free speech. A lot of, if not all of Alexandre de Moraes's decisions are around a real crime that happened Jan 8 2022 with a real coup attempt in Brazil (federal buildings were severely damaged). Some people pretend this didn't happen and come here and hide arguments behind free speech. These "censored" political influencers are investigated under the umbrella of this major case based on people who potentially had a major impact on influencing very simple people to commit crimes against democracy. Brazilian democracy is still at risk and should get support from digital platforms so we don't end up in a digital wild-wild west. This is still under secrecy investigation and the decisions cannot be judged by people who don't even have access to all the case material to begin with. I'm happy that Elon did the right thing. Hope he keeps collaborating with the law so we all can live in peace.

There was no "coup attempt". There was a protest. Occupying and damaging Brasília buildings is essentially the standard brazilian protest. It's happened before.

You call it a coup because they wanted the military to seize power. They didn't try to seize power for themselves, they wanted the military to rule over them. That's a valid political position. A coup attempt is the military actually trying something. An actual coup is the military succeeding at it. A thousand people with bibles and flags is not a coup or even an attempt at a coup. It's just a protest.

I don't believe he is only talking about the occupation of the parliament, which in my opinion could be considered a coup attempt, although a very disorganized and ultimately failed attempt.

But he is also talking about the leaked documents and dossiers that are being investigated as means to a coup. Organized by some high level military and other influential people, including the previous president.

Edit: more info at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Brazilian_coup_plot

Even the biased Wikipedia article you cited calls it a protest.

> Protesters invade the National Congress of Brazil

There were plenty of reasons to doubt the results, and these judges made numerous contributions to those reasons with their actions. They resisted two attempts from our representatives to add an anonymous paper trail to the "unquestionable" voting machines. They disproportionately censored Bolsonaro and his supporters in the months leading up to the election, called everything they said "fake news". Then they rendered him ineligible due to his perfectly reasonable criticism of the voting machines, out of all the stupid things he said. Then they went to public events to show off about it and say they were personally responsible for defeating him. How do you expect people to accept this as legitimate?

As far as I'm concerned, these judges launched the real and successful coup all the way back in 2019 when they usurped power and created a secret tribunal to investigate, prosecute, judge, sentence and punish crimes against themselves. The constitution says that secret tribunals are prohibited, yet they get away with it because they're the highest court and there's no one who can override them. Politicians who can impeach these judges are no doubt corrupt and all it takes to intimidate them is the unearthing of some scandal they were no doubt part of. Thus our representatives do not matter, the laws they write do not matter, these unelected judges do whatever they want and police obeys them. Power does not emanate from us, it is concetrated in their pens.

Due to this context, I see those people as blameless protesters of an unjust system who went on to become political prisoners of these judges. Who are you supposed to turn to when you believe the supreme court is violating the constitution? These fools turned to the "heroic" brazilian military and begged them on their knees to sort this mess out. The rest is history.

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