I truly hope Musk doesn't cave and the court blocks the site.
Maybe this way more people will wake up to all the abuses, violations and honestly, crimes, happening in the country, committed by the Brazilian Supreme Court.
Having content on their site that you might not like isn't really comparable. It is sensible to be suspicious of Musk perhaps, but the current hatred of him is as disconcerting as the former glorification.
I think one could expect a bit of self-reflection to not have states shut down online spaces. And that is true for those that I do not personally like as well.
Presumably refusing to censor things that the government there wanted censored? AIUI most of the rest of the world doesn't have our legal prohibitions against the government doing that.
No need to presume: you can read the article. "dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization."
Anyone who accuses X of hosting disinformation and fake news will 100% win in court. It’s at least 75%of the content I see when I dare to go to the “for you” algo feed.
Obviously there's a lot more detail in all the prosecutions and investigations. Most, or all of it, should be publicly available if you really care to understand the problem.
Laws have been broken, and this is the justice system's reaction to that. This is not censorship. Brazil (and most of the world) don't subscribe to the idea that freedom of expression and freedom of press are unbound.
This is censorship. Just because it's being done within a legal framework doesn't mean it's not censorship. The Brazilian people will have to decide whether they want their judiciary to have such excessive control over freedom of expression.
The rest of the world should subscribe to the idea that freedom of expression and freedom of expression are (nearly) unbound. The USA is the only major country which gets this right.
> The Brazilian people will have to decide whether they want their judiciary to have such excessive control over freedom of expression.
This is a very loaded comment, full of personal opinions. Which is fine, but let's not pretend it's factual truth.
In any case, we have. At least within the limits of our USA-inspired representative democracy. Federal law goes through 3 houses of elected representatives: the National Congress, the Senate and the Union Executive.
The Constitution goes through even more scrutiny.
> The rest of the world should
More personal opinions. Which, again, is fine. But it's not factual truth.
> The USA is the only major country which gets this right
I think this says it all. We have very little common basis for discussion. I would say the USA is the main major country that gets the _most_ things wrong.
When any party, either government or private, blocks free expression then that is literally censorship. It might be legally or morally justified in some circumstances, but it is still censorship.
Words mean things. You don't get to redefine words to support your argument.
Sure but you'd also have to define free expression.
Article 10 of the Human Rights Act [0] says:
> 2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
I will charitably assume that you aren't a native English speaker and are honestly confused about the nuances of the language rather than trying to derail the discussion with incorrect and irrelevant semantic arguments. Just because a particular act of censorship might be legal within a certain framework doesn't mean it isn't censorship.
Although I can't imagine why you would cite a UK law in a discussion about censorship in Brazil. It's sad how the UK has been growing ever more authoritarian and totalitarian, but that's an entirely separate discussion.
> Just because a particular act of censorship might be legal within a certain framework doesn't mean it isn't censorship.
For the record, I would like to note that this sort of censorship is utterly unconstitutional here in Brazil too.
Every single time this gets discussed, I cite the literal words from the constitution:
> Any and all censorship of political, ideological and artistic nature is prohibited
These are very simple words that any citizen can understand. There is no room for misinterpretation here. Yet every single time people respond with impressive mental gynmnastics to justify the judge-king's actions. I've had people argue with me by citing laws lower than the constitution, by getting into asinine arguments over the definition of free speech and censorship, by arguing about "isonomy" as if it somehow invalidated the very simple words written above, and also by calling me a moron for presuming to do the judge-king's job as if the contradictions weren't there in plain sight for all to see. The guy you're replying to once called me a sterotypical reactionary WhatsApp uncle right here on HN.
In the eve of the 2022 elections I witnessed this judge censor a documentary a priori. Without even watching it, before it was even released, he judged it was "fake news" and ordered its censorship. This is the sort of thing that used to happen in last century's military dictatorship. There is no justification for this whatsoever.
If a brazilian is harmed by someone's speech, they get to answer. They get to be made whole by legal means. They don't get to straight up censor the other guy or in any way prevent them from speaking. I see this all the time, even in politics. Some guy insults another, gets sued and is made to pay damages or whatever. That's all there is to it. The original insult is not censored. This is fine.
With these judges it's different. Some magazine ran some damning article on them back in 2019 and they granted themselves virtually limitless power to investigate, prosecute, judge and punish "fake news" of all kinds, with themselves as the victims. They determine what's fake of course. Their powers just kept expanding until they essentially usurped all power in this country. It got to the point the judge started proposing changes to laws directly to our representatives. The changes were rejected but he just rammed the "fake news" nonsense down our throats anyway via his "resolutions".
This is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship of the judiciary. Unelected judge-kings with lifetime mandates whose pens directly make the people with guns do their bidding. It's kind of ridiculous to even discuss "laws" at this point. These guys could write whatever they want on a piece of paper and it becomes law.
And yet big companies bow to countries such as China under the ‘it’s all just business’ mantra. Brazil isn’t China but they’re not some small islands either, they can challenge SV and that is a good thing.
Twitter’s argument, which they’re trying to make in Brazil through the justice system, is that the orders to censor (by one Supreme Court justice) aren’t constitutional under Brazilian law. In those other cases, Twitter abided by local law as they claimed they would.
The greater point to my comment is that they have a track record of siding with the Mohdi's, Bolsonaro's, Erdoğan's et al when it comes to blocking accounts and otherwise standing on principal as "free speech absolutists" when they like the disinfomation being spread.
So your response to me is a question for the very thing that I asked you for, this is very bad discussion form when you throw such serious accusations around. Merely giving examples of Erdogan or Modi is obviously not good enough because Musk says that he follows local national laws. So according to that personal rule, all his behavior is consistent. You said that he breaks his own rules, so where does it happen? Are you assuming that disobeying the Brazil order is such a case? Then you have to say so and show why Elon's reason for doing so is wrong because yes, he has given reasons for that. I personally don't know them, I don't care about every single case that affects Twitter. I do care about the social media circus arriving at HN where people think that they can just throw these easy accusations and then not even bother actually touching on the core issue.
I don’t know ask Elon, he has been pretty consistently censoring the left. Just last week he blocked the “whitedudesforkamala” account. Is that not censorship?
That account was automatically flagged for spam and then reinstated.
Even if it wasn't, censorship by an individual or a company is not a crime, are you confused by the first amendment which is a restriction on the government?
That's a strange way of saying you completely lost the argument so you had to resort to digging into comment history to try and find something, but I'll take it.
Address the topic, not the commenter, stop violating HN guidelines.
It's not about liking or not - it's about breaking the law. Hate speech is qualified in Brazilian criminal law. Nazism and anti-democratic aggitation are crimes, for instance.
> While certain restrictions on freedom of expression may be motivated by principles of equality and non-discrimination, “direct and public incitement to genocide” and “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence” are strictly prohibited under international law, and are considered the “severest forms of hate speech”.
There’s no legitimate definition of hate speech. It’s just an ever expansive label used to undermine political speech and justify censorship or criminal charges. Free speech is the most fundamental civil liberty.
Also no one cares what the UN’s “international law” is. They just all support it or ignore it as convenient, because it means nothing.
It's a dispute between Brazil supreme court and a US based company. I didn't want to refer to Brazilian law because it seemed circumstantial, nor could I refer to US law because the first amendment defeats it. Falling back to international law only seemed natural so I didn't think I should have explained my rationale.
But that was only to say, responding to who asked me the original question, that it doesn't matter what I think. I'm not a legislator. What matters is what's enforceable.
Isn't all law* outside of natural laws essentially an agreed upon framework of convenience? Sovereignty itself only works in consensus (see the failures of the sovereign citizen movement in the US).
*I'm deliberately side-stepping religious law because there's no way to reasonably debate it logically. So this is meant to read "all secular law"
> So you think it's a crime to allow people speak things you don't like?
That was the original question which was clearly designed to trap me in an opinion pitfall. I was making sure I was referencing external sources when responding to that, but nobody seemed willing to take what I wrote in context.
> However, to date there is no universal definition of hate speech under international human rights law. The concept is still under discussion, especially in relation to freedom of opinion and expression, non-discrimination and equality.
Ah, the ever popular "hey, can you re-create Einstein's theory of relativity for me right now? No? I guess physics must be fake, then" argument, popular with bad-faith conversationalists of all stripes.
Links from the BBC article you appear to have missed:
"Antisemitism on Twitter Before and After Elon Musk’s Acquisition"[1]
"The Musk Bump: Quantifying the rise in hate speech under Elon Musk"[2]
Additional studies:
"Hate Speech Spikes on Twitter After Elon Musk Acquires the Platform" [3]
"Auditing Elon Musk’s Impact on Hate Speech and Bots" [4]
> But there are both in-depth studies and anecdotal evidence that suggest hate speech has been growing under Mr Musk's tenure.
> Several fringe characters that were banned under the previous management have been reinstated.
> They include Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, and Liz Crokin, one of the biggest propagators of the QAnon conspiracy theory.
:shrug: I don't use X, so I don't get caught up in it. I am just making an outsider's perspective to both X and the Brazilian Supreme Court. I see articles posted constantly about both, and they both stir up controversy.
Agreed. If someone wanted to find a bloody shirt to wave to bring attention to real abuses, Elon Musk's failing $44 billion-dollar tantrum is probably among the least sympathetic victims imaginable.
It's very easy to speak about things you don't know based on a newspaper article, especially when that newspaper is obviously biased. Just look at the site's news about Bolsonaro. All the news that criticizes Bolsonaro has not been proven true or did not reach a conclusion; in other words, they were proven to be purely political narratives. It's hard to argue these points. Everything the Brazilian Supreme Court has done is illegal. A Supreme Court that initiates investigations on its own, is an interested party, and at the same time is the judge. In other words, everything is wrong, everything is illegal. Purely political judgments, typical of dictatorships. Many of the people who were arrested in Brasília were trying to prevent others from committing acts of vandalism or damaging public property. In other words, the trial was done in groups, something the Brazilian Constitution does not allow; it was not individualized in any way to establish individual responsibilities. Not to mention that most of the people there were in favor of the military taking power, contrary to what Bolsonaro advised. Many thought Bolsonaro was too weak, and that’s why they were there protesting, asking the military to take over the government. Saying that Bolsonaro was responsible for those movements is pure lies. It is just an argument that the Supreme Court wants to use against Bolsonaro so that he can somehow be imprisoned, but he is very popular, and not even the Supreme Court can arrest Bolsonaro because there is no real reason. The most ridiculous thing is that well-educated people, because people who read Hacker News are well-educated, let themselves be carried away by these childish narratives.
> Everything the Brazilian Supreme Court has done is illegal. A Supreme Court that initiates investigations on its own, is an interested party, and at the same time is the judge. In other words, everything is wrong, everything is illegal.
Not at all. People all over the political spectrum have enacted protests exactly like that one multiple times now. Brasília has been occupied many times in protest of whatever. I even have pictures.
You know what's funny? Actual murderers here routinely get lesser sentences than those people got.
A local sharp power versus a global soft power? Seems like an interesting comparison within the context of a reply to: "Maybe this way more people will wake up to all the abuses...". It is interesting because it is a contrast, yet still makes sense.
Honestly, I think the sentences are being too light, especially considering they can leave prison much earlier than that (I am unsure of for this crime it is after a third or a sixth of the sentence).
If you mean the aftermath of January 8th 2023, that is an absurdly dishonest comment. Nothing in that frustrated coup d'etat attempt can be remotely seen as a protest.
Brazilians have occupied Brasília and Palácio do Planato many times before. In 2016, for example, after Dilma was impeached. Now it's a coup d'etat? Come on now.
Those events were very different. In 2016 the protesters were not attempting a coup.
They, perhaps, should still be charged with damaging public infrastructure (which has much lighter sentences).
Equating those two events mean you are either arguing in bad faith, or you disagree that what happened in Jan 8th was a coup attempt (which is simply denying facts)
You bet I disagree. You simply cannot convince me that elderly folks with bibles and flags were attempting a coup d'etat.
It's funny. The 2016 people also claimed that Dilma's impeachment was a coup. They still claim that, to this day. Everything in this country is a coup apparently. Everything but the supreme court giving itself limitless powers and becoming a political party made up of unelected officials.
> You bet I disagree. You simply cannot convince me that elderly folks with bibles and flags were attempting a coup d'etat.
Elderly or not, they were demonstrably colluding with parts of the army to create a situation where a GLO (Law and Order Guarantee) would be invoked. Lula, as much as I despise the guy, was very smart in seeing through the plot.
In 2016 the protesters were claiming that Dilma ousting was a coup, and as much as they are wrong (the legal rites of her impeachment were satisfied), they were not themselves attempting a coup.
You might be under the wrong impression that I agree with their bullshit in 2016. I do not. But the events of January 8th were as clear cut a coup attempt as it gets.
The only real disgrace is that no one in the armed forces was punished yet.
It's exactly like this. I also don't agree or condone anything that the past government did. In fact weren't the previous governments corrupt, complacent and power hungry it would never have created the conditions for a far right extremist like Bolsonaro to rise to power.
Seeing the coup for what it was doesn't mean we forget or downplay what happened before, but these circumstances were clearly different.
> they were demonstrably colluding with parts of the army to create a situation where a GLO
Bolsonaro might well have been. Whatever it is that he tried or wanted to do clearly didn't work out. He threw his hands up, flew out to the US and did absolutely nothing.
The people protesting were hoping the military would show up and save them. Or something like that. This naiveté pretty much eliminates any possibility that those people were "colluding" with anyone. If they had been colluding with the military, they would not have been arrested.
There are many, many videos showing them begging for the military to enact a coup.
The army could and should have removed their encampment in the capital, and even forbid the police to dismantle that same encampment.
This, among many other things, show those parties were colluding for a coup.
You may argue that the coup attempt was foolish and had little chance of succeeding. Oh well, if I try to murder someone and fail because I am too much of a retard to murder someone I should still be charged with attempted murder.
Sorry if I have little empathy for those that wanted to undermine democracy. They should be rigorously punished.
Begging the military to enact a coup does not actually amount to a coup. As far as I'm concerned, that's just free speech. People may disagree but that must be tolerated right up to the point they pick up weapons. Only past that point could repression possibly be warranted.
Showing up at the capital with flags and bibles is not an attempt to take power by force. So the "attempted murder" analogy is not convincing either. To take power by force, you actually need force.
Every day on the internet people publicly wish fates worse than death on others. This does not amount to attempted murder or anything of the sort. So logically, wishing for coups doesn't amount to an actual coup either.
> As far as I'm concerned, that's just free speech. People may disagree but that must be tolerated right up to the point they pick up weapons.
Hard disagree here. Free speech is not unlimited, and in most countries there are limitations to it. Calling for violence is one of those things. Demanding a military coup is not, and should neve be, protected speech.
> Showing up at the capital with flags and bibles is not an attempt to take power by force.
You know full well that what happened there was a lot more than elderly people with flags and bibles. If you don't know, you are willfully blinding yourself.
> So the "attempted murder" analogy is not convincing either.
Murder, while a serious crime, in my opinion, is generally a less serious offense than the abolition of democracy.
> To take power by force, you actually need force.
Brazil has a long story of military coups, in more than one occasion invited by portions of the civilian population.
> Every day on the internet people publicly wish fates worse than death on others. This does not amount to attempted murder or anything of the sort.
We are not talking about people merely "wishing" a coup. They in fact, and very plainly, attempted to make it happen.
> Demanding a military coup is not, and should neve be, protected speech.
Sure it should. That is a valid political position. They wanted the military to rule them.
If you're gonna ban that speech, then I demand the complete erasure of speech I deem far worse. I demand the complete annihilation of the vast majority of brazilian political parties and literally everything they stand for, especially those which contain the words "communist" and "socialist" right in their names. Those ideologies are demonstrably far more damaging than the brazilian military dictatorship ever was.
I simply do not accept the validity of the notion that militarism, fascism and nazism are all banned wrongthink while literal communists and socialists walk the soil of my country completely unpunished. I am not capable of the cognitive dissonance necessary to accept that. In order for me to maintain my sanity, one of those ideas must go.
> You know full well that what happened
I know the military didn't actually enact or even try to enact a coup. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant.
> Brazil has a long story of military coups, in more than one occasion invited by portions of the civilian population.
Yes. Military coups. Emphasis on military.
> Murder, while a serious crime, in my opinion, is generally a less serious offense than the abolition of democracy.
Surely we can agree that actual committed murder is worse than an hypothetical attempt to abolish democracy. A crime with actual victims must be more severely punished than one with zero victims.
If we can agree on this, then we can agree that these people were punished in a completely uncivilized manner. They got worse sentences than literal murderers and rapists routinely get here. That's just stupid even if I were to accept the idea that they tried to take power, and I don't accept that idea.
We should also be able to agree that this sends a very dangerous message: if you intend to protest these judges, you want full measures instead of half measures. They're going to punish you as if you had gone all the way anyway, you might as well go all the way.
> We are not talking about people merely "wishing" a coup. They in fact, and very plainly, attempted to make it happen.
Not at all. They were just generally protesting, and the protest was not in any way different in its violence compared to any prior ones. That they called for a coup at the same time does not make it an attempt to enact a coup.
An attempt to enact a coup would be the people with guns showing up, beginning their operation and then failing. That's an actual attempt to seize power. An actual coup would end with them succeeding at it.
They tried to get the military to do it. But they didn't try to do it themselves.
This is well argued. I think the part that you missed the part that the majority of people calling or voting (or "wishing"?) for a military takeover is technically still a democracy. It is not necessary to call for a free speech argument, when you have the power of the mob behind you. Incidentally, why democracies are just... dangerous mob rule.
As you said, democracies do vote in socialists, or communists, which are far worse.
Banning 'wrongthink' while at the same time allowing murderous ideologies like socialism to roam free, so that ideas have killed hundreds of millions of people in history, are actually scot-free, does seem paradoxical, at the very least.
> As you said, democracies do vote in socialists, or communists, which are far worse.
Hell, they elect them. An actual socialist president was elected in 2022 and is in power right now. And he appointed another communist to act as a judge in the supreme court. The brazilian government is absolutely filled with these people. Our economics minister wrote a dissertation on the soviet union's economics shortly before it collapsed. An economics minister who doesn't believe in private property. I wish I was making this stuff up.
Most brazilians apparently think that communism died with the soviet union and that any talk of socialism in Brazil is just baseless conspiracy theory. Despite the fact we have lots of political parties which feature the words "socialist" and "communist" in their literal names.
I fear for the future of this country. Compared to this, military rule would not be so bad. At least there's a chance for Brazil to prosper that way.
I mean, you complain about "communists" and "socialists" (as if Lula's government was anything like that. I mean, his vice president is Geraldo Alckmin. Not really an example of socialist).
But that is all beyond the point. You don't mind the coup attempt in January 8th because you are sympathetic to the idea of a military dictatorship in Brazil.
The only possible reading is that you are an authoritarian, as long as the ones you are aligned with politically are in power. You don't value democracy. This conversation is moot.
The funny thing is that you think that a military dictatorship would not be so bad and thst Brazil might prosper, ignoring how hilariously incompetent the military in Brazil is.
There was no coup attempt. And you're right that even if there had been one I would not have minded.
The reason for that is in my world view I am already living in a dictatorship of the judiciary. So it's not that I don't value democracy, it's that Brazil is not really a democracy to begin with.
If I have to choose between a dictatorship of the military and a dictatorship of a communist judiciary, I'd rather live under the military one. An actual democracy would be nice but it doesn't seem to be one of the available choices.
I'm not sure that I'm politically aligned with the military either. It's not like its a right wing haven. Lots of communists in there too and it got even worse after Lula reached power.
I chose my words very carefully specifically because I wanted to avoid even the implication that I think the military is competent. I refer to the brazilian military as the "armed pensionists", they do literally nothing other than suck up our taxpayer money. I wish it was different. I still think they are preferrable to communists in power but that's a very low bar to begin with.
Even so, it would be unwise to underestimate what a military state is capable of. The brazilian dictatorship was responsible for major industrialization and the imports replacement policy. This contributed to the creation of the Lua programming language, for example. I sure as hell want Brazil go even further than that, and these communists aren't getting the job done.
To be precise, lets say that brazil was a constitutional democracy respecting the balance of powers and protecting minorities.
Now, the country, thru the usurpation of previously separated powers, has devolved into something else. What that is is hard to say but it looks like autocratic socialism, fascism or communism. Its hard to say at this point since the executive and executive are mostly looking the other way.
I call it a dictatorship of the judiciary. Simply because our representatives don't matter. They pass laws, judiciary ignores them. They reject laws, judiciary acts as if they had passed. And in the end, it's the judiciary who makes police show up at your house to oppress you.
I agree that it's hard to say what specific class of clown world Brazil has degenerated into but whatever it is it sure as fuck isn't a democracy. Hearing the word "democracy" come out of the mouths of these judge-kings makes me laugh psychotically like the joker.
Let's not have this argument here. Suffice it to say that I have news, videos of the people in question calling themselves communists and socialists. I'll just take their word for it and call it a day.
The CIA and NSA are already involved. The CIA in particular essentially gave the brazilian right the evidence that got our current president arrested for corruption years ago. Biden's CIA guy literally told our former president to stop questioning the elections in a public statement, even some american journalists noticed. The left constantly accused Bolsonaro of being a CIA puppet and I don't even doubt those claims. I just wonder what happened behind the curtains that soured the CIA's opinion of him.
The entire time Bolsonaro was in power he was questioning the election system, doing parades and using public money to promote himself.
His supporters openly asked for military intervention in case he didn't win reelection, something Bolsonaro didn't try to defuse.
In fact, when he lost, he just fled the country.
When truck drivers threatened to stop the country indefinitely in an illegal movement he didn't try to tell them otherwise. When his supporters marched towards Brasília asking for military intervention, he didn't try to say nothing against that. Up until the point where soldiers arrived to contain the situation in Brasilia, because the police wasn't doing anything, being complacent with the situation, these invaders were thinking these soldiers were there to help them! They applauded these soldiers that were there to arrest them.
None, not a single one of these facts were present in 2013 or 2016.
And you are trying to tie these events together? Come on now.
Literally none of the things you said amounts to a coup d'etat.
Our countrymen begged on their knees for the military to intervene only to be arrested and placed in a concentration camp as political prisoners while their "hero" abandoned them like the cowardly rat he is.
That's not a coup. A coup would have been the military actually intervening. A coup would have been those people showing in the capital with weapons and executing authorities then seizing power.
You simply cannot convince me that a bunch of elderly folks with bibles and brazilian flags angrily protesting the election amounts to a coup d'etat.
> Our countrymen begged on their knees for the military to intervene only to be arrested and placed in a concentration camp as political prisoners while their "hero" abandoned them like the cowardly rat he is.
Let me get this straight, you mean to say that Bolsonaro's mistake was not taking these protests far enough?
I mean to say I feel extremely sad for my countrymen who cared far too much about this cursed land and who ended up betrayed in literally every way. Betrayed by the military they put their faith in. Betrayed by the politician they believed in. Wouldn't be surprised if they still liked the guy despite it all.
Whether it was a mistake or not, I dunno. I just don't fault him for trying whatever clumsy thing it is that he tried. I don't fault him because I don't believe this country is a democracy. I think it's a judiciary dictatorship. Watching those unelected judges say the word "democracy" actually makes me cringe.
Our views from democracy and the current state of things is very different I don't know how to reconcile them. I don't think this is how democracy is done. You don't just bully yourself into power when there is a crisis, however long it is. And there isn't such a thing as a judiciary dictatorship, not when you have a conservative controlled and disproportionately empowered congress and an executive power without governability. What we have is a democratic crisis that must be solved through democratic means.
Whatever distorted view of nationalism and the role of the military forces is just a smokescreen for partisans trying to seize power and failing.
EDIT: I lay out in my blog a bit of what I think is the correct path in starting to defuse this democratic crisis we see worldwide at the individual level https://xd1.dev/2024/07/against-political-realism
> Our views from democracy and the current state of things is very different I don't know how to reconcile them.
I don't know either. This is often my experience trying to discuss this.
For what its worth I will read your blog and try to better understand your position.
> You don't just bully yourself into power when there is a crisis, however long it is.
Who are we supposed to turn to when the Surpeme Court grants itself limitless powers? Gives itself the right to be the victim, investigator, prosecutor and judge? Starts creatively interpreting and selectively applying the constitution of the nation? Basically doing whatever they want, backed by the fact their pens move armed police forces?
It's the supreme court. There is no higher court you can appeal to. Is there anyone you can turn to?
Anyone other than the military? Which is actually listed as the "moderating power" that's meant to intervene in exactly such extreme situations?
I don't have a good answer to that. No one has has ever been able to give me the answer either. That's why I don't fault those folks for asking for military intervention.
I don't believe there is a democratic solution to this because the supreme court is not actually a democratic institution to begin with. They are not elected by us, they are appointed by our representatives. Once in the supreme court, their mandates are lifetime. Short of suffering impeachment by the other politicians, they're basically untouchable. There is a 100% chance that the politicians who can impeach them are hopelessly corrupt though, I seriously doubt they're gonna screw around with judges who can put them in the ground.
> I don't have a good answer to that. No one has has ever been able to give me the answer either. That's why I don't fault those folks for asking for military intervention.
If we had went through all the due process for debating and processing these issues in the public sphere I would tend to agree. Or if it reached such catastrophic outcomes as we have seen in other countries.
However we went from a mostly systemically dysfunctional government, which is very common, to having fear and despair unilaterally incited by Bolsonaro. When he blames all the issues on communism and the workers party, incite people to kill the opposition, which some supporters took to the extreme of actually gunning down people celebrating the election, spend the entire time in power questioning the election system without actually improving it, we skip the entire democratic process without giving it a chance to work.
Yes, the workers party spent almost four mandates and nothing changed. But brazillian democracy itself is quite young, it's not even 40 years old. Things take a while to get better, and we already see our democratic institutions get better over time.
After saying all that I kind of agree that these folks asking for military intervention aren't all at fault. I think they are victims of a strategy of fear Bolsonaro used to gain power. However, I don't think that movement is legitimate and I think if not for the judicial system we might have had way worse problems to worry about than Moraes having talked to two assessors when investigating rioters, or having Moraes close down X for not complying with sovereign country laws. We might even see investigations against de Moraes, just as we have seen against Moro. We have precedence for this.
There's one thing about Bolsonaro that can't be denied: he made people proud to be brazilian again. After decades of subversive worker's party nonsense, it was a breath of fresh air. What you call fear and despair is happiness and hope for many if not most.
But in general I don't disagree with you. Bolsonaro is a moron and it's pretty sad that he was the brazilian right's most viable candidate. His mandate had good points but was also full of completely unnecessary controversy. He was obssessed with saying insulting and outrageous things for the sake of it. He actually could have won if he had simply kept his mouth shut.
> spend the entire time in power questioning the election system without actually improving it
He's not at fault for that. He tried. He's always advocated for the paper trail. Our congress tried too, multiple times. The supreme court wouldn't let them improve the system. They declared the paper trail unconstitutional.
Had the paper trail system been implemented, there would have been zero reasons to question or doubt the election results.
But we just can't have nice things. The judge-king declared that the machines are INQUESTIONABLE!! And started censoring and fining anyone who questioned anything. It's just pathetic. The judge and his obstruction is a major reason why things got to the point they did. He didn't just obstruct progress, he doubled down on his nonsense and started getting arbitrary with the punishments, fines and censorship. It's all "fake news" to him.
I am completely opposed ideologically to the current system but I don't think they're the real problem. The problem is these judges.
Have you ever heard the saying? "Doctors think they're gods, judges know it". Brazil will not be fixed until those words are gone.
> We might even see investigations against de Moraes, just as we have seen against Moro. We have precedence for this.
Couldn't find a translation for the first one, but in a gist you don't need to when, first the GSI is complacent in the coup and when there would have been a bombing attack.
By protest do you mean a coup d’etat? Treason is still punishable by death even in the United States. Sounds like those “protestors” were given a light sentence.
Given that, under Musk, Twitter has caved into such governments as Turkey and India when presented with a censor-or-quit ultimatum, one would think the historical precedent of what Twitter will do is clear.
Unless Musk's principle is really that one needs to bow down to right-wing attempts to censor speech, and a left-wing attempt to censor speech must be resisted at all costs.
(Either way, Musk's adherence to the principle of standing up for free speech universally is very poor, and I truly marvel at anyone who believes him to be a defender of free speech.)
He caves to requests from autocrats and fights requests from independent judiciaries in liberal democracies. That's the more salient dividing line than right vs left.
This is a false narrative. Twitter has said they’ll abide by local laws. In Turkey and India, they did. In Brazil, they’ve made the claim formally that unilateral secret censorship orders from one justice are not legal per Brazil’s own constitution, and so they cannot comply.
You’re using this false equivalence to attack Musk and Twitter as unprincipled when they’re actually being principled.
I believe in Brazil the ultimate authority on the interpretation of the constitution is the one who has told Twitter what they need to do. Such a court saying "your interpretation is wrong, this is what the law says" is by definition the local law to which they need to abide by.
Disobeying that court order means breaking the local law of the land. It is completely fair to ask the question why Twitter seems willing to argue that the courts in one country are wrong and the courts in another country are right, when both courts perhaps seem to violate their own constitution. What is their fundamental principle to choose when they declare a court empowered to interpret its own constitution is doing it wrong?
(I'll note that part of Mike Masnick's excellent speedrunning content moderation is a step noticing that it's not actually a good idea to abide by all countries' local laws, because many countries have local laws that people would get upset at you for abiding by.)
I am reading what you’re saying as a belief that governments don’t make mistakes or don’t abuse their power. And that their action should not be questioned or challenged. But I feel all governments are not trustworthy - even in the US where constitutional protection and legal process is great, there are flaws or mistakes or abuses.
In Brazil’s case - when the order to perform censorship is secret, and when the people arguing against censorship are not allowed to have legal representation without implied threats of arrest, how can the public even know of or debate the legality of these orders? It creates an opening for abuse of power, which is exactly what is happening here in my opinion.
By the way, each of the other countries you are referencing is a different situation with different nuances. For example, regarding the liability of lawyers representing defendants. Or whether the orders are done and secret. Or what their constitution says. It’s been a while since I dived into this but my recollection was that Twitter correctly complied in other cases (legally not morally) and is correct to take a stand here.
In Brazil’s case, it is important to note that there has been no new legislation that granted these powers to this single Supreme Court justice who is unilaterally issuing secret orders for censorship. Orders are not issued by the judicial bench as a whole. Some of the other justices have spoken in support of the approach, but it is possible that they are themselves acting out of fear because of how things have gone. For his part, De Moraes claims his power comes from a different court (to simplify, Brazil has two different top level courts with different powers) but it is suspect because courts cannot make laws and because he served in that court previously.
Ultimately though, censorship is bad. Free speech is good. And even if it was legal I think the use of such power is highly unethical and not compatible with democracies. For that alone, I feel Twitter / X is on the right side of this issue, independent of legalities or what the situation is in other countries.
Having to cave to countries pushing for more and more content control is what their predecessors made possible. And it isn't just Turkey or India, it is the US and parts of Europe too.
For years there were arguments that a private platform could censor what they like. I guess some people are just ignoring the repercussions.
Would be good if you listed all the abuses, violations, crimes happening in Brazil committed by the Supreme Court instead of vaguely referring to something the vast majority of users here will have no idea about, nor any way to research if they don't speak Portuguese.
- STF started a secret investigation about fake news, which is illegal because it’s not written on our constitution and make it the police and the punisher.
- people under investigation or jailed can’t access this secret investigation, even their lawyers can’t, so they don't know why they're being arrested for.
- STF is starting other investigations without being provoke, which is illegal under our constitution.
- they send one person to prison because he was running from justice on USA, but this person lawyer prove that he never leave the country. Even the USA authorities say he didn’t entered the country.
- they censored a magazine that published a report of corruption inside de court.
- they censored some journal about people calling to end the secret investigation.
- they are trying people who should be tried in the first instance (the US equivalent of local courts), not in the supreme court.
- all orders sent to X (twitter) are secret, including the reason why this person or tweet must be down. which is, of course, illegal under our "marco legal da internet", a law approved years ago that was suppose to regulate internet.
> - STF started a secret investigation about fake news, which is illegal because it’s not written on our constitution and make it the police and the punisher.
As far as I know this is disputed and not black-and-white, there's been a back and forth between PGR, AGU and the court on the legality of the Supreme Court on investigating activities that directly affect members of the court (including technical employees employed by the court themselves). I'm not so into Brazilian politics since I left more than 10 years ago but got some context from chatting with some law practicing friends.
> - STF is starting other investigations without being provoke
I don't understand what this means.
> - they send one person to prison because he was running from justice on USA, but this person lawyer prove that he never leave the country. Even the USA authorities say he didn’t entered the country.
What person? Would like to research more about this case.
> - they censored a magazine that published a report of corruption inside de court.
Is this about the "O Antagonista" and "Crusoé" debacle from 2019?
Edit: just checked about the case in 2019 and if that is what you refer to, the request to take down the article was due to the article lying about Odebrecht mentioning Dias Toffoli and reporting that his deposition was reported to the PGR and Lava Jato task force while both denied receiving any material about it. It sounds like a pretty clear case of defamation/libel.
> - they censored some journal about people calling to end the secret investigation.
What newspaper was censored in this case? Also keen to check it out if given more information.
> As far as I know this is disputed and not black-and-white, there's been a back and forth between PGR, AGU and the court on the legality of the Supreme Court on investigating activities that directly affect members of the court (including technical employees employed by the court themselves). I'm not so into Brazilian politics since I left more than 10 years ago but got some context from chatting with some law practicing friends.
The judiciary cannot act ex officio. It must be prompted by the public prosecutor or another party, such as defense attorneys.
> What person? Would like to research more about this case.
Filipe G Martins.
> Is this about the "O Antagonista" and "Crusoé" debacle from 2019?
Yes.
> Edit: just checked about the case in 2019 and if that is what you refer to, the request to take down the article was due to the article lying about Odebrecht mentioning Dias Toffoli.
Toffoli name was into Odebrecht spreadsheet.
> Reporting that his deposition was reported to the PGR and Lava Jato task force while both denied receiving any material about it. It sounds like a pretty clear case of defamation/libel.
Funny. Evidence collected from Lava Jato is illegal. But Telegram messages collected by a hacker and whose authenticity was not confirmed, were normally used to free corrupt individuals from jail.
Furthermore, who provoked the Supreme Court to censor this article? Or was it something ex officio? If the Supreme Court was provoked, why didn't they choose another rapporteur for the case? Allowing the case to be judged by the supposed "victim" violates some basic precepts of law.
> What newspaper was censored in this case? Also keen to check it out if given more information.
> The judiciary cannot act ex officio. It must be prompted by the public prosecutor or another party, such as defense attorneys.
From what I gather they used Article 43 from the court proceedings, that's the debatable part but they can act under that, no?
>> Reporting that his deposition was reported to the PGR and Lava Jato task force while both denied receiving any material about it. It sounds like a pretty clear case of defamation/libel.
> Funny. Evidence collected from Lava Jato is illegal. But Telegram messages collected by a hacker and whose authenticity was not confirmed, were normally used to free corrupt individuals from jail.
Nothing of what I said was evidence collected from Lava Jato, you are creating a strawman here.
What I said was: the reporting from "O Antagonista"/"Crusoé" mentioned that there was material being handed over by Odebrecht's lawyers to the Lava Jato task force and to the PGR about Toffoli, while both (the task force and PGR) denied there was ever anything handed over to them by Odebrecht naming "friend of a friend" as Toffoli. And that's libel.
> Filipe G Martins.
Yeah, reading about his imprisonment seems like the Moraes is using a similar heavy-handed illegal approach used by Moro/Delagnol during Lava Jato. He shouldn't have been arrested given the cause (the travel) didn't happen, even though he was part of the coup planning I can't ever condone this overstepping of the court, pretty stupid from Moraes part.
> From what I gather they used Article 43 from the court proceedings, that's the debatable part but they can act under that, no?
Kind of. The article 43 from the court proceedings, is clear when it says that it limits the power of investigation to the court's premises. The internet does not seem to me to be a court's premises.
> And that's libel.
I'm not sure. And it's hard to analise it since the evidence has either been destroyed or is under seal.
For the Martins case it seems like there was some actual paperwork issues from the US where he was incorrectly listed as having traveled; hard (for me) to tell whether that was stupidity or malice though.
What remains of justice when the judge is also the vindictive victim and the accuser?
Recently the press published message leaks indicating wrong conduct from Moraes or at least from his minions. In one of the messages they even cogitated — joking? — hiring someone to kidnap those they couldn't get extradited. But what summarizes all is Tagliaferro's, the chief of the supreme court investigative team (yep), answer to a journalist when asked if he was responsible for the leaks. That he, knowing Moraes, "would never have the courage" to do so.
The same court that removed the penalties of more than two hundred confessed criminals during the investigation "operation car wash" [1]
It was the largest corruption scandal in history of human kind [2].
The criminals confessed their crimes due to the sentence reduction incentives of the 'rewarded collaboration' law. One of the most important requirements to get the sentence reduction is "you cannot lie, if you do, you lose everything".
I find your comment a little hard to parse - can you provide a link to something more specific about what you are claiming the Brazilian Supreme Court did that was corrupt? I didn't see anything obvious on the wikipedia page.
Sorry, it's hard when it is not my native language.
Yes, they are very corrupt. They are untouchable, and use the given power to their own benefit. The law is deliberately written very subjective so they can interpret and judge as it is convenient to them. They even use their power across their jurisdiction, which has been bringing debate in society lately.
Politics is an exchange of favours in that environment. To have an idea of how it is, I recommend you to watch "Elite Squad II" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1555149/
On one hand, I do want more countries taking social media to court.
However, in this specific case, it's been pretty clear that the Brazilian court orders send to X/Twitter. Specifically, some that order the censoring of specific individuals are illegal. (Some of these orders appear to violate other Brazilian laws)
This is a hard one to really judge. Just a mess overall.
Alexandre de Moares is the president of the Brazilian Supreme Court, a selected group containing the most powerful individuals in the country. They are named by the president and once they are done, they never leave the position until they reach their compulsory retirement at the age of 75 years old.
They form the highest court of law in Brazil for constitutional issues and its rulings cannot be appealed.
Brazil has been on a path to authoritarianism, especially since the last election. Moraes, the justice issuing unilateral orders to ban accounts, censor people, and arrest them (for political speech), is drunk with power and doing the sitting government’s bidding. Twitter is right to fight morally, for free speech. But they’re also right to challenge it legally - their claim is that Moraes’s orders aren’t constitutional under Brazilian law.
Since 2019 when the "fake news" inquisition started. Someone ran an article on one of these judge-kings, and they basically gave themselves unlimited powers to investigate and judge whatever they want. Then the supreme court turned into a political party composed entirely of unelected individuals with direct power over police forces. That's the true coup.
Thanks for those links. I am surprised at what I am reading as it is worse than I thought. It’s also disappointing to not see these angles explored fully in mainstream media, as Brazil is a high population country with significant global economic ties, and this political shift is a huge problem for everyone.
Not explored because you are talking with a very biased account that publicize the discourse of the far right in Brazil. There is nothing illegal about what is being done. Brazilian laws allows removal of online content in case of hate speech, violation of electoral regulations, threats or for benefit of ongoing investigation. If you are in Brazil, you should obey Brazilian laws, and the same is true for any other country.
I'm not an "account". I'm a person. I have a name. I'm not a fake either. My work has been featured here on HN. I post what I think, not some prepared discourse.
I assume you can cite the exact laws which refute every single one of the points raised in the comments I cited?
We're not even gonna get into the censorship stuff this time around. We'll limit our focus to the very specific irregularities of the supreme court which are well outlined in the aforementioned comments. You don't even have to refute both comments, the first one is enough:
Take the sentences starting with a dash and cite the laws which refute those claims, one by one. Cite the laws that say these judges can do everything that was outlined in that comment. Link me to the law that supposedly allows supreme court judges to investigate, prosecute, judge, sentence and punish others for crimes against themselves. Take your time. I will be checking my threads for replies.
If you refute those points, I will change my world view accordingly, and I will never cite those comments ever again. I will even thank you for making me smarter than I was yesterday.
If you can't, then at least have enough decency to stop commenting this "brazilian laws allow..." nonsense like clockwork. Simply because brazilian law clearly does not allow judges to do what these judges are doing. Also, at this point brazilian law is irrelevant anyway since whatever these judges decide is the real law. I mean, our representatives rejected the proposed "fake news" law, and the judges proceeded as if the law was in effect anyway.
I keep laughing at the "law" arguments people keep bringing up - even if the law allowed for this kind of thing (which is clearly against the Brazillian constitution), does that make it right?
Yes, the law is apparently abusable enough that it allows the supreme court to deem whatever it wants illegal and censor what they disagree with. Does that mean it makes sense?
These people are in for a rude awakening in a few years.
Arguing that angle is fruitless. My fellow brazilians seem to think the law is some kind of holy tome which holds the ultimate truth of the universe. Maybe it's because we never had racial segregation laws like in the USA. There was no Martin Luther King Jr. to introduce the concept of civil disobedience to them.
Hilariously, things are so screwed up that arguing this morals angle is not even necessary. The existing laws already do a fine job at not allowing what these judges are doing. The whole problem is they're the highest court in the country and they're just doing whatever they want with not a single person able to stop them. "Selectively applying and creatively interpreting" the very simple words written in the constitution.
And every single time people respond with impressive mental gynmnastics to justify the judge-king's actions. I've had people argue with me by citing laws lower than the constitution. By getting into asinine arguments over the definition of free speech and censorship. By arguing over "isonomy". By calling me a moron for presuming to do the judge-king's job as if the contradictions weren't there in plain sight for all to see.
> These people are in for a rude awakening in a few years.
I hope I'm here to see it.
No, really. At this point it's a desperate hope. My own parents, who lived through the military dictatorship, asked me to stop saying this stuff online. They are afraid I'll be arrested.
Calling failing to show up or nominate a legal representative to a judicial hearing in a country that offers a ridiculous number of opportunities to appeal as "feud" shows some bias in reporting.
> Hasn't there been a pretty consistent rachet completely independent of which party happens to be on top at any given moment?
I'd argue no. There are elements sceptical of government power in both parties. (Abolish ICE, abolish the Fed, et cetera.) The problem is they're often married to a general distrust not only of the state, but of other people, to the point of being attracted to delusional conspiracies.
Unfortunately, being a censorious dipshit is a thoroughly bipartisan pasttime.
Personally, I believe the Democrats to be less strident in their efforts to be censorious dipshits, though I have to admit that the Republicans may prove to be the safer option... by virtue of being unable to get anything, which would include destroying First Amendment rights, done.
Pretty obvious that the left is pro censorship. Look at how they’ve abused labels like “hate speech” or “misinformation” or “disinformation” to censor discussions on controversial topics whether it is BLM or COVID or whatever. Look at the Biden-Harris administration pressuring private companies like Meta to do their bidding and censor speech. Tim Walz even said recently that there are limits in free speech, in what I felt was an implicit intent to undermine the first amendment.
Unfortunately many on the left now like government enforced or corporate enforced censorship, and feel there is only one truth everyone must accept without debate. Free speech is a classically liberal value but is now viewed as a conservative value by some.
The right perhaps has versions of this attitude when they want to suppress porn or whatever, but I feel it is less common as a viewpoint and also not as impactful.
In 20 hours Brazil could join China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Venezuela, as the only countries in the world where their citizens are banned from reading Twitter.
We will no longer be allowed to read what Biden, Kamala, the European leaders, the hundreds of thousands of institutions around the world and 350 million fellow earthlings have to say.
All this by way of the sudden and unappealable decision of a single judge this night.
Which law? No law says that. Also worth to notice that X closed it's office and fired everyone in Brazil because they threatened to arrest its employees which is absurd considering they have no administrative authority or technical capability to comply with those orders.
The law says that you need legal representation to be able to do business in Brazil. To sign contracts and pay taxes. Twitter no longer does business (i.e. doesn't sell ads) in Brazil. Twitter fired everyone and left Brazil a few weeks ago.
Twitter is now like Hacker News. A billion-dollar American company (Y) that hosts user-created content, free to be used by anyone on the global Internet.
Hacker News/Y does not need legal representation in Brazil.
X will likely be blocked in Brazil at the ISP level. And this judge-king is also known for threatening arbitrary fines totaling tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars against anyone making use of "subterfuge" to get around censorship. I wouldn't be surprised if one day he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and suddenly Brazil turns into the the first western country to outlaw civilian cryptography.
Maybe this way more people will wake up to all the abuses, violations and honestly, crimes, happening in the country, committed by the Brazilian Supreme Court.