Here it is how it looks like if you try to visit an account of a cult member and political rival of Erdogan from Turkey(the cult used to be ally of Erdogan, then turned against him. Now they publish sometimes credible and other times dubious corruption documents and allegations from exile): https://dropover.cloud/755d93
Also, Twitter has legal representation in Turkey and people are routinely detained, imprisoned or made pay fines for their tweets in Turkey. The country also ranked very poorly on any freedom or democracy index, political figures are routinely held in prison. Erdogan government often dismisses orders from the Turkish constitution court, if you think that Musk is into constitution - it doesn’t add up.
AFAIK Twitter is also blocked in China and Russia.
What is the fuss around Brazil? Why this is not just another day with business as usual?
As I understand it, X is avoiding to pay fines in Brazil, so in retaliation, Brazil ordered X to be blocked in Brazil if they don't respond. Starlink refused to follow along with the X block, so fines have been imposed at Starlink as well, for not following court order. I'm guessing the fines would accumulate daily, so now Starlink is adhering to the block.
Add in a bit of personality dramas, corruption and typical billionaire and politician bullshit and you have the full picture.
Why would you assume that I intentionally and delibrately lied | misrepresented this?
What I did do was quote EuroNews who reported (as was linked on HN yesterday) that:
Brazil's Supreme Court voted unanimously on Monday to uphold the decision by one of its justices to ban Elon Musk’s social media platform, X. [1]
You are correct that it was (as is common in many countries) a sub-panel of justices .. who all voted unanimously with no dissent opinions.
The panel that voted in a virtual session was comprised of five of the full bench's 11 justices, including de Moraes, who last Friday ordered the platform blocked for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law [2]
Regardless, the point made stands - describing the initial ban as the action of a single rogue justice no longer holds water.
So who appointed them means I get to ignore them? So I could start doing abortions in Florida up to birth tomorrow, because I don't agree about the decision of the Trump SCOTUS?
Appointed - has influence, it is too simple to pretend that you don't understand it. And no need for allegory - it is just an attempt to deceive your opponent.
thats the system, like in USA, the elected presidente chose the supreme court judges, and the judge in question was appointed by a right wing president in 2017 when current one is a left wing from a diferent party. so, yes, influence, but in this situation twitter is acting as a rogue company and refuses to comply with the law, it can fight in the court it they do not agree, but as in most countries, is not up to the criminal to decide what is legal and what is not, for that most countries have a due legal process, as is the case for everything that is happening
twitter is not complying with brazilian law, as stated in the constitution, and within brazilian legal framework, the supreme court has the legal atribution of defining what is legal or not, juditiary branch of government is separeted from executive and the judge in question was appointed by a right wing president in 2016 , current one is left wing, so everything acording to the law, telegram had this issue in 2020, they comply and now they can operate, as will twitter after comply with a simple court order, wich is required to have a legal representative in brazil, there is no question if it can or cannot operate, it can, just need to have someone to be responsable for the company and comply with the law
A. The law in Brazil says any company needs a legal representative in the country. X does not.
B. Under hate speech and misinformation laws some accounts were asked to be removed. They did not.
C. Because the company wasn’t replying at all to court requests, they consider that obstruction of justice vs trying to appeal the court
D. As far as Starlink they consider it a “de facto economic group under the control of Elon Musk” which is mostly true.
Now as far as the Constitution, this is the Supreme court. So saying X has the right to judge the Supreme Court to be in breach of the Constitution, when they themselves are meant to make those decisions, is pretty nutty to me. It's like saying I don't agree with the abortion ban in Texas/Florida so I will continue to do them, since I don't accept Roe V Wave was overturned by Dobbs, so I will just do my own thing, keep doing abortions and f the court.
That's a good way to get yourself arrested, which is what happened here.
Instead you should look into why do you think this to be the truth?
Considering your posts were so egregious even the mods took action against them, you actually showed everyone you are most likely a bot/sockpuppet/radical of some sort.
I guess the fuss is about Bolsonaro being depicted as a dictator in the media and as soon as Lula da Silva takes over, authoritarian measures such as these are pushed forward?
This was decided by a Brazilian Supreme Federal Court justice, not Lula da Silva. In fact, the justice was appointed in 2017. Also, the court upheld his decision 2 days ago. Your comment is disingenuous and making this a liberal vs conservative issue when it's actually about X not respecting Brazilian law.
The key difference is that Brazil is going after right-wingers. Not your average right-winger mind you, those seven accounts were closely related to the Brazilian version of Jan 6th: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Brazilian_Congress_attack
Since right-wingers are pretty much the core audience of Twitter nowadays, they complained, it reached Musk, he decided to take a bold stance, he lost the entire market. Simple as that.
Platforms like Twitter are backdoors into our society, it's that simple. When in history did we have so much mass scale insanity and hysteria going on before social media?
I know 100% crap things happened before social media, but the scale of the nonsense is for sure unprecedented.
not only after right-wingers, is the usual nazi, pedo violence too, but the ones who make noise are the usual far right , since no pedo goes on public to ask to have rights
I see no need to turn conspiratorial, he's just gullible and easily persuaded by whoever's the loudest in his replies. If by some miracle leftists started agreeing with him, glazing him up every time he tweets something stupid, calling him the world's only good billionaire or something, I'm sure he'd switch sides.
> What is the fuss around Brazil? Why this is not just another day with business as usual?
The orders in Brazil were issued in secret. X couldn't even show that the accounts were withheld by legal demand. Turkey government is considered authoritarian by most where in Brazil the waters are still shallow.
I suppose if Twitter still had a legal representative there, they would have been involved. But hey, somebody decided not to keep that office, so here we are.
Said who? Any criminal will say that what they do is justified and legal and all. Only justice will officially decide on that and here justice decided, whether somebody (you, me, twitter) likes it or not. There's always the appeal path, and if all exhausted and I still don't like it, well, there. And honestly I can't even begin to understand the blue-eyed logic behind "I don't like a legal decision so I will not respect it and expect impunity"
> Said who? Any criminal will say that what they do is justified and legal and all.
The scans from the secret court ordes published by X on @AlexandrFiles. Note, if these are fabrications why haven't the STF denied their content? It's not just talk, evidence was presented.
> Only justice will officially decide on that and here justice decided, whether somebody (you, me, twitter) likes it or not.
You're assuming the rule of law as a premise which isn't the case. This is a heavily politicized case from a judge that is know to be political. Would you have a different opinion if this was a Russian judge instead of Brazilian judge?
> There's always the appeal path, and if all exhausted and I still don't like it, well, there.
There's no way to appeal to an independent court/judge. The appeal is judged by the supreme court and the other judges have strong incentives to not go against their colleague.
What do you mean by "blue-eyed logic"? Do you really need to put race in eveything?
> "I don't like a legal decision so I will not respect it and expect impunity"
What's your instace on Lula being arrested for corruption? What's your instance on leftists invading and setting fire to public buildings in Brazilian in 2006?
Damn, let's be honest! It's beyond censorship! It's an authoritarian judge censoring congressman and random people on X (one account had 50 followers) because he is personally angered by some posts. If he's addicted to social media and that was taking a toll on his mental health he could've used LeechBlock NG or NextDNS. No need to block it for everyone just because you can or to harass an unrelated company because one of the owners pissed you off.
that's not true, everything that is happening is according with the brasilian law, our juditiary is mostly right wing, moraes was appointed by a righ wing president in 2016 and current one is from a oposite left wing party, we are a mostly functional democracy with a real separation between government branches, the issue her is only a matter of comply with existing laws
The fact that a website can be accessed across borders does not mean that within the sovereign territory of a country, it can just not respect its regulations.
Your argument implies that we are supposed to ask the same level of autocracy from Brazil, as from Turkey, China or Russia.
If that’s the argument being made, then fine. Let’s just accept that Brazil shouldn’t be treated like a democracy anymore and that Musk should be coherent and accept Brazil’s autocratic whims the same way he accepts Russia’s, China’s and Turkey’s ones.
Brazil is being overtaken by politicians who think they are above Brazil's constitution, which is quite catastrophic since Brazil seemed to be a good (?) republic.
Brazil's last president was literally an officer in the military dictatorship that ran the country for decades, and he has loudly talked about how that dictatorship should have killed like 20,000 more people. You can disagree with Lula, but idk how it gets more "above the constitution" than your job literally being to kill political opponents.
this ex-military guy attemped a coup, to be appointed as presidente in spite of election results, they literally asked for a "military intervention" , the coup failled because US military was not onboard as they where in 1964 when a violent , blody and corrupt dictatorship was in place , with a US navy ship in Rio de Janeiro harbor. 2022 attempt was much like trump attempted in 2020 but now civil society , and the world reacted and uphold the election
Don't talk as if this guy actually tried something. He ran away to the USA like a coward, like the rat he is. Literally abandoned everyone who ever supported him.
> they literally asked for a "military intervention"
You bet they did.
What are you supposed to do when the supreme court usurps all power and installs a dictatorship of the judiciary in your country?
There's actually a device in brazilian law that lists the military as a superior "moderating power" that's supposed to intervene and bring order to things if the balance between the other three powers gets too fucked up.
Why, that's the exact situation we found ourselves in back in 2022. Hell it's the situation we still find ourselves in. Unelected, unaccountable judge-kings not only censoring political speech but getting away with it.
So they tried asking the military to bring order to this mess. Not only did the military refuse, when the military actually showed up, it was to arrest them.
That's what happened on January 8th. That's the story of the "heroic" brazilian military, and the complete fools who actually believed in them.
So let's drop this silly "coup" narrative. There was no "coup". There was not even an attempt at a "coup". There was a protest where they asked the military to sort this mess out. The result of that protest was the protesters ended up in a gulag.
My friend don't fall for this trap. Every Brazilian with at least half a brain knows that Lula is corrupt, Moraes is authoritarian and Bolsonaro a coward. He is just poorly repeating the talking points of those that deceitfully try to change the subject and justfy the unjustifiable. Bolsonaro is the Left panacea.
He entered military prep school in 73 and graduated in 77. Re-democratization started in 74. Obviously he had no political influence at the time even though he supported the military government as a politician. Anyway it doesn't matter, Bolsonaro being good or bad has nothing to do with X being blocked.
Ah sorry, my bad. Nonetheless, here's a list of sourced Bolsonaro quotes including like three to the effect of "I wish that dictatorship had killed more people." https://jacobin.com/2018/10/jair-bolsonaro-quotes-brazil-ele... (Also he says "I'm favorable to torture" and "It was a mistake to torture and not to kill." Which is it, Jair?)
It's no secret that Bolsonaro made a career on this kind of rhetoric but this is a tangent. Bolsonaro being a good or bad person will not make concrete authoritarian acts from the supreme court less authoritarian.
I don't think the supreme court acted in an authoritarian way, they just don't have the same legal tradition as the US does. Regardless, I was responding specifically to the notion that Brazil was a thriving democracy before Lula took office, which is clearly absurd given that the last holder of that office has built his entire public persona on hating democracy.
> I don't think the supreme court acted in an authoritarian way, they just don't have the same legal tradition as the US does.
What do you mean by that?
The constitution on article 5 and 220 is clear on freedom of expression being a guaranteed right. e.g "manifestations of thought, creation, expression, and information may not be subject to any restrictions"
> responding specifically to the notion that Brazil was a thriving democracy before Lula took office, which is clearly absurd
Brazil has a long history of authoritarian and populist governments yet it's a democracy since 1988 despite the erosion. And certainly more thriving than Cuba or Venezuela. This notion isn't absurd at all. If you think that a party that is part of an ideological block of authoritarians like Castro, Chavez, Maduro, Xi, Putin et cetera and that has stayed in power for 16 of the last 22 years has done nothing to consolidate and perpetuate power you are beyond naivety.
It's not just Elon. Michael Shellenberger & TheFP for example has been reporting on this as well. You might not be impressed by the censorship happening in your country, but it's certainly worrying. I wouldn't know what to think if Canada banned Twitter.
He's in the wrong morally or in terms of following the law?
When the supreme court is the victim, the prosecutor, the law maker, and the law aprover all at once, the only thing you need to do to break the law is not do as they say.
> You might not be impressed by the censorship happening in your country, but it's certainly worrying.
For him the ends justify the means. Such people are more political and emotional than truthful and rational. When the current president, Lula, was (rightfully) arrested for corruption they put a show about right to due process. But clearly they don't care about right to due process and it's just another tool in a political toolbox.
Subsequent examination of the case pointed out the judge conspired with the accusation forging evidence causing many sentences, including Lula's, to be nullified. Lula's was nullified because the judge in question didn't even have jurisdiction over the case, so the forgery of evidence wasn't even litigated. The judge was subsequently named to head the Ministry of Justice for Bolsonaro, who won the election since Lula was unable to run.
You're biased. There was collusion between the judge and prosecutors but there was no forging. Evidence is indisputable, most of the accused made deals and confessed the crimes. The process was nullified by the same authoritarian and corrupt supreme court. I recommend anyone interested to read the page on Wikipedia.
> The judge was subsequently named to head the Ministry of Justice for Bolsonaro, who won the election since Lula was unable to run.
And so? Lula recently appointed his lawyer and minister of justice to the supreme court. Of 11 supreme court judges 7 were appointed by Lula and his party. Another one is a name close to his vice-president (Moraes). And even one of the two Bolsonaro appointees is a man that made career under Roussef.
> while he knows he would get blocked in Turkey in 2 seconds.
I guarantee Turkey is a minuscule revenue source for Twitter and that he doesn't care. His position is that he obeys lawful orders rather than the extralegal and often obviously illegal means centrist administrations have been using to surveil and censor. Starlink may have changed direction simply because the Supreme Court confirmed the dictator's twitter ban.
And how is this different from Turkey? The Turkish constitution court decisions are often not upheld, there are people in prison who are in prison despite the court ruling.
Brazil was a crushing dictatorship for a very long time, precipitated by similar frauds as this one*. The US helped that dictatorship happen by moving ships next to Brazil to back it up, and we're helping this one.
If you're confused by the self-righteous of upper-middle class Brazilians about this, they had the same reaction to disappearances and torture during the dictatorship. You wouldn't dare take over a country without the support of the upper-middle class who will have to administer it. You can convince them of anything that doesn't affect their comfort at all. They supported Bolsonaro's coup, and now they'll support the destruction of freedom of speech in their country to keep Bolsonaro from speaking. They're actually beaming with pride about how they're not free to speak, similar to neocons in the US.
I thought Lula was mostly a good guy, but he seems more a passenger than a president at this point. The administration must be very confident of being able to prevent future elections, because they won my a tiny margin (just as Labour in the UK and the Democrats in the US), but they think they have the mandate to come down hard. Brasil nunca mais?
[*] the evil of Elon Musk being a bit libertarian means that all Brazilians should be censored.
Labour in the UK didn't win by a slim margin. They were +10% of the popular vote and have a landslide majority in Parliament. It hasn't been unusual in the past for a govt in the UK to win while losing the popular vote, so they do have a mandate.
Labour won a majority of the seats but barely increased their percentage of the vote (33.7%) over what they managed in the previous election when they lost handily (32.1%). It was the most disproportionate election in UK history in terms of how popular vote mapped to seats won.
You may be technically correct but the comment above has a point. It’s not a strong mandate, and it’s more fair to emphasize that the Tories collapsed than that Labour won.
Bolsonaro has his supporters and a share of then did ask for a military coup, but those are minority..
Majority of the country was against a coup.. But popular support changed nothing..
The military coup did not worked because the US send messages indicating they would not support it, so the air force and army commanders backed out of it..
brazil is a functional liberal democracy, current presidente is left wing, rightfull elected in 2022 by a process recognized by the world, including USA en EU, China, russia and all. Legislative has a majority of right wing elected deputies, juditiary is choosen by open access civil service examination with some reasonable requirements (law degree), except the ones in suppreme court which are selected by elected president (like in USA), they do not stay for life, although and must quit when reach 75 years old
Speaking as an American who probably has a pretty typical perspective of Brazil—my impression was that Brazil was the country in South America with values closest to those in the US. If Twitter's leadership had the same misapprehension then it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable for them to push back against an order that clearly wouldn't fly in the US.
Now, this does suggest either that they completely ignored their Brazilian legal team, didn't have one, or said team was incompetent. So this is not an excuse for their behavior so much as an explanation.
An average American in the US expects this from Turkey and expects different from Brazil. That's apparently a rather ignorant perspective, but such is life.
Not long ago an average Brazilian expected this from Turkey and expected different from Brazil but the times they are changing. And Brazil is a canary for implementing this modus operations on US. Thankfully US constitution and institutions are much more robust but they will try and will have popular support.
> If Twitter's leadership had the same misapprehension then it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable for them to push back against an order that clearly wouldn't fly in the US
Huh? If the team is in Brazil, why would they oppose something that "would fly" in Brazil but not in the US? Doesn't matter if the entity itself (Twitter in this case) is in the US, if you're doing business in another country, even with a office there, you follow that country's laws and regulations.
Oh you'd be surprised how about any US company tries to push their world (and legal) view on the local subsidiaries, regardless of the local legal system. Managers are appointed on the basis of "just make it happen" and of course they cannot make it happen so they get replaced - with the next one, who again does their best to ignore what the local legal or employee or middle management tries to tell them.
That's why I specified that this clearly shows incompetence somewhere—either the US entity made the call without listening to anyone in Brazil or the people in Brazil didn't adequately clarify the situation. Either way, it sure looks like the US leadership (probably mostly Musk) misjudged the situation by projecting US law and values onto the Brazilian system, which is a mistake they would never make with Turkey.
> misjudged the situation by projecting US law and values
This happens almost by rule when US companies operate outside of the US, this is not some exception to this rule, so hardly surprising that it also happened here.
I'm not sure sure it's "incompetence" as much as just a cultural difference.
He is abusing the trust people had in the platform before he took it over. Many people believe what they read on there wholesale because it had a decade of semi-legitimate journalist and other respected figures participating.
Former Twitter employees admitted the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story didn’t violate any Twitter policies but it was taken down anyway. They also admitted they made no attempt to verify the authenticity of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The conservative-leaning parody site, The Babylon Bee, was suspended by Twitter for 12 hours, after it had mockingly awarded transgender government official Rachel Levine the title "Man of the Year."
Bit hyperbolic ?
Anyway, that link you sen is hilarious, Twitter is a private company and platform, they can stop showing useless stories if they want too, there is no law against removing total rubbish from the platform.
Twitter also had a right to "free speech".
I'd only really any of this as a problem if laws were passed banning discussion about..."the holy laptop".
The bee is lame, I'd remove that from my platform too.
How do you get to authoritarian, when it’s the Brazilian authorities demanding that people be silenced? Perhaps you’re referring to some unrelated situation where X has been censoring people?
Also, those accounts were used by people who were investigated by the equivalent of the FBI, the Policia Federal (PF). The initial request to block those accounts AFAIK came from them, and the fact that this case ended up in the hands of the Supreme Court is because Elon decided to play chicken, escalating the situation in every possible way for seemingly no good reason.
That may make the Brazilian government less authoritarian, but that doesn’t make anyone else more authoritarian. If anything, the fact that Musk is opposing even a very small act of authoritarianism would suggest that he is very strongly against authoritarianism.
In Turkey this wouldn't fly for even a second. He thinks he can make an example out of Brazil (and it's clearly striking a nerve even if it ends up not working out.)
As another commenter noted, the illegal content (under Brazilian law) on Twitter is one thing, but additionally Twitter has not responded to any legal action and does not have a representative in the country, which Brazilian law requires of them (https://apnews.com/article/brazil-x-elon-musk-shutdown-morae...). Musk can whine all he wants, but boring procdural rules still apply to him.
Additionally, Musk complies prolifically with censorship requests when they come from racist fascists like Narendra Modi. The source for that is literally Twitter itself in its report on removal requests (the link is in this article): https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-or... .
What's the difference? Well, Musk likes Modi and his vicious crackdown on Muslims, and he doesn't like Lula's government because he's a popular leftist. Like, you don't have to agree with either side to see that the only principle at play here is Musk's personal political grievances.
I wonder if we'll ever get a truthful biography of the reasons for and circumstances around his public actions over time? It would be great to peer past rumour and conjecture.
> Not sure if it’s still true but for a while you could get instantly banned for saying “cisgender.” Free speech absolutism!
This was never true, and you could have easily checked before posting this. People who are really concerned about misinformation seem to spread it around casually about their enemies.
It's marked as a slur and falls under their hateful conduct policy.
>Elon Musk has deemed the words “cis” and “cisgender” slurs on Twitter and warned that anyone who harasses others on Twitter will receive at least temporary suspension.
While not banned, any tweet with "cis" was labeled as harmful content and immediately hidden. Some people did receive bans iirc. You could type "cis" under actual violent white supremacist posts and your comment would be labeled harmful.
Twitter is not a bastion if free speech. It's a Nazi bar where a certain type ideologically violent free speech is encouraged.
In Brazil's case, the orders are illegal and in some cases contradict the law of other countries.
This was all explained pretty well by X Global Affairs:
https://x.com/GlobalAffairs
Are they running their own courts and judge the Brazilian courts and came to the legally binding conclusion that this particular Brazilian judge is wrong?
A country typically falls into dictatorship by breaking its own laws. A judge issuing orders without due process and threatening to jail legal representatives of a company (again without due process), kind of seems a little like a dictatorship in the making.
You're projecting US values onto a country that is not the US.
All of Latin America is like this, and if X wants to do business there, this is the cost of business.
Twitter was happy to do this in Turkey and other countries. But Brazil has Steve Bannon and Bob Mercer with their hands there, so that should be a factor.
No. They convinced them to willingly use addictive substances that would kill them while, at the same time, suppressing research into the negative effects of smoking and paying lobbying groups to prevent legislation against smoking.
Moral relativism at its finest, when a person selling cigarettes at a gas station is equal to Pol Pot.
I'm curious where would you rather live:
1. A place where they sell cigarettes and deceive you how dangerous they are, but you don't have to buy them if you don't want to.
2. A place where you and you family can be disappeared in the middle of the night. Mind you you can still get cigarettes here as well, but with a lot less variety.
So, since I don't want to shift goal posts and I originally said deaths not murder.
Even if we include all tobacco and opiate related deaths, governments are winning in the death toll game by a lot. And if we factor in pollution related deaths we will also need to factor in lives saved from products produced by businesses as well.
It's not the company, it's the values being enforced. Everyone was fine with Apple getting an antitrust case and also that fight with the EU.
Generally, I believe that companies should never act against the laws of a country. If China orders a company to censor something, I'm mad at the government, not the company.
it's not the case in Brazil, most issues requests to take down content are related to the usual nazi, pedo, violence threads and simple and plain lies proven by overwhelming contrary evidence , everything is open to discussion by the involved parties, no secret tribunal exist in brazil, like some us patriot act tribunals
it is not up to the criminals to decide what is or is not legal, is up to the judges, if they do not agreed, the law is clear, you can fight in court, but you must comply
>A ruling of a court - even the highest court of the land - does not make something law.
Isn't that precisely how common law legal systems work? There is a law but its definition isn't strictly that of what the books say but rather the judicial precedents made in relation to it?
the site is not blocked, the question is not comply with brazilian law, if they comply the site will be unblocked, thats a simple and direct matter of not complying with a court order, is not up to twitter to decide what is legal or not in our country, is up to the juditiary branch of governement, Which is separated from executive branch, much like the US and all liberal democracies , the supreme court judges are appointed by the elected president, like in US, but they do not stay all life, must quit at 75 years old. The judge in question was appointed by a righ wing presidente in 2017, current presidente is a left wing from a oposite party.
I don't know why people get so "twitchy" about this topic, what don't you understand about this situation being unique in history? I didn't say I support this level of censorship. I'm just smart enough and sympathetic enough to see how the platform causes issues for democracy and how this is a hard thing to grapple with for western democratic society. Smart people are using our morality against us and plenty of people fall for it.
Everyone I know that seriously uses Twitter, I've basically distanced myself from. It's an insane platform.
> what don't you understand about this situation being unique in history?
Because this exact argument is brought every single time someone supports censorship. Free speech is easy to support when you agree with what is being said, what matters is what happens when you disagree.
> I'm just smart enough and sympathetic enough to see how the platform causes issues for democracy and how this is a hard thing to grapple with for western democratic society. Smart people are using our morality against us and plenty of people fall for it.
And other smart people tell us that "actually, we do kinda need to subvert our values in this case, trust me". Now, I do see that there are shades of gray, but Twitter is far from a radical platform (we're not talking about KiwiFarms here) and, usually, when you're right, you don't need to win by silencing the other sides arguments.
Online anonymous platforms are very different to the free speech required to run and live in a democratic society. Twitter is a platform and social media is a technology. It's a cheap form of influence and is being used as a backdoor into our value systems and the narratives we use to understand our world.
You're anti-censorship. Do you think it would be ok then if a website offer rape porn? or child abuse images? Wouldn't not allowing that being on TV be a form of censorship too?
This isn't hiding books from you about astronomy or stopping you from getting an abortion it's grappling with scams, illegal contraband sales, child porn rackets, foreign electoral interference, information wars and more.
If we as a society find that a specific technology is causing actual harm to our society then we need to have discussions about how those technologies should be used and accessed and regulated. We can't just let our shit get broken because "censorship". Yes, this is a difficult thing to deal with because it's not easy for the reason you state.
Twitter is not a town square and even in a real life town square,sometimes the police have to get involved when shit gets out of hand...are you frustrated about that also? In the actual town square, you need to actual make effort and put your true self on display to exercise your right to free speech. Twitter is a joke compared to that.
> Twitter is a platform and social media is a technology. It's a cheap form of influence and is being used as a backdoor into our value systems and the narratives we use to understand our world.
No disagreement there.
> You're anti-censorship
Very much so, yes.
> Do you think it would be ok then if a website offer rape porn? or child abuse images? Wouldn't not allowing that being on TV be a form of censorship too?
It's absolutely a form of censorship, but (obviously) not one I disagree with.
> If we as a society find that a specific technology is causing actual harm to our society then we need to have discussions about how those technologies should be used and accessed and regulated. We can't just let our shit get broken because "censorship".
Yes, I'm with you as far as "we need to discuss this" and "this might be a problem".
> Twitter is not a town square and even in a real life town square,sometimes the police have to get involved when shit gets out of hand...are you frustrated about that also? In the actual town square, you need to actual make effort and put your true self on display to exercise your right to free speech. Twitter is a joke compared to that.
Well, except, to go with your metaphor, Brazil is saying "there are some drug dealers on the town square, let's just completely block it off and forbid meeting there altogether". Squashing innocent political meetings of your opponents might be an unfortunate side effect, but what can you do.
Just to be clear, I'm not at all a fan of Twitter. But it is a moderated platform and it's far from distributing the horrible stuff that we both agree should be censored [0]. It's not a shining diamond of intelligent discourse, but it's not in any way an extremist platform and it unquestionably did help democracy by helping normal broadcast the crimes happening in their region. Blocking it is a horrible precedent and really throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
[0] Yes, you will find examples of borderline tweets and horrible stuff that slipped through the filters, but that's to be expected for a platform of this size - in general, Twitter is comparatively tame and moderated.
Twitter is not a town square though, at all, not even one with drug dealers in it and here is why. The cost of being a political activist in the real town square is high, if you're being an extreme right wing Nazi, someone might come and challenge you, therefore people who really and truly believe in something worthwhile will go there, in person, against all odds and protest or raise their voices.
On Twitter, the cost to you personally for being a useful idiot is low, but the impact can still be rather high if you spread hateful bullshit and here in lies the problem, the cost of people acting in bad faith, and bad actors spreading shit on Twitter is next to zero, yet the harm is still high.
This is why it's not a town square, or a vehicle for free speech, but it's a very good mass manipulation platform.
If you want free speech, just go make a website, write up whatever you want on there and if you have anything interesting to say, people will read it. Take someone like Sam Harris, people pay for his content, he isn't even on Twitter, yet people find what he has to stay worth paying for.
People like Sam Harris or Jocko Willink have actually made their own spaces so they can say what they like without the fear of censorship, this is a better option in my opinion, the cost to them personally is still high, and therefore they stand by what they say because their actions are attached to their reputation.
Twitter isn't about free speech, or good ideas, it's about network effects, algorithms and influence. It's mostly a shit thing.
I have to go back to my original point, I can fully understand why this is a difficult situation for society and governments to deal with. If we let authoritarians influence our populace into a state of disrepair and ruin (which is what they want) then we'll all turn around and blame the government for failing to act, won't we?
Personally, I can imagine a time when social media platforms are outlawed. From the negative impacts on children, to marauding herds of racist fueled violence and election influence it's not hard to see that time coming, and if it comes, we will still have free speech, just not toxic platforms.
If platforms care about free expression they would not have a formal presence in authoritarian countries. The best way to protect your users is to operate exclusively within US jurisdiction and let subjugated peoples have accounts. Jurisdictional arbitrage works. So does tor.
> The best way to protect your users is to operate exclusively within US jurisdiction
Well, no. If you want to protect your users, don't keep servers/data/legal entities in countries where the government can order you to wiretap your own services and also serve you with a gag order.
So no, the US isn't a great place for people who value free expression.
The US in the 1st amendment has one of the strongest regimes for protecting expression in the world. In this case I'm only considering activity that is intentionally public and published so surveillance isn't considered. Privacy is orthogonal.
> The US in the 1st amendment has one of the strongest regimes for protecting expression in the world
Sure, but there are plenty of other countries that has "one of the strongest regimes for protecting expression in the world" also, but also doesn't have gag orders, so I'm fairly sure what country I wouldn't host a service like that in.
You yourself said "one of the strongest regimes", so since you didn't say "#1", I'm sure there are other countries in that list of yours. Want to share three of those other ones you were thinking about?
1. Companies are not your friends. This goes for any company;
2. Companies will always choose profit over everything else, including moral stances. Companies may make moral stances. These are temporary blips.
The second is really important because it debunks a lot of propaganda.
A common one is "we can't tax companies (or billionaires) because they'll leave". No they won't. There's really no evidence of this. Even if they do, you, as a government, can say "ok, you've lost access to our market". The US wields access to the US financial system quite effectively as a weapon both domestically and with foreign policy. Yet we continue to give mostly ineffective corporate subsidies.
Drug prices is another one. It often comes up that US customers pay 10-100x+ for the same drug you can get in Europe or Canada. Lots of excuses are given for this but the reality is that prices are so high because the government has been bought and importing drugs has been made illegal. Even things like Medicare negotiating prices with drug companies is (mostly) illegal.
But consider in terms of (2): would companies sell a drug in Canada for $50 when it costs $500 in the US if they were selling it at a loss? No, they wouldn't.
So Starlink is still for sale in Brazil because it's profitable and because following the law in Brazil (whether you agree with the law or not) is more profitable than opting out.
Yeah, I don't like a corporation thinking itself to be above a government. Whether the request to ban those accounts was fair is a political game I don't think they should be playing. And Elon is obviously not above banning other accounts...
Flawed as it is, Brazil is a democracy. Judges stepping out of their lanes is something up to the representatives to deal with, not a foreign company.
We are on the discussion boards of a startup incubator which had a monarchist as a board member for years. Have you not picked up on all of Silicon Valley going techno-feudalist? Paul Graham probably goes to Urbit rallies when he’s not writing longform essays about rockstar 10X founder culture
That's what happens when you refuse to comply with a court order. You can question it, you can get a habeas corpus to prevent you from being arrested in the meantime, but the question will be eventually settled and the company will have to comply if the order is found legal.
It is up to the criminals to decide if they will comply with the law, if they do not, the law has consequences, this is very simple and straightforward, same as in US, you do not comply with a legal order, you suffer the consequences, the company is not complying with our contry law ? it should not operate in brazil
The entire point of having a legal representative is that legal representative can and will support the consequences of the company. So, arresting them or whatever looks to me business as usual.
Nobody flew to argentina they were just fired. There are interviews with the last employes reporting that they didn't even got pay after they were fired. It was a suprise decission for them too. What you are saying here is just no sense.
some criminals which were condened by a failled coup in 1/8/2022 and where in house arrest , most like the ones which was condened in US for the 1/6/2020 trump coup, so, they are condened criminals
Also, Twitter has legal representation in Turkey and people are routinely detained, imprisoned or made pay fines for their tweets in Turkey. The country also ranked very poorly on any freedom or democracy index, political figures are routinely held in prison. Erdogan government often dismisses orders from the Turkish constitution court, if you think that Musk is into constitution - it doesn’t add up.
AFAIK Twitter is also blocked in China and Russia.
What is the fuss around Brazil? Why this is not just another day with business as usual?