It's really instructive to see how quickly people will abandon any pretense of liberal society when they have a personal animus against the ox currently being gored.
Exactly. Elon Musk said you have to be braindead [1] to prefer being banned in a country over honoring censorship requests by the government. But he immediately abandoned any pretense of that position due to his personal animus against the government of Brazil.
Here's a good explanation of how the Brazilian Supreme Court did a creative and novel interpretation of the law to give itself powers to investigate and regulate the internet without law enforcement or legislative/executive involvent.
As documented by the New York Times, the first thing the judge did after getting powers to censor was to call a Brazilian magazine article about the person that gave him those powers 'fake news' and got it removed. It later turned out that article was true so he had egg on his face and had to retract his censorship order.
> To run the investigation, Mr. Toffoli tapped Mr. Moraes, 53, an intense former federal justice minister and constitutional law professor who had joined the court in 2017.
> In his first action, Mr. Moraes ordered a Brazilian magazine, Crusoé, to remove an online article that showed links between Mr. Toffoli and a corruption investigation. Mr. Moraes called it “fake news.”
> Mr. Moraes later lifted the order after legal documents proved the article was accurate.
Political censorship is unconstitutional in Brazil. These judges are after Bolsonaro and his supporters for the political speech they engaged in. Blatant political censorship.
The constitution literally contains the words:
> Any and all censorship of political and artistic nature is prohibited
It's really not that hard to understand. Any citizen can understand this. It's just that it doesn't matter what the law says. Because there's no court above them, the law becomes whatever they say it is.
Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country. Obviously, the brazilian constitution is not written in English. I took the liberty of translating the passage so that people from this community would understand it.
You don't have to believe my translation. Here's a completely independent source I found by searching the web:
TITLE II. FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND GUARANTEES
CHAPTER I. INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE RIGHTS AND DUTIES
Article 5
Everyone is equal before the law, with no distinction whatsoever,
guaranteeing to Brazilians and foreigners residing in the Country
the inviolability of the rights to life, liberty, equality, security
and property, on the following terms:
Term IX.
expression of intellectual, artistic, scientific, and communication activity
is free, independent of any censorship or license;
CHAPTER V. SOCIAL COMMUNICATION
Article 220
The expression of thoughts, creation, speech and information,
through whatever form, process or vehicle,
shall not be subject to any restrictions,
observing the provisions of this Constitution.
Paragraph 1.
No law shall contain any provision that may constitute
an impediment to full freedom of the press,
in any medium of social communication,
observing the provisions of art. 5°, IV, V, X, XIII and XIV.
Paragraph 2.
Any and all censorship of a political, ideological and artistic nature
is forbidden.
The terms referenced by the above paragraph:
Term IV.
manifestation of thought is free, but anonymity is forbidden;
Term V.
the right of reply is assured, in proportion to the offense,
as well as compensation for pecuniary or moral damages
or damages to reputation;
Term X.
personal intimacy, private life, honor and reputation are inviolable,
guaranteeing the right to compensation for pecuniary or moral damages
resulting from the violation thereof;
Term XIII.
exercise of any job, trade or profession is free,
observing the professional qualifications that
the law establishes;
Term XIV.
access to information is assured to everyone,
protecting the confidentiality of sources
when necessary for professional activity;
It's really not that hard to read and understand these words. Surely you'll agree that there is not a single case here that says these judges get to censor anyone for any reason at all. If a brazilian is harmed by speech, he gets to answer and to be made whole by compensation, financial or otherwise. He does not get to censor the other guy. I simply cannot find in this entire text a single exception that would allow censorship.
Debating these points here on HN, I've had people cite lesser laws than the constitution, I've had people get into incredibly pedantic arguments over how it's ackshually not really censorship when you delete the political opposition's social media, I've had people appeal to authority, I've had people call me a moron. I've never, not once, had them point out to me where in the fuck it says, in the above text, that these judges can do what they're doing.
> Isn't political debate in Brazil sharply divided by selective absolute Constitionalism in any case?
The whole point of my comments is that everything in this country is like that. Even the supreme court judges, whose literal job is to interpret and apply the constitution, are like that. They "selectively and creatively interpret" the constitution.
This country has no laws. Only the whims of these judges.
> Why leap to the defence of bad faith falsehoods spread by bad losers of a democratic election?
I "leap" to the defense of so called "falsehoods" because I see several things wrong with your loaded question.
This country is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship of the judiciary. Calling what we had an "election" is an insult to elections, it was more like a circus. I do not believe for a second that there was fraud in the US elections, but here the "bad losers" had plenty of reasons to doubt the results, among them the blatant political censorship perpetrated by the very same judges involved in this case.
I was going to elaborate on the above points but ultimately decided against it due to how fruitless it usually is. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if I saw HNers defending the communist Venezuelan dictator's "reelection" and calling the opposition he murdered and exiled "bad losers".
Shutting down businesses (not speeches, they aren't keeping pro-lula Twitter accounts up while censoring conservative ones) for refusing to comply with the law isn't censorship.
Censoring books in public library is censorship though, and Musk supported De Santis anyway.
> keeping pro-lula Twitter accounts up while censoring conservative ones
Funny. Among the accounts targeted by this judge, not a single one is pro-Lula. Really curious, indeed. Are these guys saints? Are they literally never wrong on the internet?
Not too long ago, one of Lula's ministers "disseminated" some serious "misinformation". She literally said about a hundred million brazilians are starving to death right now. Where's the judge's fact checking? I wonder.
I mean, Lula himself has admitted to journalists that he just makes up statistics on the spot. You'd think he'd be this judge's worst enemy, given how gung-ho he is about "misinformation"... Oh shit, is that the judge attending a barbecue with Lula and his allies? Whew, lad. What do you know?
- broad Twitter ban (which is the topic of TFA), which itself results from Twitter refusal to cooperate with Brazilian justice.
- prosecutions related to the attempted coup in Brasilia, which includes activities on Twitter (and obviously there isn't a single pro-lula in the list of people involved, like there's no Bidden supporters among the people charged for Jan 6th, and it's not a conspiracy against republicans …).
Big corporations aren't exempted from laws and they cannot unilaterally decide not to comply with Court's order, whatever you think about the order in the first place. And the reason why Musk doesn't comply with Brazilian justice isn't free speech, as he's eager to comply with authoritarian regimes all around the world, he's just doing that for political motives.
Reminder: you'll get censored on Twitter if you type the word “cisgender" and Musk supported Ron De Santis censoring books in libraries, and also canceled Tesla orders from people after they criticized him personally: Musk doesn't give a shit about freedom of speech, he just claim he does hopping enough idiots will buy it against all evidence.
I'm not "conflating" anything. The "fake news" nonsense has been on-going since 2019. The persecution of the brazilian right has been on-going since the lead up to the 2022 elections at the very least, possibly earlier. The events that led to the order to ban X began in 2019 and accelerated in 2022. He's been ordering the banishment of political accounts since before the election. I know because I was commenting on the situation here on HN the whole time.
None of these things should have happened in the first place. Twitter should never have been banned because the judge should never have ordered the censorship of those accounts to begin with. There should have been no order for him to defy in the first place.
You may legally object to what Musk did based on the judge's authority. The point is I have zero moral objections to it. Illegal orders must not be obeyed. "Just following orders" has not been a valid excuse for anything since nazis were hanged at Nuremberg. And I do believe this judge's orders are illegal. He just gets away with it because there's nobody above him to put a stop to it.
I don't particularly care about Twitter or how hypocritical Musk is. No doubt he has plenty of self-serving reasons for defying the judge. The fact that a judge ordered him to censor political accounts over "misinformation" nonsense is what matters here. Musk can do whatever he wants on his platform, I don't care. Judges ordering censorship of politicians? I absolutely do care. Censorship is when the government shows up and deletes what you said. And censorship equals dictatorship, it's that simple. It's undeniable evidence that brazilians are living under a dictatorship.
You say Brasil is a dictatorship, yet we're talking about a country where the current president is a left wing guy coming back to power after his party being beaten by the right wing previous president and been jailed himself for corruption charges which eventually got dismissed.
It's the kind of thing that doesn't exist in dictatorship. In a dictatorship
- there's no such thing as a former president doing a comeback
- no former president goes to jail when his party is in power, or that's because he got betrayed by his own party
- there's no political switch between parties with such a dramatic different world views
> Censorship is when the government shows up and deletes what you said. And censorship equals dictatorship
Your definition of censorship is delusional: freedom of speech, like any freedom, can never be absolute, and it's always and everywhere regulated by laws.
... The former president made a "comeback" ? Yeah... Because of these judges.
They erased his crimes. They released him from prison. They persecuted anyone who called him corrupt. Hell they even gave back the corruption money. They allowed him to run for president. They did everything in their power to make sure he won. Then they banned from politics the only guy who ever managed to pry the worker's party from power.
Then they went to public events to openly brag about it. Supposedly impartial judge goes out and literally says "we have defeated bolsonarism", other judges put out statements literally spelling it out for you that "Lula is president today due to the decisions of the supreme court". Then they start persecuting Bolsonaro and his supporters. Leading us to this very moment where Twitter gets blocked nation wide for failure to comply with their censorship orders.
I actually wish I was delusional. I wish I was just hallucinating all this nonsense. Then I could just take some antipsychotics and everything would be fixed. Unfortunately it's not that easy.
> Your definition of censorship is delusional
It's not my definition.
Read the very simple words written on the constitution.
> Any and all censorship of political and artistic nature is prohibited
The accounts here were engaged in political speech.
Blocking their accounts for that speech absolutely does match the "any and all censorship of political nature" clause.
Nowhere does it say that the judge gets to censor them if they engage in "fake news" or whatever.
Therefore what the judge did is unconstitutional.
Before the elections I witnessed them censor a political documentary before it was even published. Without ever watching the thing, they decided it was "fake news" and stopped its publication. A priori censorship, something not seen in these lands since last century's military dictatorship. An obviously biased political documentary that nobody cares about and only a fool would believe to begin with... Their censorship of it was what made me realize the truth.
I didn't read your link, but if political speech has to be honest then I'm sure all of the politicians in Brazil are going to have their speech censored, right?
Of course. Brazilian politicians, even the literal brazilian government's official accounts, used to get fact checked on X on a pretty much daily basis. I have videos of our current president straight up admitting to a journalist that he invents numbers on the spot.
These are the "authorities" who would presume to condemn you for posting "fake news". In the 2022 elections, I witnessed these judge-kings censor people for associating Lula with the Venezuelan dictator. Then I had to watch him literally roll out the red carpet for that very same dictator only months into his mandate. More recently I watched as he supported the dictator's "election".
I don't know much about Brazil , nor the background on this story, however even if Musk is in the right here, that doesn't make him any less of a fascist.
There isn't always a good and bad guy in these situations. Corrupt people and organisations can and often do oppose each other.
> "Elon is the one who cut off Twitter's 5th biggest market because misinformation is the opium of fascist-wannabees like him"
You don't seem to be sure on what is going on or even know what 'fascist' means.
Anything can be declared as "misinformation" these days which is the what many governments commonly use to enforce censorship and for its citizens to continue to believe one narrative for governments to then continue to lie to its citizens.
If someone tells me the sky is blue, and then someone else tells me the sky is purple, I'm not going to believe it's purple just because "the government" tells me the weather forecast
That's something you can vetify yourself though. What if the government claimed that Polish soldiers attacked the German border, you claimed that it was actually German soldiers in Polish uniforms to give Germany a casus belli to invade, and a court censored your claim because they insist it's misinformation? How the hell is the average citizen going to determine what is misinformation or not there if any counterarguments or evidence are censored?
I have a hard time believing you're this naive about this. Either you really haven't thought through the repercussions, or you're in favor of it because it's being used against your political enemies (for now).
