In this case, the unelected leadership of Facebook is apparently censoring the free speech of a political candidate.
I don't really know anything about Lula (I wouldn't have known this was Brazil if it wasn't explicitly mentioned, I only know from the Wikipedia page 30 seconds ago that their full name is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and "Lula" is a nickname), so I can't say if they're "fine" or "evil", but one does not simply get to disregard the implications of censorship (of anyone, let alone a political party) when it happens to be done by a private corporation.
Especially when it's a foreign private corporation that's already deeply suspicious for political interference in multiple nations, as Meta is.
It feels like your treat the facebook as some common good, and censorship made by it thus preposterous, something which should be punished
But it's a multimillion dollar corporation in a foreign country, to me the idea they owe you something is strange
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Governments are still more powerful than corporations, this is why I am more afraid of the censorship of the internet by governments than of it by corporations
"Governments are still more powerful than corporations" at this point i would not be so sure anymore. especially when some of corporations have full weight of us goverment behind them.
All the more reason to ban Meta. If Meta are actively taking sides in Brazilian elections, then the site _should_ be banned, even if it's temporary for the lead-up to the election.
Meta can do whatever they want, but so can a sovereign nation if they deem Meta was actively subverting their democratic process.
> Governments are still more powerful than corporations
Corporations aren't all equal. And Meta is one of the most unequal. Add to that the relationship with Trump's government, and your 'corporations' argument is meaningless.
If it were some other mutli-national that doesn't have its own massively popular news platform, I'd be much more likely to agree.
Meta's specific goal is to have conversations go through them. They want to have the benefits of free speech without the obligations to support it, and use their power and influence to campaign to maintain both aspects of this.
To borrow the EU's language, Meta is a "gatekeeper".
> But it's a multimillion dollar corporation in a foreign country, to me the idea they owe you something is strange
You misunderstand: I do not claim they owe us anything. At least, not in this regard.
What I claim is that nobody owes them anything either.
They want to be the platform? Then speech occurring on it is not theirs.
They wish to perform acts of censorship? Then they cannot be "the platform". With emphasis on "the", because if they were simply "a" platform this wouldn't be any bigger a deal than a newspaper picking a side.
I don't actually know if Meta is close to being a monopoly in Brazil, that's just kinda an assumption on my part owning to the other legal cases against them for knowingly making their products addictive.
"Governments are still more powerful than corporations, this is why I am more afraid of the censorship of the internet by governments than of it by corporations"
Sure mate, disregard the fact that some companies make more money than half the countries in the world and are actively trying to undermine democracies, but yeah it's the government's fault for trying to protect the citizens.
Spoiler, they only follow court orders. You can violate the law as long as you want until there's a judge saying you do. This is just modus operandi for any big corp in America nowadays.
I was referring to normal business operations in the US.
So if someone thinks this is illegal, it's only illegal until a court says so. It can be in clear violation of the law but until a judge says it is they can pretend they 'interpret' things differently
You’re inventing a person that thinks COVID censorship was good and this censorship is bad and then you are getting mad at this fictional person (which might just as well exist but no one here made that argument)
I mean, if any of the people commenting on this post calling it censorship also believe Trump getting banned from Twitter was censorship, they're free to reply to me stating so, proving me wrong in the process. Nobody has done so, because I'm right.
You’re assuming that the people in this thread made a different argument about platform censorship before and therefore hold a double standard. May I suggest you stop arguing against the straw man you put up?
You’re conflating the first amendment with free speech generally. They are different (related) concepts. The person you’re replying to did not appeal to the first amendment.
I'm not conflating anything, I'm simply repeating what I was told hundreds of times in the past by others in their defense of social media censorship, such as when Twitter banned Trump. So, is it different now?
Well sometimes they do. Plus if another country is regulating or doing something to a company from your country I think it’s fair to have an opinion about it.
Plus a number of folks use the universality of their preferred politics when another country does something they like or don’t like. “International law”, “rules-based order”, those sorts of things. It’s pretty common to see.
No, it’s not different now because you’re conflating two different things. One is the first amendment cited in Twitter case. The other is free speech cited here.
Did Twitter violate the principles of free speech by shutting Trump down? Well he was using his speech to foment an insurrection and caused a mob to sack the Capitol so yes, Twitter, within the bounds of the first amendment, for an eminently justifiable reason (to preserve democracy), attacked Trump’s speech, which is against free speech, yet preserves free speech, because the alternative was allowing insurrection to continue. The first amendment cannot hold under a dictatorship, as we are seeing right now as all press are (were? Are they complying with the order?) illegally banned from the White House.
> nothing good usually comes out of governments censoring internet
wrong. Blocking Facebook in China because they didn't follow domestic laws was the best thing that happened to the Chinese internet. It enabled the growth of domestic platforms like WeChat, Weibo and Tiktok.
The platform want to be both just neutral platforms and police content. This is ridiculous. Either be liable for the rape threats or don’t interfere at all.
You don't need to censor access to the platform itself. Just declare the group for what it is: a criminal cartel. Then just make it illegal to do business with criminal organizations: no Brazilian ads on Facebook anymore.
Private companies are censoring the internet right now to interfere with democracy.
This ideological fear of democratic structures ignores the very real threat of autocratic, privately owned structures consolidating more and more power.
The only viable counterweight to corporate power is public power.
Even less good comes out of corpos doing it, yet we accept it as the status quo. The ubiquity and totalitarian control exerted by the big platforms is something even the media moguls of the 90s couldn't even dream of.
Didn't t Brazil also ban discord screen sharing and camera?
I often use Study Together which is a large discord server (50k users online) for folks to work and study in groups/body doubles, but someone told me a lot of Brazilians have to use VPN to circumvent the ban.
Yes, this would be a better outcome. Or at least make it illegal for politicians to use facebook / TikTok
From where I am, one third of politicians in recent elections have tiktok. It's a shame, everyone knows about human rights violation in China but the european politicians have no issues with using tiktok.
And their size puts them in a different class. If a foreign entity has effective powers that make it similar in some ways to a foreign state, it makes sense to treat it as such.
Ok so sanction and fine their ass until they start behaving. If we can sanction north korea for having an ideology we don't like, surely brazil can sanction meta's ass for trying to blatantly meddle in another state's affairs. Bar every employee from traveling there. Freeze any assets. Use diplomacy to pressure the US to press charges. Make them come to heel for chrissake
Make it illegal. Make it illegal for local advertisers to do business with them. Sanction individuals that cannot be locally prosecuted. Sanction the company.
It's already a requirement that to operate in Brazil they need local representation. Someone local who can be prosecuted, even if it's just a proxy - I'm hazy on the details but I remember reading about this at one point when they went after Twitter.
Is it going to fully stop Brazilians from using the service? Most likely not, but it will almost certainly reduce their usage, and the remaining users become a less profitable product to Meta, since they're not going to see ads for companies they can actually spend money on.
This changes incentives and may well be enough to make Meta rethink their policies. Or not, but then its effects can be measured and adjusted.
With adequate checks and balances, following laws approved by a democratically elected legislature, and when it's done to protect democracy and rule of law, then yes. If we can limit the reach of someone yelling "fire" in a crowded theater in order to cause a stampede and harming people, why not preventing the already yelled word from being heard by the crowd and cause the action to fail?
Not supporting the idea, but this feels like the traditional technical details vs practical real world solution.
Rather than banning individuals right to access a site, and then playing technical whackamole, you make that company's ability to operate in a country illegal. this puts the incentives and the technical onus where it belongs.
Again not saying they should or I support the notion of banning a site. Just that there are practical legislative solutions.
"Properly" is not that important. First, most people are both lazy and also non-technical. Second, ban business relations with them suddenly they get no ad revenue, ban schools and governments from using them as well as businesses and people have to connect with everyone besides friends by non-Facebook means (or non-Meta depending on details).
Usually. Because usually it's governments that are censoring specific people to push a certain narrative. This time it's Facebook censoring specific people in order to push a certain narrative.
Conflating "the internet" with "~Trillionaire owned, oligarchy controlled, American social media" is certainly a choice.
I'll say the opposite: Every single place that has banned American social media is better for it. Every group of people denied access to American social media are healthier and happier for it.
How would you go on a ad campaign against Facebook, using Facebook ads, where Facebook have already blocked your ads?
I don't know the exact media landscape of this world any more, but I can say I don't personally own a TV and can't even remember when I last watched live, and given all the TVs in stores sell themselves on how "smart" they are and which streaming services they work with I don't want to guess what normal viewing habits are.
Similarly, the closest I get to radio ads are in podcasts. If I own a radio, it's been forgotten in the bottom of a box for years and at least two house moves.
I have no idea which companies are ultimately behind podcast ads.
But something good comes out of facebook being able to censor the internet?
Its like throwing a grenade into a goverment building and being surprised that the government now wants to prosecute you. It is a fair prosecution based on actions in that case.
Banning facebook might actually be a moral good for the internet but that's my personal opinion.
Maybe not when internet was an open platform. Now it is controlled by a few American billionaires that love they have a US Gov administration that thinks the same way as them.
Eh, as a staunch free speech advocate, I absolutely want Meta and X banned from Canada. That doesn't stem free speech at all, and is akin to banning a propaganda arm of a hostile foreign government.
They are cancerous propaganda/idiocracy funnels that are destructive to every Western country. They should not be freely operating anywhere but American America of America, Inc (TM Trump Inc).
Actually, elections in Brazil are highly regulated and rules are enforced in the name of fairness. If Meta/Facebook want to keep serving the Brazilian public, they need to abide by local laws.
Brazil is not a "little corporation with a fancy flag". Brazil is a democratic republic. The largest in Latin America, and one of the largest in the world.
That entity is the democratic representation of those two hundred million people. What you are suggesting is nothing less than colonial disenfranchisement of Latin America. I guess it wouldn't be the first time?
What you call "leaching" we call "comparative advantage" on good days, and "dear god just ban it all already" on bad days.
What you call "I mean seriously aside from Airbus and ASML wtf even goes on over there in terms of actual technological development", Trump calls "a trade deficit" and tries to stop.
(The "deficit" becomes almost, not perfectly but relatively, neutral if you include the digital stuff like FB).
That’s my point. The Europeans heavily rely on America for all sorts of shit, but all the Europeans do is whine and complain about literally everything. I’m no trump or Facebook/zuckerberg fan, nor do I even live in America.
But it’s actually laughable how much the Europeans complain about the Americans/American big tech while at the same time inventing no alternatives themselves and in fact relying on America for a whole host of shit, notably their defence. AI is another great example where the Europeans won’t cease complaining but don’t have and apparently won’t have a single frontier model of their own. Mistral is the best they’ve got lol.
Europeans love to berate and criticise others for building something but won’t build it themselves (and they still use what’s being built in the end).
Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
> But it’s actually laughable how much the Europeans complain about the Americans/American big tech while at the same time inventing no alternatives themselves and in fact relying on America for a whole host of shit, notably their defence. AI is another great example where the Europeans won’t stfu with their whining but don’t have and apparently won’t have a single frontier model of their own. Mistral is the best they’ve got lol.
That's like criticising people for complaining about cigarettes when they don't even have their own cigarette companies.
> Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
No it’s not. There are several European efforts to develop AI, they just aren’t good at it and it isn’t anywhere near frontier level. The analogy is that the Europeans are trying to make their own cigarettes but can’t do it as well as the cigarette makers they are criticising and fining constantly.
