The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said he hopes the crisis surrounding the social network X in Brazil might teach the world that “it isn’t obliged to put up with [Elon] Musk’s far-right free-for-all just because he is rich”.
Lula’s comments to the network CNN Brasil came after the supreme court voted unanimously on Monday to uphold the ban on X, which is now largely inaccessible in one of its biggest global markets.
The suspension was first ordered on Friday as a result of the company’s refusal to obey court orders requiring the removal of profiles accused of spreading disinformation and for the social network to name a local legal representative.
His wealth also doesn’t mean we need to accept his wealth as valid.
Lula is so fucking great. He’s literally just backing up the courts that are applying the law fairly and as-written, which is more than I can say for most leaders.
Don’t get me wrong, Lula is correct on this. But he’s still a scummy politician who has a questionable past
What’s the questionable past?
Raising 20 million Brazilians out of poverty, while making his country the 8th largest economy in the world? I’m sure he’s as corrupt as any Brazilian politician, but none of them have anything that comes even close to that to show for it.
It’s politics. You could have some shoplifting charge from 40 years ago and people will yell about how you’re the worst and attempt to invalid everything you do because of it.
Media Bias/Fact Check - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
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Wikipedia about this sourceWe should preemptively offer to extradite
Listen, Musk is an asshole who has created large problems at Xitter. There is absolutely no debate on that.
HOWEVER I have to wonder if most of the people cheering what’s happening in Brazil actually know what’s going on?
Did you know that one single Judge has been given the power the censor the Internet? Do you know that no justification needs to be released to the public about WHY a person, account, or post is being censored, removed, or banned? Do you know that this Judge actually banned Apple and Google from distributing any VPN Software before they were forced to change the order due to public outcry? Do you know that the fines this Judge is issuing have no basis in the law?
Even prominent Brazilian Attorneys, like Thiago Amparo, who previously supported this Judge and their work are now saying that it’s going too far.
Brazil now has an Internet Censor who obviously doesn’t understand the technology who is issuing censorship orders that require no justification and to the surprise of no one his orders are helpful almost entirely to the current President specifically and the ruling party in general.
Here’s an archive link to the New York Times giving more details.
So yeah, screw Musk but the screw whatever unholy state censorship is going on down in Brazil too.
Actual discussion of the post: -1 score
Stupid play on words comment disparaging the right: highest score in comment section
Wish we could see how legitimate upvotes and downvotes are or if lemmy is a lot of teenagers who dont have the patience.
Im uneducated on the politics of brazil. I think censoring might be conducted without a fully evil intent, but people’s ability to reason about validity of information should be fostered instead of disallowing certain speech. Scary to think you’d be arrested for using a social media site. Thats not okay. And its brazils decisions regardless of musk.
Disinformation should be downvoted. Then corrected.
I guess im not sure what happens if you dont pay a fine. Probably getting arrested right? Because the fine is like 7.5k a day.
Brazil is a signatory of the American Convention on Human Rights, meaning you can’t be arrested for owing money. The sole exception is being detained for wilfully not paying alimony.
The worst evils always start with lofty intentions.
I dont know what that means.
Scary to think you’d be arrested for using a social media site.
Scary to think conservatives have power anywhere on planet earth, given how they just make random shit up and then accuse people of that made up bullshit whenever they want. Scary to think how conservatism is the single biggest threat to humanity and should be eradicated. Scary to think.
Sorry are you memeing or did you want to talk about something? What are you suggesting be done?
Talk? 🤣 The time for talk was several years ago. It is not possible for a conservative to enter any discussion in good faith, as every word uttered by a conservative is either deception or manipulation. Every word.
Im not a conversative, im just a person who isnt calibrated to the echo chamber. Sorry for the confusion.
Every word.
Have you heard of the research showing conservativism is highly associated with Big Five personality traits (which are considered mostly immutable)?
I hope you understand the implications of that finding when paired with a statement like:
conservatism is the single biggest threat to humanity and should be eradicated
The initial ruling was by a single judge but it was upheld yesterday by a panel of five supreme court justices:
Members of Brazil’s supreme court have unanimously voted to uphold the ban on X, after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws led to the social network being blocked in one of its biggest markets.
They didn’t approve the “Initial Ruling”. They approved the amended version that didn’t bar Apple and Google from distributing VPN Software and didn’t create a 5 day deadline.
Do you know WHY Xitter doesn’t just appoint a legal representative and sidestep this mess? It’s because this same Judge threatened to imprison the last one and pre-emptively froze her bank accounts!
https://time.com/7016537/brazil-blocks-elon-musk-x-twitter-company-refuses-comply-judge/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3rnl5qv3o
This is not how a legal system is supposed to behave.
This is not how a legal system is supposed to behave.
But it don’t work that way, he can threaten how much he want, the same way that he threatened to ban VPN, but he can’t do whatever he want
Can you share where you saw “threatening to arrest and froze bank account”? Twitter made a post on their own page about something along the line. Other than that I couldn’t find any.
The resignation of the legal representative has more nuance than what you said here. His (not her) name is Diego de Lima Gualda, an attorney in Brazil. After a series of non compliance from Twitter, the Twitter Brazil filed a request arguing that the Twitter international is responsible for compliance and Twitter Brazil does not have authority. The judge dismissed this request for obvious reasons, and the next day he resigned from the position.
The non compliance led to resignation. This is crucial because the actions of Twitter are the reason why the legal representative faced the consequences. Not that the judge ordered something out of the blue. I think you are missing the key point here.
Obviously censorship is bad. There is no contention in that. My point is this order is the last one in the long standing feud between Musk and Moraes. Musk has been so aggressive in personally attacking the judge. So portraying the judge as someone going on a power trip is not the accurate picture.
Did you know that one single Judge has been given the power the censor the Internet? Do you know that no justification needs to be released to the public about WHY a person, account, or post is being censored, removed, or banned?
Replace judge with CEO and ask the question again.
Replace judge with CEO and ask the question again.
The CEO can’t threaten to throw you in prison and freeze your bank accounts, two things that this Judge did. That’s why Xitter doesn’t have a Legal Representative in the country anymore. The last one resigned after being threatened by the Judge and Xitter won’t appointment a new one because of that.
But sure, a CEO has exactly the same power as a Supreme Court Justice. Literally no difference at all.
he ate that
Why the downvotes?
And it doesn’t mean Musk has any valid and useful intelligence. He got handed money early in life, got lucky with PayPal, and now thinks because of all of that, his views on the world matter. They don’t. He’s a piece of shit and the world should reject him among many others.
I hope that my country’s goverment makes the other countries realise how damgerous this man is.
brazilian futurism was not what I expected for 2024 but I’m pleasantly surprised
Better than Brazilian dystopianism
Fucking thank you. It’s nice to see at least some heads of state actually have the stones to tell Phony Stark to fuck off.
When I was younger I was taught that authoritarianism was a trait of right-wing politics.
I believed that at the time.
What I was taught was wrong, as we can see in this article.
Protecting citizens is an important thing in democracies.
Protecting citizens from receiving the wrong kind of information about political matters? That doesn’t sound democratic at all, much less like an important thing.
You really should read Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance to understand why this is important, and why “the only way to counter speech is with more speech” isn’t just wrong, it’s actually counterproductive.
Here’s the short version, if it helps.
Even if you agree with that argument (which I don’t), that was written about ideologies like fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, which were (when they were relevant) actually very suppressive of free speech when they were in power, more so than current left-leaning authoritarians who are defending the blocking of ex-Twitter in Brazil or (worse) saying that other countries should do similar things.
All those downvotes you’re getting shows me that Lemmy is exactly like Reddit. Hivemind
“Can people really be disagreeing with me?”
“No, it must be the hivemind.”
Not authoritarianism, fascism.
it’s called the Paradox Of Tolerance.
Democracy: has laws
Business: ignores the law
Democracy: bans business for failure to follow the laws
You: “is the authoritarianism?”
The only part in all of this where an individual is deciding what happens is where Elon Musk is deciding what should and shouldn’t be illegal. You are arguing for authoritarianism.
Elon is the tech version of Murdoch and is more dangerous because of his worldwide access through Twitter. Unfortunately the extremists will have more of a voice and propaganda will overwhelm the media. Since the media is controlled by billionaires they have no interest in exposing them
Elon is more dangerous because he’s a US government contractor which means his incessent law breaking and bullshittery will mean the US government will go to bat for him in a conflict
Wouldn’t want those military secrets getting out
Over the past year Musk has removed all masks and clearly believes he can operate beyond the law. His motives are clearly to watch the world burn. He is an extremely dangerous, unpredictable and powerful man, threatening democracy across the globe.
Our governments need to protect us from him. Brazil’s being brave here, I hope they’re just the first.
His motives are clearly to watch the world burn.
His motives are money and power. He is indifferent to if the world burns in the process.
He’s already got all the money and most of the power. Now his hobby is far right extremism and anarchy.
At some point accumulating more money is no longer about added utility and more like a kind of cynical game score. And musky boy is clearly chasing that high score.
He doesn’t have all the money. I have some money, Brazilians have money. It’s not enough to have most of the money and power if there’s more he can get.
He has more than anyone else in the history of the world. By any scale, he’s won at money.
No. You’re giving him too much credit and actually making it seem like mr. Musk is in any sense of the word capable of self-reflection. He is a burned out, incompetent tech-junkie and nothing but a hypeman for expensive toys someone else develops. He might be allegedly blackmailed by Russian kompromat or just plainly stupid enough to believe the propagandistic image of strong Putin/Russia. The only scary thing about him is, he never takes a fall for his numerous blunders. Yet, before first-worlders are not the ones paying for his mistakes he will rest comfortably upon his dollar throne.
Money is basically a vehicle for power and this a ketamine junkie in a garbage truck speeding through every intersection in the world and daring anyone to try and stop him. At least Brazil is trying.
He is a discount Tony Stark. Where he wishes he was as cool as Tony and comes up with things Tony did. But is no where even close to being that.
Some call him Phony Stark, or Lex Loser.
Be that as it may, the man has influence and it would be incredibly foolish to discount this because he’s a fucking moron. Sadly, the world is full of extremely incompetent billionaires, and they hold a shocking amount of influence over the world, whether it’s through collusion on layoffs, enforcing RTO in tandem, cutting green initiatives within a month of each other, etc.
This is why it’s important to have decentralized social media. We cannot have anyone unilaterally deciding what gets talked about and what doesn’t.
Ordinarily, I might agree. However, this suspension is because musk refused to appoint a legal representative for the company in Brazil, IAW Brazilian law. That’s a reasonable ask for a company that’s actively doing business in the country. If a billionaire* crybaby refuses to follow the law, then he gets to deal with the consequences. FA meet FO.
Your right to free speech ends when it turns into terrorism, racism or a call for a coup.
There are some things that should be banned, such as the twitter accounts that promoted the attempt at a coup in Brazil in Jan 8 2023.
These are the accounts that the judge asked to be banned. After Twitter didn’t comply they started sending fines and eventually outright banning it.
Free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything. It means the government cannot punish you for your political views. But they can, and must punish racism and anti-democracy speech.
Also, it’s a misconception that a decentralized service cannot be banned. In fact it’s not hard at all
If what these accounts said was so dangerous then why didn’t the government go after the operators of the accounts and arrest them? Instead they tried to silence them by banning them from Twitter. That would only bring more validity to what these accounts were saying if the government has to tell foreign companies to silence them instead of challenging their speech.
If what these accounts said was so dangerous then why didn’t the government go after the operators of the accounts and arrest them?
Oh, is X willing to help them find the operators of the accounts? Or are you suggesting they do something impossible instead of something actionable?
If the owners of the accounts aren’t operating in Brazil (likely) then there is little Brazil can do to go after them. X is operating in Brazil, so Brazil has the authority to go after X if they refuse to do anything about it.
If yelling “fire” in a movie theatre is so dangerous why not allow people to do it and don’t ban it and instead just arrest them after the stampede?
That’s a bad comparison. Yelling “fire” in a crowd to induce a panic is illegal and can lead to arrest. But that happens after you actually yell “fire” not before you might yell “fire”. In your example you say ban yelling “fire” when inducing a panic is already banned. Do you want people banned because of pre-crime?
So I agree with you about the whole “arresting people after they yell fire and not before” thing, but we’re talking about people who attempted a coup here, these aren’t hypothetical pre-crimes.
To your earlier point about going after the people who actually did the coup:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-64299892
According to this BBC article, 39 people were indicted within about a week of the attack
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Brazilian_Congress_attack
According to Wikipedia, 86 people have been convicted and sentenced to jail time.
I’m sure there are better numbers but I don’t speak Portuguese so I’m not going to find them.
Also, while this conflict did begin with Brazil wanting them to ban accounts who helped organize the coup attempt, x was banned because they refuse to appoint a Brazilian legal representative.
but we’re talking about people who attempted a coup here, these aren’t hypothetical pre-crimes
We’re talking about the entire country of Brazil — 200 million people — being cut off from using X.
Thankfully.
Yeah, it’s too bad it’s only 200 million, and only “X”. All the billionaire-controlled, black-box content algorithm social media sites are a cancer on humanity. Nobody’s freedom is being impinged upon by banning them; they’re the private fiefdoms of oligarchs, who blatantly wield them in service of their own agendas. Banning them is the sensible thing to do, and I can only hope that other governments follow suit.
We’re talking about the entire country of Brazil — 200 million people — being cut off from using X.
Companies that don’t follow the laws of a country don’t get to operate in that country. The entire country of the United States - 300 million people - are cut off from enjoying Kinder Surprise. Are you equally outraged about that?
When a company says “Lol, we’re not going to have a way for you to hold us accountable” then a country is obviously going to shut them down. They’re not going to let a company ignore their sovereignty like that.
Like if exactly 200 million people could afford eletronics (saying from experience) or caring about Twitter at all.
Yes, because the company refused to appoint a Brazilian legal representative.
people are banned from doing things because they did things. e.g. if you DUI you get banned from future driving not just punished for the past. Hackers get banned from the internet etc
Also, it’s a misconception that a decentralized service cannot be banned. In fact it’s not hard at all
Yes, if banning protocols is acceptable for you.
You mean possible right?
If it’s acceptable, then a wildcard ban of undetected protocols and the “bad” ones from among the detected is possible. China-style.
That is, everything is possible.
it’s a misconception that a decentralized service cannot be banned. In fact it’s not hard at all
Could someone expand upon this? I’m don’t know much about tech, but the idea that FOSS decentralized platforms can’t be banned does seem to make sense right? Ban one, another one will pop up, etc. What am I not getting here?
I’ll admit I don’t know how Lemmy works in communicating to each other. However, Internet traffic is labeled in some manner. It has to be to ensure data traverses the web of routers we call the Internet. Lemmy instances have to identify each other to share their information to each other.
Just ban whatever traffic Lemmy instances are looking for.
In so many movies that revolves around what would happen if a multi billionaire… Turned EVIL
Well now we know
You don’t get to a billion dollars by being ethical in the first place. At the very least, they are all willing to exploit the labour of hundreds or thousands or more.
Based Lula.
