Live data from Hacker News

Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

bbc.com

111–120 of 258 posts

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#111

You know what’s next when they take constitutional rights from journalists and citizens.

> You know what’s next when they take constitutional rights from journalists and citizens. Bolsonaro's supporters were caught calling for a military coup to allow Bolsonaro to become Brazil's dictator, as well as fabricating accusations and stories that targetted anyone who was inconvenient to Bolsonaro's political agenda. You should check where you base your slippery slope fallacy because any journalist who did the…

Mainstream media journalists regularly fabricate accusations and target people based on political agenda.

Nick Sandmann sued several of them successfully for defamation, because they ruined the life of an innocent underage high school student based on politically biased reporting.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#112
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know what’s next when they take constitutional rights from journalists and citizens. Bolsonaro's supporters were caught calling for a military coup to allow Bolsonaro to become Brazil's dictator, as well as fabricating accusations and stories that targetted anyone who was inconvenient to Bolsonaro's political agenda. You should check where you base your slippery slope fallacy because any journalist who did the…

Mainstream media journalists regularly fabricate accusations and target people based on political agenda. Nick Sandmann sued several of them successfully for defamation, because they ruined the life of an innocent underage high school student based on politically biased reporting.

[deleted]

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#113
post #66
post #9

Very glad I'm not Facebook. No matter what choices you make, millions (or billions) will hate you. Is decentralization the only solution, if it even is one?

I agree. You may not agree with Zuckerberg's position of not censoring content (beyond the obscene), but it's probably the smartest position for the business. As soon as you start saying "well, we'll censor stuff that isn't accurate", you've opened a Pandora's box of every single interest group hammering you on every single decision and in the end everyone thinks you're screwing them over.

I think the solution is clear: If governments want to censor they should do it themselves not externalize costs to the foreign media company, meaning Facebook should give them access to an API/dashboard with all the posts created or viewed on Brazil and government employees should pick manually (or by algorithm) what to censor. After that any request of censoring anything coming from Brazil should be directed at the government and never again to Facebook itself.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#114
post #32
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a double edged coin. Thinking of fake news, spam, scams etc.

microcommunities and web of trust. the things you mentioned are not eliminable but i trust my peers more than a multinational with conflicting values.

Couldn't you create a microcommunity in WhatsApp?

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#115
post #92
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second paragraph doesn’t follow from the first. “Rule of law” and “stop taking the piss” aren’t left- or right-wing. Also: * China achieves the same goals with the Great Firewall * Despite this, “Gap apologised to China for selling a shirt in its North American outlets featuring a map of the country without Taiwan and Arunachal Pradesh included” - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-maps-des... *…

I think I have more of a European (civil law?) conception of "rule of law", centered on the law itself: it must be clearly written, it must apply equally to everyone, etc. Americans seem to use the term for something that should more properly be called "rule of magistrates". Judges can order pretty much whatever they want (unless overruled by a higher judge); prosecutors can charge or not charge different people for…

> “rule of magistrates”

A legal system where judicial precedent has the force of law is called a Common Law system, as opposed to a Civil Law system.

Common Law is less of an American thing and more of a former British empire thing.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#116
post #67
post #3

Sounds like they were engaging in straight-up slander—-even worse than if they had “cancelled” their victims, whatever that actually means.

Slander is a reason to have slander suits, not a ban on a class of people imposed on a social network. I'm all for the free market (i.e. users) pressuring social networks to ban certain groups, like pedophiles or neo-Nazis. I'm deeply against a government telling a social network that any broad class of people should be banned, especially if they're mainstream enough that their leader is in office.

> I'm deeply against a government telling a social network that any broad class of people should be banned, especially if they're mainstream enough that their leader is in office.

Even if those people are calling for a coup d'etat to change the democracy into a dictatorship and place this leader at the top?

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assign the copyright to the victim. Then they can make a copyright claim.

And in cases where the victim is a child (like child porn) and their guardian is involved in the abuse (which is often the case)? Then you either wait for the child to be of age to assert copyright, and force them to confront this individually, or you wait for guardianship to unwind and hope the state or foster guardian or whatever is interested in pursuing a copyright violation on behalf of a minor.

Having the minor in the custody of the abuser is by far the more serious problem, so solve that first, and if that isn't happening fast enough, fix whatever is preventing that. Then the copyright claim solves itself -- there would be lawyers lined up in front of your door for the chance to sue child pornographers on a contingent fee basis.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#118
post #105
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. You may not agree with Zuckerberg's position of not censoring content (beyond the obscene), but it's probably the smartest position for the business. As soon as you start saying "well, we'll censor stuff that isn't accurate", you've opened a Pandora's box of every single interest group hammering you on every single decision and in the end everyone thinks you're screwing them over.

Radiolab has a wonderfully deep episode on this topic: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/post-... The main issue is the sheer volume of content. Four seconds – that's their estimate for how much time employees in Facebook's "censorship farm" centers have, on average, to make a decision about whether a reported post gets deleted or not. As a result, management decided to aim for the lowest bar: co…

Facebook seems to still have some profit, so it clearly has capacity. The insufficient number of people looking at reported violations is by design.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about spam? Spam filtering isn't censorship because the recipient doesn't want to receive it. Censorship is removing access to material the recipient would otherwise choose to view. > Scams? Child porn? Doxxing? People's very personal data? A bounty to hurt a specific person, with included address and identifying information? All of these things have illegal non-speech components (fraud, child abuse), so you c…

> All of these things have illegal non-speech components (fraud, child abuse), Do you find slander to not fit the bill? And what about calling for a military coup to persecuted anyone they see fit?

> Do you find slander to not fit the bill?

But it's still the same thing -- what does it have to do with the platform? Go sue the actual speaker, and keep collecting damages from them as long as they keep using the platform to publish the slander.

> And what about calling for a military coup to persecuted anyone they see fit?

A military coup pretty obviously falls under a non-speech act which is itself illegal.

Re: Brazil Bolsonaro: Facebook told to block accounts of president’s supporters

#120
post #5

I sure hope they can reverse it in court. Otherwise this will be a precedent for that judge to block any account it sees fit under the threat of imprisoning a Facebook or Twitter employer. > Given the threat of criminal liability to a local employee, at this point we see no other alternative than complying with the decision by blocking the accounts globally, while we appeal to the Supreme Court.

> I sure hope they can reverse it in court. Otherwise this will be a precedent for that judge to block any account it sees fit The ruling was based on track records of conducting libel campaigns targetting anyone who could jeopardize Bolsonaro's political goals, not to mention supporting military coups to allow him to become president for life and silence any critic. And it seems you're missing the fact that the ruli…

The issue here is, as stated in the article, facebook was ordered to block worldwide access to facebook accounts based on brazilian law.

I couldn't care less about what said accounts were posting if they were protected by the 1st amendment.

The problem here is the precedence of an overreach.

Post reply on HN