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Brazilian court orders suspension of X

theguardian.com

291–300 of 388 posts

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#291

> The decision imposes a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800) on individuals and companies that attempt to continue using X via VPN. Fining even users is a bit surprising.

How can a court arbitrarily impose fines on users like this?

They can't. A thorough explanation of the applicable law, point by point, that demonstrates that what you are saying is complete fantasy:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

Why they could: The ruling socialist party is allowing the judge to go on a rampage because the ruling class has too many skeletons in their closet to mount an effective defense against the opposition. They hope they can just play dead during this mess - but if history is any guide, the judge will come after them later.

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did NOT violate the law. How come he is deleting the VPN apps on my phone??? That I need to remote to my overseas job??? How come I I'm now banned from reading what Zelensky, Kasparov, Yann LeCun, and thousands of others world leaders have to say? How come my neighbor, who makes a honest living through X-Twitter, has now lost her job?

They can't and won't delete any apps from your phone, but the apps would be gone from the stores, which does not make it much less of a bullshit. Restricting access to X makes sense: the platform has removed themselves from the country, making it impossible to resolve legal and financial disputes in Brazil, so it makes sense they are not allowed to operate in the country anymore. Then again, punishing users that acce…

No, it doesn't make sense. The reason they had to pull out of the country is that representatives of X were about to be thrown in jail for an American business not honoring censorship edicts written by this judge. Why not Meta or Google? Because they've honored the censorship orders.

When he couldn't find representatives of X, he went after SpaceX and StarLink, even though no law allows him to do so. The judge is simply on a personal vendetta against Elon Musk solely on the basis of political alignment.

This isn't baffling, this is leftist totalitarianism at work.

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#293
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy is the head of the STF, the highest court in Brazil, so he's kinda doing an "I am the law" bit here. That said, I do think that judges in Brazil can have a larger investigative role due to the different legal system that does not happen in other countries with more separation of powers to prevent exactly this sort of thing.

That's not the case. The law as it applies, is thoroughly explained here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

To be clear, I think Moraes is out of control in this case.

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot to say about the Brazilian Supreme Court abuses of power. And to be complete on the context, I expect it to have teeth.

Is it even remotely modeled after the US system of checks and balances? How does the court have what also seems like legislative power?

Yes. However checks and balances work because the other branches will choose to assert their power over a branch that is overstepping. However, the other branches are in the hands of the ruling socialists, and they are just happy to let the judiciary do their dirty work. And, they have quite a few skeletons still in their closet after the Lava Jato scandal.

Anyway a thorough explanation of the applicable law, point by point

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might have been able to do so but they claim not to want to cooperate with what they consider to be a violation of both Brasilian law as well as their own ethical rules. Make of that what you will but it is a more defensible stance than bending to the will of whatever tyrant pops up even if it does not improve the bottom line.

The richest man in the world calling someone stopping him a tyrant is the joke of the year.

No, its not. A thorough explanation of the applicable law, point by point, that demonstrates that the tyrant is wearing a robe

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t like Musk’s platform, feel free not to use it. Nobody is forcing you to. But if you try to lock me in a cell when I decide to use it, you are attacking my freedoms.

Musk deciding to not have a legal representative in Brazil attacked your freedom, which is the consequence of his acts.

A god-king sidestepping applicable law, attacked the freedoms of brazilians today. That's the real origin story. Here is each law being broken by the judge:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#297
post #62

[flagged]

A quick google search on Mike Benz came up with his recent interview by Tucker Carlson titled "The Deep State's Step-by-Step Plan to End Free Speech". You know Tucker Carlson is such a big fan of Putin, he was the only western journalist allowed to interview him, which he did. Just listen to the interview, they both just spew fascistic nonsense for two hours. Tucker desperately tries to have Putin condemn the America…

Here's a good article on Mike Benz:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/michael-benz-rising-vo...

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#298
post #93
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the government

The parent is saying Musk complied with these requests elsewhere without complaint, he's only making a fuss about it in Brazil. It's an odd hypocrisy or shift in strategy.

X has an office in Bengaluru that does engineering, so leaving India would be non-trivial.

Also Modi is an elected popular leader. India's censorship laws have been passed through the normal means. If Musk pushed back most Indian institutions would rally against him.

de Moraes is a chief justice making decrees that it's not clear he has the power to make. He's doing it in an unhinged fashion. Getting out of the country until things cool down is probably the smart move.

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#299
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see what happens when Google refuses to comply! Not gonna happen. But it should, if this is the order!

Why do you want Google of all companies to stand above the sovereign state, which is a representative democracy? The ruling is incredibly dumb for sure (at least the removing apps from devices part), but if the sovereign state demands it, they'll either have to exit the market/nation entirely or comply.

Dude wtf. Are you serious right now?

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#300
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see what happens when Google refuses to comply! Not gonna happen. But it should, if this is the order!

Why do you want Google of all companies to stand above the sovereign state, which is a representative democracy? The ruling is incredibly dumb for sure (at least the removing apps from devices part), but if the sovereign state demands it, they'll either have to exit the market/nation entirely or comply.

It's a bit silly & over the top, but I do think there's a huge danger to this planet with lots and lots and lots of jurisdictions all over the planet who have all kinds of incentives to self deal, to try to bend the internet & computing to their whims.

And the Internet & computing can't have such extreme veto power over how we think & connect. Europe for example has granted itself a right to be forgotten, where even if you do awful awful things you can ask to have yourself removed from the Internet. And so far that's been respected... In European search results. But as much as they insist, we don't censor the rest of the world of those results, just because one group of people says so.

Whether vpns are available isn't exactly the same. But its still horseshit. It's still casting a gigantic net because you are a petulant shitty power-mad rule-maker. It doesn't seem representative of the nation either; it seems like some hyper-political over-reacrion horseshit.

There's just so many people who will be trying to control how we think, how we connect, control what the internet is. And I feel like there's a long running crisis of what we do and what we don't do to match nations. We maybe aren't at full Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. But we've had a number of services get to the brink fo bas again and again, only for someone to blink. And it seemed inevitable that this system of never testingimots was going to break, and when it did, rather than break reasonably & part ways, Brazil has just gone scorched earth, has drastically drastically upped the brinkmanship & blast zone, in extremely harmful ways. This is just my judgement call, but fuck yeah I think this shit deserves a colossal colossal colossal middle finger, and if Brazil wants to escalate, well, have fun doing something other than the internet that everyone else uses. You'll have to build that path yourself, and I don't think we should support & enable that schism.

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