Brazilian court orders suspension of X • Hacker News Board

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#341

Post by crazygringo » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 12:52 PM UTC

cassianoleal wrote: post #323

crazygringo wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning a site is one thing. Banning an entire communications technology, with abusively high fines for citizens who defy the ban, is on a whole other level.

X is not communications technology. It's a forum website controlled by a private company. It's not like they're a protocol or that they're infrastructure.

X is the site I was referring to.

Virtual Private Networking is the communications technology I was talking about.

Banning VPN's is what's shocking here.

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#342

Post by matheusmoreira » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 1:01 PM UTC

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #273

matheusmoreira wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Brazil. That guy is a judge-god-king. Whatever he writes on a piece of paper becomes law. Saddest part is even on HN you will find brazilians supporting everything he does.

Lets be fair now. It was not like this as far as I can tell, before Lava Jato. Its just that the executive and legislative are now so weakened due to corruption scandals (and open investigations) that no one seemingly dares to move against 1 wild judge. I wonder how this ends though. 1 judge seemingly has more power now than a set of democratically elected senators

It's been like this since always. "Doctors think they're gods, judges know". My legal medicine professor, a coroner, told me that during a class.

It got worse in 2019. Some magazine ran a damning article on them. In retaliation, they granted themselves virtually limitless power to investigate, prosecute, judge and punish "fake news" of all kinds, with themselves as the victims. They determine what's fake of course. Their powers just kept expanding until they essentially usurped everything. It got to the point this judge started proposing changes to laws directly to our representatives. The changes were rejected but he just rammed the "fake news" nonsense down our throats anyway via his "resolutions". It's under the umbrella of this "fake news" inquisition that the judge-king banned X in Brazil.

And not a single politician will move against them. Precisely because they're all so hopelessly corrupt. All the judges need to do to put them in the ground is unearth one of countless corruption scandals.

This is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship of the judiciary. Unelected judge-kings with lifetime mandates whose pens directly make the people with guns do their bidding. It's kind of ridiculous to even discuss "laws" at this point. These guys could write whatever they want on a piece of paper and it becomes law.

Even more context:

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36543423

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#343

Post by IG_Semmelweiss » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 1:14 PM UTC

cassianoleal wrote: post #325

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

> However, the other branches are in the hands of the ruling socialists I'm sorry, but... what? The Executive is the one closest to this qualification, but Lula, Haddad, Zé Múcio, Tebet and the others in power are nowhere even close to being socialists! Lula perhaps, until about a couple decades ago was a little bit closer but now he's not even on the left very much. The Congress and the Senate, on the other hand, ar…

Let's see:

1 - EXECUTIVE:

Lula is in the literal workers' party.

Fernando Haddad, Minister of Finance, did his own Master's dissertation defending socio-economics of the USSR, before the USSR collapsed and was an embarrassment for cocktail communists everywhere. The guy who calls economic shots is literally a communist fanboy.

Carlos Lupi, also Minister, is literally one of the vice presidents of the Socialist International . The word socialist is literally in the name, and he is VP of it worldwide!

2 - CONGRESS:

The opposition is in clear minority in in both chambers[1]. The opposition has almost a 2:1 deficit vs the Government inside the Chamber of Deputies

3 - MACRO:

The president's own party is in an alliance with the communist party[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Congress_of_Brazil [2]

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#344

Post by random_dev_1989 » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 1:41 PM UTC

I can't express in words how horrible it's been to see the country I loved go spiral downhill due to a corrupt president and an non elected judge with ties to the REDACTED faction. At least 30% of the country is in favor of that. The country is infected with corruption everywhere, from small scale to the core. I'm leaving the land my family has worked hard for 200 years and moving to Uruguai. At least I have the option. I always wanted to stay apart from political discussion and for the most of the time I was center-left. From now on, I do not help nor connect with any cockroach who endorse this (the brazilian left wing party).

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#345

Post by Georgelemental » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 1:46 PM UTC

meiraleal wrote: post #280

Georgelemental wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that seems like reasonable content to moderate Why should the government be the one to make that decision? If anyone has a conflict of interest, it's them, no?

It definitely shouldn't be the richest man in the world, a foreigner.

You are not forced to use his platform if you don’t like it.

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#346

Post by hu3 » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 1:56 PM UTC

tux1968 wrote: post #157

hereme888 wrote: post #128

How would the Brazilian gov. know if a person is visiting X on a VPN, if the VPN is of good quality?

Any Brazilian with a known handle, will be vulnerable the moment they post anything. It doesn't matter the quality of the VPN at all.

What happens if a Brazilian travels to USA and tweets from there.

Then returns to Brazil?

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#347

Post by hungie » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 2:02 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #321

hungie wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come off the hyperbole. You don't believe that. I guarantee you you can think of content that's something we should moderate less. What about opposition candidates spreading truthful information. You'd really moderate the truth away before you'd moderate blatant misinformation?

Fair point - I mean opposing speech in general, and not just that specific phrase. I wasn't clear.

Right. Oppositional speech is worth keeping.

But when oppositional speech is like, "Covid vaccines are made from dead children, so you must not vote for whomever", I start to be like, a whole lot less sympathetic to the idea that we should not moderate at all.

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#348

Post by meiraleal » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 2:22 PM UTC

Georgelemental wrote: post #345

meiraleal wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely shouldn't be the richest man in the world, a foreigner.

You are not forced to use his platform if you don’t like it.

Yes and I don't use it but he is forced to respond to court orders :)

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#349

Post by betaby » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 3:02 PM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #250

codedokode wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPN protocols are easy to recognize and block using DPI unless they masquerade as legitimate traffic.

Does Brazil have a national firewall like China?

Not yet. Individual ISP implement blocking lists throughout IP ACLs but mostly by DNS means.

Re: Brazilian court orders suspension of X

#350

Post by hax0ron3 » Sat, Aug 31, 2024, 3:26 PM UTC

It is funny how many people who, if Putin's Russia did this, would immediately understand what is going on here and not make complicated excuses about law or the subtle nature of free speech, instead when Brazil does this pretend that this is something different simply because they so vehemently disagree with Musk and his politics.

Of course most of those people also disagree with Putin's politics, but to them Musk is the "near enemy", which is more dangerous to them than the "far enemy".

If one sees any fundamental psychological drive in an average American's positive reaction to this news other than pure tribal/religious desire to annihilate their political opponents, one has not yet put on those nice sunglasses from They Live. Don't get me wrong, of course there is the occasional actually principled rational person, but overall the vast majority of reactions to this fall along tribal lines, even here at the orange site, which maybe once was full of geeky libertarian types but has clearly for a long time now been overrun by a different sort of person.