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Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

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Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

#102
post #2

Several folks in Brazil had much to choose from out of Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky as alternatives to Twitter / X. Now that X got banned in Brazil and to potentially lose over 100M+ users we are starting to see which platforms they are choosing to sign up to. So far, Bluesky is seeing a surge in user registrations after the invite system was lifted a year ago. I would expect Threads to also see a surge in registrat…

Mastodon was dead from the start, it isn’t in the running. Threads has too big of an image problem to overcome. No one wants Instagram for Twitter. Bluesky is the only platform currently that has a chance, but it’s an under funded, tiny team who can’t ship on time. Bluesky will see a surge in registrations but no change in DAU as they still haven’t supported video, so no one will stay on the site.

Why do you believe that about Mastodon?

Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

#103
post #74

Disclaimer: indifferent at best to musk, probably more dislike than anything else, but not with vitriol. So I read that this is all because musk refused to appoint a Brazilian citizen as an X representative, as dictated by Brazilian law. I have not verified this part. Musk refused because the last person to fill that role had all their bank accounts frozen by the judge. The judge also cut off payments from Brazilian…

Not exactly. X had a local representative who was threatened by this judge issuing illegal censorship orders. It’s not that they refused to appoint a representative but that they had to get rid of all their employees and legal representation in Brazil because the judge was going after them as individuals, making it impossible for X to challenge what they viewed as unconstitutional orders to censor speech. The root of…

> Ultimately these decisions are made by Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X.

He's obviously known for his hands off "I just allocate capital" attitude towards his businesses.

Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATProto actually separates moderation from PDS or App View. Users can choose which labellers they prefer and can even combine them, separate from where they host their data or the UI they choose to use. https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderati... They do the same for feeds, 4 core components, with user choice and interoperability for each

So what levers does that give governments seeking to get compliance out of an internet service - if multiple apps are hosting anti-party propaganda the government has to block the domains of each app ? Or, perhaps the domains of the content itself is blocked so apps continue to work but fail to load content within certain borders ?

apps don't host data, PDS (personal data servers) do

apps implement views on that data, and may or may not follow the rules, of gov't or users. For example, even though you can block a user, detach a quote post, or hide comments, apps have to implement this behavior, and nothing stops a person from finding that relation.

ATProto is federated, not centralized, and not something gov'ts and regulations have thought thoroughly about. Also, with DID, I believe DNS blocking will be hard because I can change the name and still get to the same content

Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

#106
post #74

Disclaimer: indifferent at best to musk, probably more dislike than anything else, but not with vitriol. So I read that this is all because musk refused to appoint a Brazilian citizen as an X representative, as dictated by Brazilian law. I have not verified this part. Musk refused because the last person to fill that role had all their bank accounts frozen by the judge. The judge also cut off payments from Brazilian…

Not exactly. X had a local representative who was threatened by this judge issuing illegal censorship orders. It’s not that they refused to appoint a representative but that they had to get rid of all their employees and legal representation in Brazil because the judge was going after them as individuals, making it impossible for X to challenge what they viewed as unconstitutional orders to censor speech. The root of…

Isn't it about the people who invaded government buildings on January 8 2923 because they claimed Jair Bolsonaro won the election much like the January 6 attack in the USA after Trump lost?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Brazilian_Congress_atta...

The same people who wanted to overthrow the government and wanted a coup d'état by the military?

I doubt that the US government would differently in such cases.

And Twitter censored accounts on behalf of Turkey and India for political reasons but in Brasil they act differently, maybe Musk is in favor of Bolsonaro.

And that Linda makes the decisions is questionable at best

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-linda-yaccarino-tw...

Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

#107
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about the same Elon who tweeted the picture of the judge behind bars in an masterful attempt to resolve the issue, right?

Is that relevant to the illegality of Moraes' secret censorship campaign?

Is it censorship to block accounts of people who want to overthrow the government?

Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

#108

[flagged]

You do know it's about the people who stormed government buildings in a riot to overthrow the government?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Brazilian_Congress_atta...

Musk ist protecting the Brazil version of the January 6 rioters of the US.

Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

#109
post #76

Copying over my latest backend status update; figure folks would find it interesting Servers are holding up so far! Fortunately we were overprovisioned. If we hit 4mm new signups then things should get interesting. We did have some degradations (user handles entering an invalid state, event-stream crashed a couple times, algo crashed a couple times, image servers hit bad latencies) but we managed to avoid a full outa…

Does Bluesky intend to be responsive to the kind of court orders that X rejected?

Clearly given he is excited to receive the traffic

Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

#110
post #45

It saddens me the Brasil banned X because of racism, anti-semitism and hate-speech. But X is still not banned in the west. At some point we have to come to this realization in the west that absolutism is never the answer. Free speech is good upto certain extent, the way it was at Twitter before the rich and powerful took over. Moreover, it is content moderation and it doesn't have anything to do with free speech.

You can’t be so naive that you think this has anything to do with the reasons you listed. The government in Brazil does not like X because users are critizing the government. Unfortunately Brazil is barely a democracy and it’s infested with little potentates.

Criticizing?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Brazilian_Congress_atta...

It's a bit more, isn't it?

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