Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 855 posts

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

#171

Post by throwadobe »

diogocp wrote: post #23
dont_forget_me wrote: post #16

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.

> Free speech is good upto certain extent Up to the extent that you agree with it?

Up to the extent it doesn't infringe on other people's rights, according to the Brazilian constitution, including the right not to be discriminated against.

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

#172

Post by braiamp »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #91
dgfitz wrote: 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…

> what they viewed as unconstitutional orders to censor speech.

As in Brazil constitution? They don't have free speech, but freedom of expression. Read article 5 of the Brazilian constitution.

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

#173

Post by aguaviva »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #91
dgfitz wrote: 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.

And who is her boss, again?

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

#174

Post by gruez »

bsnsxd wrote: post #56
nickpsecurity wrote: post #7

One of the linked articles said it boiled down to X being ordered to censor political opponents of those in power. They chose not to. I’m glad. Now, traffic is going to Bluesky. I wonder if this means that Bluesky has or will be offered the same choice. We might see what the character of that organization is by what choice they make.

"censor political opponents" is the most intellectually dishonest take, and in it lies the whole root of the discussion. Said opponents' accounts were asked to be shut down, not because they are opponents, but because they were being used to commit crimes against the electoral justice. The Supreme Court is a lifetime seat meant to not be caught in bi-yearly electoral politics, so it can oversee it, this current judge…

>Said opponents' accounts were asked to be shut down, not because they are opponents, but because they were being used to commit crimes against the electoral justice.

What are the "crimes" they're being accused of? Getting the opposition locked for "crimes" is basically authoritarianism 101. See: Venezuela[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Venezuelan_presidential_e...

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

#175

Post by nine_k »

vaidhy wrote: post #96
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

If the judge's orders clearly contradict the constitution, it's pretty logical to suggest that these would lead him to a jail.

There are various ways to resolve a conflict; to comply to your opponent's demands just because he happens to hold a high enough office is but one of these ways. Complying to unlawful orders so as to preserve profits is often seen as corruption. Sometimes the best way to resolve a conflict correctly is to take a stand.

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

#176

Post by geekodour »

pfraze wrote: 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…

hi pfraze, can u tell us a bit more about the golang event stream? does it also trigger the computation of the views periodically?

more precisely wanted to understand how do you generate the event stream from sqlite

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

#178

Post by siproprio »

meiraleal wrote: post #117
mwilcox wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly given he is excited to receive the traffic

Interestingly, the cohort moving to Bluesky isn't the same as those who were having trouble with the law.

Yes. Brazilians were censored and moved to bluesky. Elon musk has problems with the law! Absolutely no overlap whatsoever. Also very interesting in its own way.

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

#179

Post by throwaway48476 »

pfraze wrote: post #113
delichon wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Speaking entirely personally as I don't handle those questions at bsky. I couldn't even begin to comment without seeing knowing what the court orders were and what the cases are. Every social company operating internationally runs into this issue, and it's daunting to say the least. So, again, this is not something I decide. What I can say is that the protocol is a neutral global layer for data, which can then enable…

>Brazilian developers fork the Bluesky app and build locally-owned social platforms on the atmosphere.

This makes it easy to send thugs to their house and 'encourage' them to comply with any political demand. Jurisdictional arbitrage, particularly sites hosted in America following the first amendment is the only thing keeping anti authoritarian speech alive in authoritarian regimes.

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/audio-pakistan-global-critics

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

#180

Post by throwaway48476 »

declan_roberts wrote: post #115
verdverm wrote: post #70

I left Xitter about 6 weeks ago and went all in on Bluesky. Took time to give feedback to the algo, but it's doing much better these days. I don't feel like I'm missing out on much, you'll get the same news & events on Bluesky. A lot of people who were scared of losing their following are reporting more, better engagement with lower follower counts. What I really like about it is the ATProto, which while imperfect, s…

Blueskey seems to have all of these neat features that developers/nerds seem to like, but literally nobody else cares about.

A proper decentralized publishing platform would be content addressed not federated which retains all the downsides of centralization.
Post reply on HN