Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Twitter was already super partisan long before he took it over Sure. But Elon changed teams. He used to be bipartisan. But he chose a champion in the aftermath of Covid and--by the looks of it--he's chosen a bad one. (In an alternate universe where Musk stuck to what he's good at, I could see the entire Artemis programme being delegated to SpaceX and a bipartisan adoption of Tesla as America's EV standard bearer. I…
> Musk stuck to what he's good at Right. And that is?
Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
401–410 of 855 posts
Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
Freedom of speech is a general conception of human rights, not any one particular law. Governments can choose to respect (or not!) those rights, but the idea applies to everyone.
When it comes to human rights, unfortunately, the notion got perverted by USSR and its allies. The difference between the US and the rest of the world is that the US has the First Amendment, which it upholds. So, for example, in the US "hate speech" is not banned, and while inciting violence is banned, it must be literal incitement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat... This is important, be…
The enlightenment era gave us two separate definitions of freedom. At its foundation, the US govt is granted whatever rights it has to constrain freedom by wholly autonomous and free individuals, and in the other (French, continental) conception freedom is both defined and granted by the state. Authoritarianism is baked into the definition.
It will take future historians living in more intellectually permissive times to give a full account as to why the first concept of freedom only ever took root in the US and why the majority of countries have adopted the second.
Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Bluesky intend to be responsive to the kind of court orders that X rejected?
Something tells me at the least bsky will not begin a name calling primary school attack with a supreme court justice of a sovereign nation while using abusive names for the president of that country all the while using childish fake AI generated graphics. PS. Somehow all of this feels very natural when done by Musk. It kind of makes sense. It feels like “yes yes, he’d do this”.
Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
#404I 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…
I want a social network like X/BlueSky but it uses a community notes style algorithm to decide what content to show me instead of raw engagement. Should get rid of the trolls as Paul Graham wants to happen.
Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember when the Toyota Prius was a potent symbol of everything that was wrong with smug liberals. Lazy comedians still use the Prius as a punchline. Why doesn't a Tesla Model 3 carry the same sort of political baggage? Why don't right-wing conspiracy theorists consider Musk to be part of the "WHO/WEF globalist elite", despite the fact that he's a tech billionaire who is literally trying to plug people's brains in…
> Why doesn't a Tesla Model 3 carry the same sort of political baggage? When was the last time you were in a red state? Driving an EV of any kind is a strong political statement. > By taking sides in a partisan culture war, he has made his core mission essentially non-partisan Not how partisan affiliation works--think of someone who flip flops from one side to the other. They aren't seen as above the fray or non-part…
Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember when the Toyota Prius was a potent symbol of everything that was wrong with smug liberals. Lazy comedians still use the Prius as a punchline. Why doesn't a Tesla Model 3 carry the same sort of political baggage? Why don't right-wing conspiracy theorists consider Musk to be part of the "WHO/WEF globalist elite", despite the fact that he's a tech billionaire who is literally trying to plug people's brains in…
> Why doesn't a Tesla Model 3 carry the same sort of political baggage? When was the last time you were in a red state? Driving an EV of any kind is a strong political statement. > By taking sides in a partisan culture war, he has made his core mission essentially non-partisan Not how partisan affiliation works--think of someone who flip flops from one side to the other. They aren't seen as above the fray or non-part…
This surprises me (I believe you though!). I've read lots of articles and fun facts lately about how places like Texas go fastest at installing solar panels, because solar is now the cheapest source of energy and all. I'd blatantly assume that those new solar field owners would be charging their cars with their own electricity, also purely for money reasons and not climate/ideological ones.
Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
In France specifically, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (which is an integral part of the Constitution), defines freedom as doing anything which does not harm others, and that the Law determines the limits of a freedom. Which means Freedom (including of Speech) in its very conception is more bounded that the US notion of Free Speech (which, even though also limited, is less restrictive). Howev…
> In France specifically, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (which is an integral part of the Constitution), defines freedom as doing anything which does not harm others, and that the Law determines the limits of a freedom. But the whole point of freedom of speech is for situations where it does "harm others". If nobody has a problem with your speech, then you don't need laws to protect it. The…
Broadly speaking, freedom of speech can mean two roughly orthogonal things:
1. Lack of government censorship.
2. Freedom of speech as an outcome: a society where people can speak their minds without excessive consequences.
Sense 2 is inherently vague and can't be regulated, as people won't agree on when the consequences are excessive. But it's usually what people want when they care about the freedom of speech.
The two senses are sometimes opposed. If you say something other people find unpleasant and a million people decide to ruin your life, it's clearly against freedom of speech in sense 2. But if you have laws against such mob justice, they can easily violate freedom of speech in sense 1.
Freedom of speech in sense 2 is more about culture than government regulations. If you have a highly polarized society, you can't have freedom of speech in that sense.
Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
#408I'm from Brazil and this judge is totally out of control. I agree that X needs to have a legal representative in Brazil, this is correct anywhere, but he threatened a fine of 200k and imprisonment to the person Musk appointed as representative if his stricture orders were not complied with. He threatened us to pay $9k in fines per day if we use VPN to access X. Unless you are part of the government base, it is diffic…
Moraes essentially wanted a hostage. Executives of companies shouldn't be arrested for things they have no power over, such as content moderation. My guess is that Moraes wanted to force Musk's company to not have a legal representative in the country, because the moment you know if you accept a job there's a high chance that job will result in you being arrested, those business men and women won't want that job. So Moraes clearly forced a situation that drove X out of the country.
If anything – it would still have been incredibly draconian and abusive from Moraes part – but it would have been “less bad” if the had skip the whole "arresting the legal representative" thing and had went straight to "block Twitter/X for not complying with his orders" part. But I guess Moraes really wanted to go for the "they didn't have a representative in Brazil, so we ban it" narrative.
Which by the way, this requirement, even if it's in the law, it surely not demanded from the vast majority of online companies that offer their service in Brazil. Otherwise they would have blocked Blue Sky as well, because (I assume) it doesn't have legal representatives in the country. So at best this law is being selectively enforced.
Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
#409Here is a friendly reminder that Twitter/X started cooperating way more with government takedown requests since Musk took over [1]. So obviously Musk is not protecting free speech here because he usually doesn't do it. What is he protecting? [1] https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-or...
No he is just rubbing them the wrong way. States, governments are control freaks. They make sure only their "disinformation" must be spread (public schooling, paid academia, controlled media). Rest will be muffled.bl Before musk Twitter was aligning with them, now not much.
Re: Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember when the Toyota Prius was a potent symbol of everything that was wrong with smug liberals. Lazy comedians still use the Prius as a punchline. Why doesn't a Tesla Model 3 carry the same sort of political baggage? Why don't right-wing conspiracy theorists consider Musk to be part of the "WHO/WEF globalist elite", despite the fact that he's a tech billionaire who is literally trying to plug people's brains in…
Weirdly Hybrids have now become a climate denial fave. In any thread about EVs there is a typical HN commenter desperate to tell you that they drive a hybrid, not an EV like those silly virtue signalers. For those who remember the vicious attacks on the Prius it's a wild shift in attitude.
In any thread about climate change they are desperate to tell you that you’re a climate denier when you point out inaccurate information.
For those who remember the vicious attacks on science, we called that the dark ages.