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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

#421

Post by kstenerud »

kstenerud wrote: post #295
pcwalton wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's frustrating that anything related to X/Twitter is such a predictably-partisan tinderbox because this is really interesting technical information. Thank you for sharing it!

It's partisan/political because Musk is partisan/political. And it's not just Musk. We've been living in a fantasy land of "no political affiliation" in the tech world for decades, and now that the age of the hyper-rich has come once again, they are realizing the benefits of using the power they wield to shape the worlds they live in. So now in the early stages of this century's great fight, we'll see our beloved tec…

Looking at the responses, I can see that people are still viewing this through the limited lens of left vs right.

This is of course a thing in that nobody can hide their colors anymore, but I'm specifically talking about the rich now feeling empowered enough that they even have the hubris to challenge governments of the world for their own benefit, and in some cases even build their own empires to escape the limitations of governments by forming their own rich-people-only worlds.

For example: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/magazine/prospera-hondura...

So long as you continue fighting left vs right, you're fighting the wrong enemy.

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

#422

Post by johnchristopher »

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…

Thanks for the details !

I wonder about:

> Hybrid on-prem & cloud.

I wonder about the factors/considerations that led to hosting a given data/services on-prem or outside. Were there purely technical considerations or were there also about "self host what can't get leaked" (think GDPR, privacy concerns, things like that) ?

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

#423

Post by Ygg2 »

bilvar wrote: post #412
rapsey wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A supreme court judge clearly acting against the laws of their state, but somehow Musk is the bad guy.

We arrived at the point that people are celebrating censorship and authoritarianism because of their irrational hatred of one guy.

That's how it always works. "You see the problem with not dealing with XYZ is that the government/judicial/legislative doesn't have enough power to tackle XYZ."

You grant them power they asked. They don't deal with it, but ask for more power. At some point they stop asking and label you as the problem.

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

#424

Post by LightBug1 »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #383
jdietrich wrote: post #364

Earlier 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…

Funny thing is that he is poisoning his own well by making leftwing people , who are much more likely to drive an EV, abhor him and Tesla. It’s not only happening in the US but has also started to happen in other countries like Australia.

Yup - the hole turned me off so much I've switched my first EV buy to Hyundai ioniq 5 (N if my wife authorises it LOL) ... not saying they're any better but it's a branding thing ... I couldn't stand to be associated with anything to do with that hole.

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

#425

Post by pavlov »

wordofx wrote: post #410
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Weird how pointing out climate change inaccuracies destroyed scientific debate. 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.

In the late 1990s there were still medical scientists who questioned the causal link between HIV and AIDS. This was at a time when effective drugs were already approved and saving lives.

Those scientists believed they were asking reasonable questions and pointing out potential inaccuracies. But imagine you were an HIV positive patient in 1995 and you latched on to this scientific debate to conclude that probably you should just eat a lot of vitamins and things will work out fine, since the scientists can’t seemingly even agree on whether you’ll get AIDS…

This is not a theoretical example. AIDS denialism cost hundreds of thousands of lives during roughly 1995-2005. There was a Nobel prize winner (Kary Mullis) who supported the movement with his authority despite never having done any HIV research. The government of South Africa was also involved for their own political reasons.

It was a lot like today’s climate change denialism and needs to be remembered. The major difference is that the personal consequences of HIV denialism were felt within a few years on an individual level, so the matter was resolved within decades. With climate change, it’s going to take a century and today’s denialists won’t be around to feel the effects.

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

#426

Post by jasonlotito »

conradev wrote: post #392
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he legitimately believes that “the woke mind virus” is an existential threat to our society Sure. I don't think he's a hypocrite. He has , however, hyper fixated on a topic that's in vogue in tech circles but totally irrelevant elsewhere. Unlike in technology, where one can credibly fail upwards, doing that in politics comes at the cost of influence. And in this block order we're seeing, tangibly, the consequences…

I do agree that he is hyper fixated on specific things like gender but – I do think that there are elements of the “woke mind virus” that are okay with censorship. I don’t think that censorship has any place in a democracy, and I do think it is a problem we need to address. The executive branch asked Twitter to ban a NY Post story on the grounds that it was misinformation when it wasn’t. It was “malinformation”: http…

“ I do think that there are elements of the “woke mind virus” that are okay with censorship”

Then let’s not focus on some made up boogeyman and ignore the fact that in 2020, the executive at the time was happily reaching out to Twitter and other platforms asking them to remove posts. The guy Musk is supporting was happily asking Twitter to remove posts.

But let’s be clear, they were asking Twitter to enforce its rules. And you can argue that the government asking like that is illegal, but I’ve yet to see a guilty verdict in court so, until that happens, Twitter enforcing its rules isn’t censorship. No one has been denied their first amendment rights.

More importantly, by Musks own yardstick, Twitter is no longer the bastion of Free Speech it was when he took control. So regardless of what you think, Twitter is worse off now.

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

#427

Post by jorvi »

jdietrich wrote: post #364
pfannkuchen wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people see Musk differently from how he actually is. Or at least how he sees himself. He has always said, for many years, that he got into SpaceX to work towards the goal of making humans a multiplanetary species, and he got into electric cars to work towards the goal of having a sustainable energy society. I think he legitimately believes that “the woke mind virus” is an existential threat to our society, an…

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…

> By taking sides in a partisan culture war, he has made his core mission essentially non-partisan.

There is a significant amount of people choosing to not purchase a Tesla because they don’t want to be associated with Mr. Musk.

SpaceX is more insulated because there is essentially no alternative. If Yspace existed, I’m sure a significant amount of people would choose to champion that instead.

I think you’re vastly underselling how much Mr Musk his communications and his association with the new hyperbigoted misinformation-hub Xitter has turned people to dislike him, powerful and influential one’s among them.

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

#428

Post by sweeter »

bad_user wrote: post #345
ikmckenz wrote: post #303

Earlier 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…

theres no absolute free speech in the US. There are most certainly plenty of things you cannot say and protestors are often violently silenced by police and riot squads. Then the media upholds its end of the bargain by heavily re-enforcing the State Dept. position while besmirching the message of the protestors and misrepresenting them in any and every way imaginable.

You can say a lot of awful shit, but you really can't openly oppose the State with any real threat of power. I mean, I wouldn't really call the US admitting to assassinating Malcom X, MLK, among others, the pinnacle of free speech... all theses people did was speak out against injustices that they observed... and that's just one incident. This happens everyday.

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

#429

Post by mikrotikker »

kstenerud wrote: post #421
kstenerud wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's partisan/political because Musk is partisan/political. And it's not just Musk. We've been living in a fantasy land of "no political affiliation" in the tech world for decades, and now that the age of the hyper-rich has come once again, they are realizing the benefits of using the power they wield to shape the worlds they live in. So now in the early stages of this century's great fight, we'll see our beloved tec…

Looking at the responses, I can see that people are still viewing this through the limited lens of left vs right. This is of course a thing in that nobody can hide their colors anymore, but I'm specifically talking about the rich now feeling empowered enough that they even have the hubris to challenge governments of the world for their own benefit, and in some cases even build their own empires to escape the limitati…

Free speech is all that matters. Musk is not perfect by any means here but he is better than the rest. He is exporting the 1st amendment to us nations who don't get to experience such freedoms. Which is what Twitter should have been doing, instead of kowtowing to the likes of the German and Saudi govts among others...

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

#430

Post by pmdr »

neonsunset wrote: post #413

[flagged]

Misinformation has been rampant ever since social media has gained momentum, on both sides of the political aisle.

The sad part is that some folks on the left would happily have a site banned now that Musk is a right-wing nut. They don't seem to grasp the implications this would have on free speech once other countries adopt Brazil's model. In their world, it's a 'nothing burger', as they'd been calling 'the twitter files.'

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