771–780 of 855 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a question of what is legal in each country. The censorship orders in Australia and India and Turkey complied with local laws so X stuck to their policy of following them. I detest censoring and authoritarianism in general, but X has publicly stated their policy is to comply with laws in each area. One thing I’ll mention: after Musk acquired X in 2022, they were engaged in a lawsuit against the government of Ind…
Moraes was granted that authority by the Supreme Court, so it is legal. Whether it's right or wrong is a different question, but Moraes' actions are not "illegal". Moraes does seem to be acting like an unaccountable little dictator in his fiefdom, which is dangerous. But then again Elon acts like an unaccountable little dictator in his fiefdom, which is also dangerous, so I don't really mind that X is getting banned.…
This is not exactly true, so let me explain it. Moraes is himself a justice on the Supreme Court. He was not granted authority by it. His own claim actually acknowledges that no new laws (either legislation or constitutional amendments) were passed to give him this power. Instead his claimed power rests on something more confusing and again, illegal. Brazil has two top level courts - an electoral court and a Supreme Court, for simplification and use of common international language. These two are separate courts and are supposed to have separation of powers. When de Moraes was president of the electoral court, he proposed in October 2022 to the electoral court that he be granted the unilateral power (as a single person) to remove online content as part of his role in the other court, the federal court (where he was inaugurated in 2017) - this is all easy to verify and there are many sources (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_de_Moraes).
Obviously, it is a total violation of the separation of powers for him to sit on one court and grant himself powers that he can use through the other court. Because no new legislation is involved, it also violates the fundamental role of the judicial system, since the creation of laws is part of the legislative power in Brazil.
> But then again Elon acts like an unaccountable little dictator in his fiefdom, which is also dangerous, so I don't really mind that X is getting banned
I don’t condone Elon’s erratic behavior. However, I think generally he has been more on the side of free speech and civil liberty than the previous leadership of Twitter. For example, after Musk’s acquisition, Twitter tried hard to stop censorship in India through a lawsuit against the government that they battled in 2023. They did not succeed, in part because India passed laws that legalized censorship unfortunately. But at least Twitter/X tried. As far as I can tell, they have been consistent with their public policy of following local laws when it comes to content moderation and censorship. But in Brazil’s case, the orders appear to be illegal (example: https://x.com/AlexandreFiles/status/1829979981130416479/phot...).
Whatever his demeanor is though, he is a private individual, and his actions matter less than actions of the state. Alexandre de Moraes is a Supreme Court justice. Whether Elon antagonizes him or not, he should remain neutral, stick to the law as written, and lean in favor of civil liberties as a default anytime there is something controversial or ambiguous.
I’m glad I don’t live in Brazil. Why ban X? It makes no sense.
People used it to organize an attempted coup against a democratically elected government and twitter is not cooperating with the investigation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People used it to organize an attempted coup against a democratically elected government and twitter is not cooperating with the investigation.
Coup without firearms. How does that work? Are the people supposed to shout their lungs out until the government decides to step down cooperatively?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a question of what is legal in each country. The censorship orders in Australia and India and Turkey complied with local laws so X stuck to their policy of following them. I detest censoring and authoritarianism in general, but X has publicly stated their policy is to comply with laws in each area. One thing I’ll mention: after Musk acquired X in 2022, they were engaged in a lawsuit against the government of Ind…
[flagged]
Your comment isn’t kind, and is calling me names. I am not sure why you cannot just calmly speak to the issue instead of saying that I am buying into “bot-fed rhetoric” or spreading misinformation. The guidelines explicitly say to assume good faith.
> Moraes has the power to decide on this matter and the court will review his decision collectively in due time.
The problem is Moraes was not granted this power through constitutional amendment or law. Feel free to point at something specific otherwise. But here is the breakdown of why these orders are unconstitutional and illegal:
https://x.com/AlexandreFiles/status/1829979981130416479/phot...
If that is not good enough, look at Article 5 Title IX of the Brazil constitution from https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Brazil_2017, which guarantees the following right to all Brazilians and foreigners residing in the country:
> expression of intellectual, artistic, scientific, and communication activity is free, independent of any censorship or license
Posting on Twitter is clearly “communication activity” and therefore must be free of censorship. There are numerous other parts of the constitution that are also violated by the notion of a single justice issuing orders in secret. You can read through the page with the constitutional text if you wish.
> Arguing that this is a political move doesn't even make sense. How does banning X help Lula?
De Moraes was banning content and accounts that belong to the political opposition against Lula. Banning X, a service that provides equal access to social media to all parties, is equivalent to only allowing services that continue censorship of the opposition party. That is directly favorable to Lula.
I like Bluesky, its devs, and its tech. I even built a third-party web client for it in Solid.js. But I find Bluesky to be too toxic. There's too much unwanted nudity, even if all my filters are turned on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well OK but he still sold the house. If you're not doing anything, just talking, it's not fraud. People often offer to sell a bridge to somebody as a way of saying they're gullible. That's not fraud because they're not actually selling the bridge.
> he still sold the house. If you're not doing anything, just talking, it's not fraud Let's edit the premise. No sale occurs. The agent spins some yarn, but you catch on and report them to a regulator. Do you expect them to go unpunished simply because it was all talk? Should they?
People still aren't CHOOSING to leave Twitter/X.
Citation needed. I know tons of people who have chosen to leave Twitter since Elon took over
That is being FORCED.
This isn't about you and your friends that hate Elon leaving for other platforms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you consider anti-government Chinese people, such as Falun Gong members or general pro-democracy activists to be bad actors and that censoring their speech is important to protect institutions from them? I'm trying to point out that you can't simply decide who's good and who's bad. Censorship entrenches whoever happens to be in power regardless of their merits. Maybe you think democracy is the important part and a…
That's a very black and white view of ways of restricting speech. Aside from the US most democracies have some sort of limits to free speech and not all of them have turned into autocracies. To counter your argument, absolute freedom of speech allows whoever controls the media to create narratives and manipulate public opinion without consequences
I am surprised no one mentioned nostr. https://nostr.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostr supposedly more distributed and censorship resistant than bsky. https://thenewstack.io/bluesky-vs-nostr-which-should-develop...