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Brazil Court votes unanimously to uphold X ban. Users switch to Threads, Bluesky

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111–120 of 163 posts

Re: Brazil Court votes unanimously to uphold X ban. Users switch to Threads, Bluesky

#111
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Twitter is not a fundamental right, as access to users isn't a right to a company. What about the rights of people who want to use twitter? Would you use the same characterization for Chinese censorship (ie. "The New York Times is not an fundamental right, as access to users isn't a right to [The New York Times Company]")?

You don't have the right to patronize a restaurant that gets shut down for health code violations after it's shut down. There's no difference in principle here. Banning Twitter itself for failing to comply with the law isn't a free speech issue. Now, part of the order makes it illegal to use VPN to access Twitter, which is an actual free speech issue, if you'd care to argue on those grounds.

> Now, part of the order makes it illegal to use VPN to access Twitter, which is an actual free speech issue, if you'd care to argue on those grounds.

This part was later struck down by the court.

Re: Brazil Court votes unanimously to uphold X ban. Users switch to Threads, Bluesky

#112
post #54

Apparently Brazil only asked for Twitter/X to have a local office (so they could be dealt with inside Brazilian law) and ban like 7 accounts.

They threatened X employees with jail time. Bunch of reasonable folks these Brazilian judges.

[deleted]

Re: Brazil Court votes unanimously to uphold X ban. Users switch to Threads, Bluesky

#113
post #51
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech destabilizes society. It’s a suitable price to pay, I think. The goal is absolute harmony. Especially at the expense of rights.

That might be your goal. But that does not mean it needs to be everyone else’s goals. For me, freedom of speech is part of what brings societies forward, and that includes deep changes which obviously means unstable societies at some point. Humans would be stuck in Stone Age if we would have had only stable societies.

Ha, sorry autocorrect changed my “the goal isn’t” to “the goal is.”

I agree with you and mistyped. I really need to proof my comments better.

I think the goal is not harmony but value and beauty.

Re: Brazil Court votes unanimously to uphold X ban. Users switch to Threads, Bluesky

#114
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don’t want companies to have to have offices in every country where they operate. X is big enough but it’s silly of Brazil to require a literal physical presence. They can serve whatever they need electronically to wherever X is these days.

It's not about serving them. They have already been served multiple times, refused to comply, got fined and refused to pay the fines. Pulling out their office was simply a means to avoid paying fines, that's all. There's no big motive there but cash. One can argue about the politics of this all day. There are political views to be discussed about the morality of the requests to ban accounts versus the morality of kee…

Not agreeing with the law is always a valid reason to disobey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience

> Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law.

If you believe the law is immoral, then break the law and accept the consequences.

You are always morally responsible for your actions. The fact some of your actions may have been compelled by law does not absolve you. Nazis who were just following orders were still punished.

Re: Brazil Court votes unanimously to uphold X ban. Users switch to Threads, Bluesky

#115
post #23

Note that Elon Musk's definition of free speech includes anything that is not outright illegal, including fake news, see links below. I find it disturbing. The world will be better off without X. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/27/us/politics/elon-musk-kam... https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-grok-ai-fake-elect...

>Elon Musk's definition of free speech includes anything that is not outright illegal, including fake news, see links below. I find it disturbing. I find your proposal of banning speech that is "fake news" equally disturbing. Trump was very happy to slap the "fake news" label when he was in power. What he also had the ability to shut down speech on the same basis?

The president in Brazil does not have the power to take down content just because he want..

This was the justice system that ruled that some content should be blocked, and this decision can be appealed bu the person that was blocked..

The problem here is that twitter, that was not a party in the case, decided they wanted to appeal, something they cannot do in Brazil legal system..

Re: Brazil Court votes unanimously to uphold X ban. Users switch to Threads, Bluesky

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is called living in a civilized society.

Well no, if someone is a habitual liar or always wrong, then you're free to assume they are lying or wrong. The ordinary opinion of random people is not a court of law where innocence is presumed.

You believe Elon Musk is always wrong? That seems like a bit of a stretch.

Re: Brazil Court votes unanimously to uphold X ban. Users switch to Threads, Bluesky

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BlueSky don't have any justice issue. Because of this, don't need representative yet.

A lot of Brazilian users are posting "I am using a VPN to access X" on BlueSky so the judge will probably order BlueSky to turn over their IP addresses(like he did in orders to X) so they can be fined $9000 a day.

To be fair, that order would only matter if Bluesky is logging and storing user IPs. I don't know of any technical reason for needing to track that based on the AT Protocol, they could avoid the entire problem by not tracking that data (assuming they currently do).

Re: Brazil Court votes unanimously to uphold X ban. Users switch to Threads, Bluesky

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad they didn't comply. I don't want social media platforms banning people just because some national government told them to.

Well X/Elon is more than happy to comply with censorship and records requests from Western/NATO countries.

I'm no lawyer, but the claim is that the request made by the Brazilian judge doesn't comply with Brazil's own laws. Presumably if X (not Elon) has complied with other censorship requests they found the requests to be lawful.

Re: Brazil Court votes unanimously to uphold X ban. Users switch to Threads, Bluesky

#119
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>for Twitter/X to have a local office (so they could be dealt with inside Brazilian law) ...and so they have someone to hold ~hostage~ responsible if something goes wrong >and ban like 7 accounts And you think they're going to stop there?

No, so what. It's their business what accounts are allowed under local law.

Brazil could attempt to ban the accounts somehow, they don't have jurisdiction to force Twitter to ban them. The whole play here is a game of chicken - "ban these accounts or we cut you off from the Brazilian user base"

Re: Brazil Court votes unanimously to uphold X ban. Users switch to Threads, Bluesky

#120
post #2

Twitter is not a fundamental right, as access to users isn't a right to a company. If the company wants the product to be available, then it should respect local laws the same way it did in Turkey and India.

The claim is that the ban request doesn't actually comply with Brazilian law. I'm no lawyer and don't know how accurate that is, but if correct that Twitter would be complying with local laws by refusing the unlawful order.
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