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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

#841

Post by avsteele »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #833
avsteele wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, I'm only mildly surprised by the pro-censorship sentiments which are prevalent here at HN. Still, for those with an open mind... Read the NY times article; it is not amazing well done but serves to show how unaccountable the orders of the judge are. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/world/americas/brazil-x-b... Then read the orders from the judge (as claimed by X). "Secretly ban this sitting senator w…

When Musk is picking-and-choosing where freedom of expression matters (e.g., Turkey, India, publishing his plane's location information, banning users writing "cisgender", etc.), I don't think it's "pro-censorship" to not be on his side here because this doesn't feel motivated by true principle and puts his motives and associated narrative into highly suspect territory for me. Is some selective censorship from Musk b…

This doesn't make sense to me. I'm just doing to poke at one aspect.

Imagine you are a Brazilian. The government will censor these speakers whatever they appear. If you favor this ruling you are agreeing with the statement "Yes, I trust the Brazilian government to be the one to determine what is misinformation and against democracy and to make action to prevent me from seeing it"

Twitter/Musk can not substantially change your access to information as there are many other sources. The government can.

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

#843

Post by johnisgood »

ben_w wrote: post #822
johnisgood wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries in Eastern Europe actively opposes gender stuff (it is banned in education). I do not know why "gender" is being asked in the first place, it should be "sex", and that is biological. Why do we ask for gender on websites, for example? What is the purpose of it, really?

> Why do we ask for gender on websites, for example? What is the purpose of it, really? I can only think of two reasons: 1) Localised messages to and from the user. Not every language supports gender-neutral singular "you/they". 2) Demographic tracking e.g. for advertising: I've been given unskippable ads on YouTube for sanitary pads, and have forgotten which ad network presented me with one for dick pills.

Hmm, are you sure about the localized messages? They typically use 'you' instead of third-person pronouns like 'he' or 'she.'

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

#844

Post by dspillett »

mikrotikker wrote: post #767
dspillett wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So he's merely an equal and opposite reaction > He bought a powerful propaganda tool/weapon and aimed it in the opposite direction. I'd say not. I don't think twitter itself wasn't aimed directly in any direction before Musk, other than “away from where firing may cause twitter problems”. They operated from a position of cowardice rather than political bias. Sometimes this was towards the right because there was a…

You must have been on the good, non political side of Twitter. Or maybe you don't realize because you're weren't the target of Twitters unfair tactics

Those unfair tactics, assuming I accept they existed⁰, were not twitter's by my understanding, but reactions to the whims (or perceived possible whims) of advertisers, or the bulk of users that advertisers were there to claim the eyeballs of.

I'll caveat this by saying I've never had a twitter account or any desire for one¹ meaning my views are those of an outsider and occasionally a passive reader – but from what I can see twitter acted from a position of cowardice² rather than any political machinations.

----

[0] One man's fair slapping of an arsehole, is another man's unfair restriction of speech.

[1] At first it was a daft novelty, then a novelty that had perhaps outstayed its welcome, then just a place far too full of people who thought twitter was a good idea, then the famous got hold of it and it became a tribal shit-show & soon after a political shit-show – all before Musk jumped in with both feet and a lot of other people's money.

[2] Hence not kicking Trump (and a few others close to him or relevant rhetoric) despite flagrant breaches of their stated policies, until such time as he was a lesser threat due to not getting a second term, and before that kicking people not because of any internal moral code but because of what advertisers might think.

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

#845

Post by verdverm »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #837
verdverm wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluesky could implement it in their moderation service, but that does not mean users in Brazil would be impacted by it. Users could swap moderation service or swap interfaces The one thing that could happen is the PDS deleting the record for everyone, everywhere One thing to separate is Bluesky from ATProto. Bluesky is the default implementation of the 4 core pieces, but one could use alternatives for all of them as…

If you're providing tools to circumvent government bans you're gonna get banned, the government won't care about your federated moderation layer

If the govt bans a specific app, the people will just use another for accessing the same information.

It's not really tools for circumvention. The Bluesky app is more like Chrome for the ATProto network, the best implementation of a viewer, open source and leading edge. The moderation is less federated, more about user choice, as each labeller is centralized, but there are many of them.

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

#846

Post by ben_w »

johnisgood wrote: post #843
ben_w wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do we ask for gender on websites, for example? What is the purpose of it, really? I can only think of two reasons: 1) Localised messages to and from the user. Not every language supports gender-neutral singular "you/they". 2) Demographic tracking e.g. for advertising: I've been given unskippable ads on YouTube for sanitary pads, and have forgotten which ad network presented me with one for dick pills.

Hmm, are you sure about the localized messages? They typically use 'you' instead of third-person pronouns like 'he' or 'she.'

85% sure: the claim here was that there are some languages where "you" itself comes in masculine and feminine forms. I'm told this applies to Hebrew and Arabic — אתה and את — but my ability to confirm this is limited to googling wiktionary.

85% is mainly how much I trust the sources: my experience has been kind of factoid is often true, but sometimes turns out to be "this source sounds like it means X, but actually it means Y" or worse "we made it up and you'll never check".

That said, I ought to have written "I can only think of two *good* reasons", because the third reason is "whenever anyone makes a database of people, we automatically add gender without even thinking about it".

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

#847

Post by timbit42 »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #711
gargron wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe that about Mastodon?

Onboarding and discovery is much too difficult for the average user. Distributed is technologically cool, but will remain niche IMO.

Mastodon isn't distributed, like bittorrent; it's decentralized, like email.

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

#848

Post by pfannkuchen »

lossolo wrote: post #589
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 think he legitimately believes that “the woke mind virus” is an existential threat to our society Musk blames 'wokeness' for his daughter rejecting him after he didn't accept who she was. His entire conflict with the left and the 'woke' is centered around this one issue. He can't accept that he was rejected because of what he has done, so he needs someone else to blame and fight with. He bought X as his propagand…

> His entire conflict with the left and the 'woke' is centered around this one issue

Extreme doubt.

But that is probably the reason why he came out of the closet about his views.

I think a lot of people have similar views to his, they just keep quiet. Because, well, look at what happens to you if you don’t.

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

#849

Post by latexr »

kshri24 wrote: post #584
latexr wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh so it is now "wise" to "keep mouth shut". That’s been true since the dawn of communication. It’s called picking your battles. You don’t badmouth a judge while he’s considering your sentence or insult a robber while they have you tied up with a gun pointed at a loved one. > accept the diktats of authority You mean like Musk does. https://www.vice.com/en/article/elon-musk-censors-twitter-in...

> You mean like Musk does. "while Musk is a proponent of free speech, he believes that moderation on Twitter should ‘hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates" India has laws on content moderation, so does China, Turkey and other countries listed in the article. What Law in Brazil did X break? Or was it the whims and fancies of the Judge? Quoting from X post below [1]: “When we attempted to defend…

Well, that was fast.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/starlink-says-its-complyi...

Once again proving he’s all talk.

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

#850

Post by johnisgood »

ben_w wrote: post #846
johnisgood wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, are you sure about the localized messages? They typically use 'you' instead of third-person pronouns like 'he' or 'she.'

85% sure: the claim here was that there are some languages where "you" itself comes in masculine and feminine forms. I'm told this applies to Hebrew and Arabic — אתה and את — but my ability to confirm this is limited to googling wiktionary. 85% is mainly how much I trust the sources: my experience has been kind of factoid is often true, but sometimes turns out to be "this source sounds like it means X, but actually i…

Wouldn't asking for "sex" suffice though? What happens when someone picks "none of the above" or "prefer not to answer"?
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