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

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

#151

Post by cassianoleal »

_heimdall wrote: post #146
cassianoleal wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not up to X/Musk to decide that though. If they feel that way, there are legal avenues to pursue. They should always comply with the court orders, then challenge them. Not doing so is breaking the law and should be punished as such.

That really depends on leverage. The Brazilian Supreme Court really has very little leverage over Twitter (or Musk directly). Twitter has little to gain by complying with the judge's ban before challenging it in court, but they do have a lot to lose. It'd be a different story if Twitter was being challenged by the US Supreme Court, they have mhch more leverage to damage Twitter if they don't comply.

They have essentially lost all ad income driven by Brazilian users. I'd say that's quite a bit of leverage. Furthermore, SpaceX have had local assets frozen. That seems like some leverage to me. Starlink have now decided to comply with X blockage in the country [0] after Musk rattling his sabre saying they wouldn't. It _feels_ like there is at least some leverage.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41439798

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

#152

Post by defrost »

_heimdall wrote: post #144
defrost wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim by Musk (who is also not a lawyer, nor Brazilian) is that a single renegade Brazilian Suprem Court Justice has made a non compliant unconstitutional ban request. The report here asserts that every single other Brazilian Supreme Court Justice has backed that ban. You may not be a lawyer, like Musk, but I'm led to believe that all the Justices of the Braziian Supreme Court are, and that they understand the Br…

I, unlike Musk, don't have a team of lawyers though. Its common for people to attribute business decisions directly to Musk, but do we actually know he was the one and only person at Twitter involved in this decision?

Seems like weak tea.

Musk et al bent over backwards for India and Turkey and suddenly gained principles in Brazil?

A Supreme Court Justice who rules on constitional law is fairly definitive, now even more so .. in India and Turkey X-itter sided with the the ruling conservative right wing party in power, in Brazil X-itter sided with the losing conservative right wing party that spread election denial propaganda.

There's a clear pattern.

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

#153

Post by _heimdall »

cassianoleal wrote: post #151
_heimdall wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really depends on leverage. The Brazilian Supreme Court really has very little leverage over Twitter (or Musk directly). Twitter has little to gain by complying with the judge's ban before challenging it in court, but they do have a lot to lose. It'd be a different story if Twitter was being challenged by the US Supreme Court, they have mhch more leverage to damage Twitter if they don't comply.

They have essentially lost all ad income driven by Brazilian users. I'd say that's quite a bit of leverage. Furthermore, SpaceX have had local assets frozen. That seems like some leverage to me. Starlink have now decided to comply with X blockage in the country [0] after Musk rattling his sabre saying they wouldn't. It _feels_ like there is at least some leverage. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41439798

> They have essentially lost all ad income driven by Brazilian users

This one, at least, isn't really leverage. If they did comply the ad revenue would be lost anyway. If Twitter does somehow win a legal challenge they can at least try to sue for lost ad revenue, they likely couldn't make that case if they chose to comply.

I'm not sure how they can legally go after SpaceX here. Definitely not claiming to know Brazilian law here, it just seems surprising that they could be roped in only for having the same founder/CEO. Unless I'm mistaken they aren't even sibling companies under a shared corporate parent.

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

#154

Post by matheusmoreira »

kranke155 wrote: post #127
matheusmoreira wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local law says censorship is unconstitutional. It goes out of its way to spell out that on top of censorship being unconstitutional, political censorship is especially unconstitutional. That means it's super mega ultra unconstitutional. That's the whole point, you know. We think this supreme court judge is violating the constitution by doing things like ordering the censorship of "fake news". These were political acc…

You seem misinformed. Sources ? They literally just approved a law against misinformation.

> Sources ?

PL 2630/2020, the proposed "fake news" law. Not approved, despite their unrelenting attempts at passing it with urgency. At least not yet. And certainly not before all this stuff began, which would be in 2019.

> They literally just approved a law against misinformation.

Huh? I searched for newly approved "fake news" laws but couldn't find any new information. Why don't you cite some?

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

#155

Post by matheusmoreira »

kranke155 wrote: post #128
matheusmoreira wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local law says censorship is unconstitutional. It goes out of its way to spell out that on top of censorship being unconstitutional, political censorship is especially unconstitutional. That means it's super mega ultra unconstitutional. That's the whole point, you know. We think this supreme court judge is violating the constitution by doing things like ordering the censorship of "fake news". These were political acc…

https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/c0l82k39x28o Here is the BBC Brasil article on the topic. The ban has been upheld by the entire court, not just its more activist judges. A. The law in Brazil says any company needs a legal representative in the country. X does not. B. Under hate speech and misinformation laws some accounts were asked to be removed. They did not. C. Because the company wasn’t replying at all to…

There is no problem with requiring X to appoint local representatives. This has nothing to do with that.

Follow the chain of events.

The "fake news" inquisition started when some magazine ran a damning article on one of these judges.

In retaliation to that, they granted themselves extensive powers. They gave themselves the right to investigate, prosecute, judge, sentence and punish crimes against themselves.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

Then comes the 2022 election. These judges become openly partisan. They start censoring Bolsonaro supporters for "fake news". This is what I claim is unconstitutional.

Obviously, Bolsonaro was not reelected. These judges are very happy about that. They're so happy they go to public events and showboat about being the ones who personally defeated Bolsonaro.

Fast forward to today. The censorship continues. They keep ordering X to ban accounts. Which led to it pulling out of the country. Which led to it getting blocked due to not having a local legal representative. Which led to everything we are witnessing in real time right now.

There is no problem with requiring local legal representation. The problem is with the B point in your timeline. They shouldn't be "asking" (actually ordering) the removal of accounts for "misinformation" at all. That is political censorship and it is unconstitutional.

Therefore everything that happened after B, should not have happened at all.

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

#156

Post by _heimdall »

defrost wrote: post #152
_heimdall wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, unlike Musk, don't have a team of lawyers though. Its common for people to attribute business decisions directly to Musk, but do we actually know he was the one and only person at Twitter involved in this decision?

Seems like weak tea. Musk et al bent over backwards for India and Turkey and suddenly gained principles in Brazil? A Supreme Court Justice who rules on constitional law is fairly definitive, now even more so .. in India and Turkey X-itter sided with the the ruling conservative right wing party in power, in Brazil X-itter sided with the losing conservative right wing party that spread election denial propaganda. There…

> Musk et al bent over backwards for India and Turkey and suddenly gained principles in Brazil?

The question isn't what morals the company decides to stand on other than the moral that they will only comply with government requests and court rulings that are legal under that jurisdiction's laws.

I don't know details of Turkish or Indian law, but I do generally understand their governments to be more oppressive than the US. It seems plausible that the requests made by those governments were legal there, as opposed to the Brazilian request that Twitter is claiming not to be legal there.

Supreme Court justices are in fact fallible. There have been a handful of decisions coming out of SCOTUS that many have been extremely unhappy with to the point of claiming the rulings were unlawful or unconstitutional. Is it impossible that the Brazilian judge made a request/demand and threat that isn't actually lawful?

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

#157

Post by _heimdall »

BadHumans wrote: post #142
_heimdall wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not talking about Elon. Just making a general statement that you do not always need to give someone the benefit of doubt.

Sure, I totally agree that you don't always have to give someone the benefit of the doubt.

In context though, it is very unclear that you weren't talking about Musk.

> 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.

The GP comment you were replying to specifically mentions giving Elon the benefit of the doubt. Are you implying that you shouldn't give benefit of the doubt to a random person that you deem a habitual liar and therefore assume is always lying or wrong? Or are you implying that Elon is a habitual liar, should be assumed always lying/wrong, and not given the benefit of the doubt?

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

#158

Post by _heimdall »

ivewonyoung wrote: post #131
_heimdall wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The judge would probably force the legal rep to log ip addresses the next time those users access BlueSky under threat of jail time and frozen bank accounts like he did for Twitters rep.

Is it not a problem to you that a judge would go after legal counsel personally based on how the counsel represents the will of their client?

Personally I see that as a very serious problem. Its one thing if it can be proven that legal counsel knowingly breaks the law. Its entirely different if the lawyer simply disagrees with the judge. Judges shouldn't be able to threaten counsel with jail time of seizure of assets simply because the judge disagrees with the legal argument a client wishes to make.

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

#159

Post by _heimdall »

vitorgrs wrote: post #126
_heimdall wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

You probably need to store user IPs to moderate. At least on Mastodon, any instance stores IP, so....

Are IP addresses really helpful in moderation? Moderation usually pertains to the content itself, meaning you would want to block certain content from being posted regardless of the IP that sends a request. Maybe you extend moderation to include banning users, but at that point you have more specific data than IP addresses (like usernames or user IDs).

You can target a list of suspected spammer IPs, though that's often a losing game of cat and mouse where you end up missing some spammers and catching legitimate users in the crossfire.

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

#160

Post by cassianoleal »

_heimdall wrote: post #153
cassianoleal wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have essentially lost all ad income driven by Brazilian users. I'd say that's quite a bit of leverage. Furthermore, SpaceX have had local assets frozen. That seems like some leverage to me. Starlink have now decided to comply with X blockage in the country [0] after Musk rattling his sabre saying they wouldn't. It _feels_ like there is at least some leverage. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41439798

> They have essentially lost all ad income driven by Brazilian users This one, at least, isn't really leverage. If they did comply the ad revenue would be lost anyway. If Twitter does somehow win a legal challenge they can at least try to sue for lost ad revenue, they likely couldn't make that case if they chose to comply. I'm not sure how they can legally go after SpaceX here. Definitely not claiming to know Brazili…

> If they did comply the ad revenue would be lost anyway.

If they had complied, only a subset of Twitter accounts would have been removed from the website. All over 100 million Brazilian users would still be generating traffic to them and the ad revenue that comes with it. I think this is pretty large leverage.

> I'm not sure how they can legally go after SpaceX here. > it just seems surprising that they could be roped in only for having the same founder/CEO.

From my understanding (which is developing along with the whole situation), even big names in Brazilian law are disputing this. So far I haven't seen anyone say the decision was illegal, but I have seen some questions being raised.

That said, my (very poor) understanding is that it's not because Musk is founder or CEO, but because he is the largest investor in both, exerts significant control over both, and essentially uses both in tandem in order to pursue his interests. Again in my very poor understanding, these factors combined made the judge rule the 2 companies more or less like one large financial group, giving him the ability to freeze one company's assets as insurance for the other's unpaid fines.

Pardon my lack of legalese or proper understanding and description of things. Hopefully this helps a bit on your own journey of understanding.

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