Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 76 posts

Re: Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

#51

Post by hkpack »

lobocinza wrote: post #44
Daishiman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unelected foreign billionaire against a democratically elected state? State all the way.

Supreme court members weren't democratically elected. The aristocratic families that own the Brazilian political system and pull the strings behind the curtains weren't democratically elected. Even Maduro, self-appointed "democratically elected" president of Venezuela, from time to time make fun of Brazilian electoral system. Unelected foreign billionaire as a bonus doesn't force me to pay taxes or force me to use X.

> Unelected foreign billionaire as a bonus doesn't force me to pay taxes or force me to use X.

I see this sentiment almost everywhere in the world: people rightfully afraid of their own governments and willfully grant influence over their country to the foreign and often enemy state.

This is a systems problem with positive feedback loop, which means that whoever wins will have all the influence and control over the population over time.

And a lot of people see no problem with the fact that it can be the geopolitical enemy until it is too late.

I don’t know the situation in Brazil, but I see this happening over and over in my part of the world.

Re: Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

#52

Post by mrtksn »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #39
mrtksn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the users suffer from this. What Brazil should do is arrest Musk and anyone complicit with the alleged crimes. Banning products and services is punishment to the users too. Would you ban Paracetamol if the CEO did something bad?

Yes, send the elite Brazilians to fly black helicopters and get the job done Rambo style.

Or pressure US to make their businessmen not committing crimes in Brazil.

Re: Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

#53

Post by kranke155 »

moi2388 wrote: post #45
cassianoleal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Brazilian citizen, X / Musk have broken the law and have been fined. The fines are meant to compensate for damages done against my country. I absolutely want that debt to be paid. Moraes, within the boundaries of the law, has seized assets from another company that belongs to the same individual who's committing those crimes and is trying to evade punishment by closing the fined company. This should never be all…

What damage did Elon musk do to your country?

You have no idea how much disinformation there is in Brazil. Its basically 24/7 information warfare there, from both sides. I have family there, I was blown away by how aggressive it all was when visiting last year.

The only time they tried to do tracking on where these posts and sockpuppets were coming from, they ended up in Israel (this is a common practice, I'm assuming to make tracing and legal action more difficult. In Portugal the bots come from Angola).

Its clear that the same disinformation farms that are running in the US were duplicated to Brazil, by the same people (Bob Mercer / Steve Bannon). Proof of that was of course, the deeply personal relationship between Bannon and the Bolsonaro family (when he was out of jail he would visit all the time), and the faux January 6th that was replicated in Brazil after Bolsonaro's defeat.

You have to understand that the population of Brazil has A LOT less education than the population in the US or Europe. They are far more malleable to disinformation.

One of the worse examples I can think of is the disinformation campaign that was activated after the murder of Marielle Franco, who was tagged in fake photos with local Rio drug dealers - while she was still dead inside her car. So a few minutes after the murder, you had a giant disinformation campaign launched. Since it was so fast, the only reasonable conclusion is the murderers control a disinformation bot/sockpuppet farm.

Re: Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

#54

Post by ben_w »

lsaferite wrote: post #43
sabbaticaldev wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is much more unreasonable to leave the country to try evade the rule of the law

Just so we are clear, you're saying that Twitter/X should continue to operate in the country so it'll be subject to their law instead of choosing up shop and avoiding dealing with what they think are unreasonable demands?

If Twitter doesn't want to follow the laws of Brazil, then they need to stop providing access to Brazil.

Merely having no office in some country not sufficient, for the same reason it wasn't sufficient for preventing New Zealand based Kim Dotcom to be prosecuted (and his Hong Kong-based Mega Upload domain to be seized) by the USA.

Or how X sued Media Matters in Texas before X moved there and despite Media Matters not being based there: https://www.threads.net/@sherrilynifill/post/Cz5Im7VONzd

Or all the defamation suits against US citizens filed in the UK on the grounds that being published on the internet counted as if it was published in the UK, forcing the US (Federal and State) to pass laws preventing payment of penalties in such cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism

Edit:

Just found an interesting claim, thought I cannot verify it myself:

"Notably, Brazilian law necessitates all internet businesses to have a legal representative in the country who is authorised to receive judicial orders and respond legally." - https://www.opindia.com/2024/08/moraes-is-the-dictator-of-br...

and

"Under Brazilian law, social networks must have a representative to receive and consider government takedown notices about political misinformation. X has no such person after closing down its Brazil office. Moraes gave the X platform 24 hours to name a new legal representative or face a nationwide suspension." - https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/x-brazil-suspension...

Re: Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

#55

Post by ben_w »

andsoitis wrote: post #47
cassianoleal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Brazilian citizen, X / Musk have broken the law and have been fined. The fines are meant to compensate for damages done against my country. I absolutely want that debt to be paid. Moraes, within the boundaries of the law, has seized assets from another company that belongs to the same individual who's committing those crimes and is trying to evade punishment by closing the fined company. This should never be all…

> has seized assets from another company that belongs to the same individual He owns 42% share. What about the other owners who hold the other 58%? What have they done to deserve their assets seized?

Musk owns 42% of SpaceX, Starlink is a subsidiary.

I can't speak to SpaceX shareholders because they are private, but of the public Tesla that's also associated with Musk, there are shareholders who want him out because his public behaviour is interfering with the business interests, and that argument will gain weight as a result of stuff like this.

Is that "deserved" depends a great deal about how you model the entire world, but activists investors are a thing and they do fight company management.

Re: Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

#56

Post by sabbaticaldev »

lsaferite wrote: post #43
sabbaticaldev wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is much more unreasonable to leave the country to try evade the rule of the law

Just so we are clear, you're saying that Twitter/X should continue to operate in the country so it'll be subject to their law instead of choosing up shop and avoiding dealing with what they think are unreasonable demands?

do you really think Elon has the right to decide what’s reasonable or not? that's too much, no?

Re: Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

#57

Post by mensetmanusman »

mrtksn wrote: post #52
mensetmanusman wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, send the elite Brazilians to fly black helicopters and get the job done Rambo style.

Or pressure US to make their businessmen not committing crimes in Brazil.

It’s illegal to dishonor a judge in Brazil, that’s why they are going after so many of their journalists, because any criticism can be judged dishonorable by the judge.

Re: Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

#58

Post by mrtksn »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #57
mrtksn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or pressure US to make their businessmen not committing crimes in Brazil.

It’s illegal to dishonor a judge in Brazil, that’s why they are going after so many of their journalists, because any criticism can be judged dishonorable by the judge.

So? If that's how Brazilians roll, its their business.

Re: Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

#59

Post by mensetmanusman »

mrtksn wrote: post #58
mensetmanusman wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s illegal to dishonor a judge in Brazil, that’s why they are going after so many of their journalists, because any criticism can be judged dishonorable by the judge.

So? If that's how Brazilians roll, its their business.

That’s how their elite roll.

If the general public learns how things could be better with less corruption, then the world is slightly better off.

Re: Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

#60

Post by mrtksn »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #59
mrtksn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? If that's how Brazilians roll, its their business.

That’s how their elite roll. If the general public learns how things could be better with less corruption, then the world is slightly better off.

And that's an opinion which might or might not be true. There's also this trend in America of some elites posing as "People's elite", and in this particular case someone from America's elite who has an open agenda on forcing certain believes over people is trying to force something on Brazilian political elite. I wouldn't call it a fight between good and evil, I will call it "I wish we could have the fight in the Colosseum in Rome".
Post reply on HN