So Nazi’s eh? I hate Nazi’s. Let’s unravel this knotted beast a bit. If the Brazilian citizens are posting illegal content, arrest them. Forcefully cut off their internet, -snip snip- done, seize their bank accounts, works on Russia. It should never be the job of a privately owned corporation to enforce the law when the law is perfectly capable of neutralizing the offending entities and enforcing the rules it’s own damn self, are they going to make it illegal for Walmart to sell them a cell phone? Couldn’t they just create a new account with a new email over VPN? Wouldn’t it be easier if the citizens are breaking the law to arrest them rather than take away their Twitter account? I am not a fan of that fat musky sum bitch, but there is literally no reason that judge has to go after X(I really hate that name), other than he’s swinging his dick around and doesn’t like to be told to put some damn underwear on. Arrest the citizens if they are breaking the law, if they aren’t breaking the law then what gives anyone the right to silence them? Just an egomaniac judge with no actual laws backing him and a tiny shvance facing off against a megalomaniac with a tiny shvance that consistently protects only the free speech he agrees with. There. Unknotted. If the people of Brazil want Nazi propaganda to end in a prison sentence, it should be law, and then all Twitter has to do is the same thing it does with other illegal content, turn over the user to the authorities and wash their hands of the mess. Not some judge unilaterally making free speech decisions(even in Brazil)
That Nazi propaganda spreading user? Elon Musk.
It’s perfectly valid to seize or forbid account that break the law. And if a company facilitates others to break the law you ask them to stop. In this case the company refused to… so now they are in trouble too.
If Brazil had a law that requires cars to be limited to 100km/h then they need to modify their cars to meet the law. And with ota updates do this in that country. If someone imports a car and it’s not updated even though the manufacturer knows it is in that country, they also breech the law.
Do people here not generally dislike government censorship? The root of this seems to be x refusing the country’s government’s demands to ban certain people
It is well established that the right to free speech is NOT unlimited, and the “fire in a crowded theater” people tend to be the loudest complainers. Brazil is a sovereign nation entitled to its own interpretation of how to handle free speech protections, and X has repeatedly made the claim they obey the laws of the countries in which it operates.
Also, it’s disingenuous of anybody to take X’s side on this over free speech when the past two years they have complied with basically every single request from every government for personal identifying information for any user. People are serving multi-decade prison sentences for their speech because X has refused to stand up to, for example, the government of Saudi Arabia when demanding the identities of state critics.
So it’s okay to kowtow to governments when they want to violate the right to privacy, but not when they want to shut down speech which is outside a sovereign nation’s definition of free speech? And let’s be clear - we were talking about 7 users.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say it’s reasonable for a company to violate ONE right for a government under absolutely unethical circumstances and not another under SLIGHTLY debatable circumstances and expect anybody to take your position seriously. X is not a freedom fighter, and it’s not an actor for justice. It’s a partisan cesspool run by a man who is stacking the deck for the side he wants when it serves his interests.
I’m by no means defending musk or X. I think they shouldn’t have banned those users and also think they shouldn’t have revealed info about users who are not actively threatening to hurt someone
My statement was that in general it concerns me that governments are able to silence anybody in this way, which is where federation comes in handy
You make it seem like this is an epidemic of silencing.
First of all, this was 7 users. Secondly, it was such a controversial request that it had to be escalated all the way to the country’s Supreme Court. Thirdly, the request and its consequences were then reevaluated, and all 5 members of the Supreme Court review unanimously upheld the decision.
There’s obviously no such thing as a perfect system, but that is about as close to a fair review process as one can get, and I would argue it’s better than the alternatives of “the whims of the platform owner” or “completely unmoderated anarchy”.
Furthermore, they’re NOT silenced. This is deplatforming. Absolutely NOTHING is stopping these 7 people from setting up their own Mastodon instances and writing whatever they want. That’s not an option for the jailed dissidents X turned over.
Lastly, Brazil is a sovereign democratic nation within its rights to enforce its laws as it sees fit within its borders, and if the people find it that egregious they can change their leaders. X is an unaccountable cudgel of a single man who is taking it upon himself to conduct his own judicial review of the laws of a sovereign nation and act with impunity. If he were a nation, this would be an act of war. The sheer gall of it is utterly appalling.
Is this another country using x to recruit people for their takeover or people from inside the country?
I’m going to assume it’s from within otherwise it’s a moot point and they should obviously be blocked
However I would argue that speaking out against the government is the most important thing to protect, that’s kinda the whole point it exists
If they’re threatening/planning violent crime out in the open they’re pretty dumb and makes it easy for the country to arrest them for it once they have enough evidence they’re actually planning to do it, banning them off social media is not the solution imo
Again, as I said I’m not in any way endorsing X or saying it’s a freedom fighter, not saying they haven’t done terrible anti freedom of speech things, just that this kind of behaviour from governments towards any social media platform would concern me
Well, you are forgetting another category, which is incitement to violence. That falls under the same blanket speech as the aforementioned “yelling fire in a crowded theater”, and in 2024, the law is far, far behind the danger that this poses in most countries, limiting most governments in many cases to trying to stop each individual act inspired by the source rather than being able to go after the source directly. Someone does not have to directly commit violence to be responsible for it, and while I COMPLETELY agree with you that this IS a slippery slope that COULD be abused, in this case, the entire process is transparent and public with multiple exhausted avenues for appeal, and in the end, it doesn’t even SILENCE the users in question OR request they change their speech or ideas, it simply denies them access to a particular platform. As to the banning of X, even if you disagree with the particular banning of these 7 accounts, the removal from the country isn’t so much about free speech element as the idea that X has made it clear and public that they have no intention of obeying the law in Brazil, and it’s unquestioned that there ARE times when it is absolutely clear that a government SHOULD have the right to shut down information. What if X had a post next week giving Lula’s location, itinerary, security details, and clear lines of sight at a rally, and the government demanded legally that it be taken down? X has shown that if it disagrees with the legal judgement that this information should be taken down, they may refuse. It is totally reasonable for the Brazilian government NOT to accommodate the platform given its stance.
You know what you make a good point, I suppose if there’s been appropriate chance for people to stop it from happening it’s fair enough
X doesn’t seem to have any issue censoring accounts for Musk’s autocratic buddies like Erdogan, so let’s not try and pretend that he’s above caving in to government censorship. He’s just pissed off in this case that he’s being asked to do it in a way that would hurt his friends in Brazil. The site has been called out over the last several years multiple times for refusing to take any steps to moderate misinformation spread by Bolsonaro and his political allies in attempts to undermine democracy and influence the results of the last election, like the endless claims of electronic voting being insecure in the lead up to the last elections, Bolsonaro’s COVID denialism and many other examples.
Absolutely not trying to take the side of musk here, dude’s a shitter. Fact of the matter remains the government in this case is using its power to remove people from the public eye, I would dislike that regardless of what platform or who was refusing to do it
the government in this case is using its power to remove people from the public eye
These aren’t people, they’re accounts. And the accounts in question appear to have been coordinating the attack on the Brazilian congressional office in 2023. This is comparable to, say, the traffic on Parlor shortly before the J6 riot in the US.
Organized violence would not be tolerated as “free speech” in Brazil or the US. No government or civilian authority considers active insurrection a protected category of speech. These accounts were effectively coordinating a military coup. They weren’t just trash talking the new President and his party.
Blocking traffic from an enemy military force is a military response to a rival military operation. And Musk’s refusal to shut the accounts down amounts to taking a side in a military campaign.
Is it though? Refusing to take a side isn’t the same as taking a side. You should never be obligated to remove content the government doesn’t like, you should merely be required to provide data about accounts to local authorities to assist in investigations. If someone is posting illegal content, they should be accountable to the law, but it should always be the host’s discretion whether to remove that content.
Refusing to take a side isn’t the same as taking a side.
He’s been outspoken in his support for the Bolsonaro movement
Is it from a foreign country trying to take over? In which case that does change things, had assumed this was some kind of revolution from within the country
We don’t dislike government censorship of CSAM. it’s all a spectrum based on the legitimacy of the government order and the legitimacy of the tech billionaire’s refusal to abide.
I’m willing to bet the people that government wanted were not infact posting CSAM, I’m pretty sure even x would ban them of its own volition pretty quickly if they were doing that
They weren’t, it was just the example at the furthest end of the spectrum. But your framing of “if it was REALLY bad, Twitter would ban it” can not be the solution. We have legitimate governments tasked with governing based on the will of the people, it’s not better to just let Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg decide the law.
Honestly, while I think CSAM is disgusting, I am kind of against government censorship of it. Some go so far as to ban anything resembling CSAM, including imagery that looks like it, but doesn’t actually involve a real child. The problem is the abuse required to create it, but if that abuse didn’t happen, there is no crime, and it should therefore be completely legal.
The same goes with free speech more broadly. The speech itself should never be illegal, but it should be usable as evidence of another crime. A threat of violence is the crime, and that should be prosecuted, but that shouldn’t mean the government should force the host to censor the speech, that should be at the host’s discretion. What the government can do is subpoena information relevant to the investigation, but IMO it shouldn’t compel any entity to remove content.
That said, Brazilian law isn’t the same as US law, and X and Space X should respect the laws of all of the countries in which they operate.
That’s…actually a pretty reasonable take. Fuck Musk, but you’ve convinced me that government censorship is just a bad thing in general and that should apply to Musk as much as anyone else.
I do think there’s a counter argument to be made that the resources involved in setting up fake accounts to spread bullshit are trivial compared to the resources required to track down and prosecute account owners for crimes, so in a practical sense banning accounts is possibly the only thing one can do (especially if the account owners are foreign). If you give lies the same freedom as truth, you tend to end up with 10 lies for every truth.
Op’s take is not reasonable imo- if you think threats are harmful enough to prosecute they should also be harmful enough to censor.
Maybe a more soft form of censorship, such as hiding them behind a cw and a “user was vanned for this post” label rather than outright removal, but you can’t just do nothing.
Prosecution implies a trial before punishment. Censorship is immediate punishment based solely on the judgment of the authorities. That’s not a minor difference.
Exactly. If a judge states that an individual is no longer allowed on SM, then I absolutely understand banning the account and removing their posts. However, until justice has been served, it’s 100% the platform’s call, and I think platforms should err on the side of allowing speech.
I realize I’m jumping back and forth between sides here, but that’s because it’s a complex problem and I haven’t made my mind up. But that said, to return to the previous point…if you need a court order to ban every spammer and troll, you’ll drown in spam and propaganda. The legal system can’t keep up.
Try typing the word “cisgender” into Twitter.
Don’t have or plan to get twitter, care to enlighten me?
Well, they called it a slur. That’s good enough a reason.
That’s why I don’t like the idea of censoring slurs. Anything can be one.
If some chap at X, determining which word is considered a slur, says, “I watched a YouTube video with <public personality> telling someone else not to call them ‘cisgender’.”, that’s probably good enough to add it to the list, while most of them not actually matching the dictionary definition for “slur”.The point comes as to where to draw the line and the company gets to choose.
The thing is, I dislike censorship in general. Corporate or government. Yes it’s the corp’s prerogative, but we’re allowed to criticize corporate censorship and hypocrisy regarding censorship.
I don’t get why people defend censorship by powerful billionaire run companies while criticizing censorship by the government. They’re not that different.
My personal opinion is that for “edge cases” like cisgender, I should be the one who decides what “slurs” I see or don’t see on the feed, rather than some shmuck twitter mod who watched a YouTube video or whatever.
I mean it’s still not an edge case. It’s just not.
Like, insert that “That’s not how this works, that isn’t how any of this works” meme here.
I don’t get why people defend censorship by powerful/monopolistic companies
I won’t get that either.
But unlike the Government, which is at least, supposed to care about us when making their policies,
the companies don’t. Whatever gets them more money[1] is what wins.Well, said companies will realise in time[2] when it hurts them where they care about and will have to consider changing stances.
It’s not a slur, is the thing. Not any more than “transgender” is and, in fact, less so.
They know this but they are pretending otherwise, as if Elongated Muskrat were a power mad 1990s forum moderator.
pretending otherwise
Welcome to modern society. Everybody loves to pretend.
The people pretending to be offended by some random mistaken word uttered by another.
Those pretending to care about something that they are using “politically correct” words for.
Microsoft pretending to care about OSS, in the hopes of getting some highly performant devs.
…Yes, it’s not a slur. But someone told another person to not call them a “cis woman” on camera and now it is whatever, you call it.
Brazil has an extradition agreement with the United States. Would love to see that shit get put to use.
That’s not how extradition works. You have to give people up to the US criminal system. They don’t reciprocate. They just promise not to coup your government.
Extradition treaties are almost always reciprocal and this particular treaty is publicly available. No public treaty is going to include a promise not to coup another government because of the obvious political consequences of admitting you might to everyone else.
Extradition treaties are almost always reciprocal
In theory. But rarely in practice.
Why would the US strain their relationship with Brazil over Musk? Politically, it makes sense to extradite him.
Also imma need a citation on how extradition works, I searched the wiki and couldn’t find anything.
Politically I don’t think it makes sense to extradite him because politics is just money nowadays. If money weren’t in bed so thoroughly with politics I would agree but unfortunately here in america, bribery is legal and not looked down upon because we just decided to call it lobbying instead of bribing.
Why would the US strain their relationship with Brazil over Musk?
He’s in deep with the US financial sector and the MAGA GOP base.
I’m failing to see the connection with Brazil here.
What would the backlash be from the US financial sector?
Why would MAGA be mad about the US Government extraditing an African American?
What would the backlash be from the US financial sector?
Lobbyists would lean on federal and state legislators to impose retaliatory sanctions.
Why would MAGA be mad about the US Government extraditing an African American?
Because they see him as on their “team”.
So in your mind the possibility of Musk being extradited could lead to those colossal outcomes?
The starlink thing died yesterday but, I can’t imagine a reaction this strong from the US financial sector or MAGA.
I disagree with the intensity of this response, if it were to happen.
So in your mind the possibility of Musk being extradited could lead to those colossal outcomes?
In my mind he just doesn’t get extradited, because it’s too much trouble and sets a bad standard for American billionaires.
This statement was later retracted. The Engadget article was redacted accordingly.
how are people supposed to pay starlink if their accounts are frozen? is starlink offering free internet?
Supposedly Starlink is maintaining service for existing accounts, even if they can’t bill them ATM.
Somehow I don’t think that’ll last all that long.
As the article says, yes.
W
Logically, now they have to ban Starlink too.
Seems like it’s on the table
Tensions between Brazil and Elon Musk’s business empire ratcheted up further as the country’s telecoms regulator threatened to sanction his satellite broadband company Starlink hours after its top court stood behind a controversial decision to ban social network X from the country.
A senior official at telecommunications regulator Anatel said sanctions against Starlink for noncompliance could include the revocation of its license to operate in Brazil.
Starlink backed down and blocked Twitter as requested.
the world needs to ban starlink
If Starlink follows through on its reported vow to ignore the X ban, it is likely to face similar sanctions itself for ignoring a supreme court order.
That could have a big impact in the Brazilian Amazon, where Starlink antennae have spread rapidly since being made available in September 2022, bringing high-speed internet connection to far-flung regions. By the end of 2023 Starlink antennae were being used in more than 90% of the Amazon’s municipalities, according to BBC Brasil.
I mean are those people really going to be using Twitter anyway?
What i love about musk is that he is the best bad example. Maybe someday he’ll start a war with some country and then people will start to understand that no single person or group should hold this much power. Because there are also a handful of other people and groups with the same resources who choose to hide in the background.
The Corporate Wars. 🥲
Sounds like they’re likely also to find themselves in legal trouble
At least one can hope
I thought about that; then I thought what that guy makes in a few minutes’interest on his offshore accounts is probably more than all of Brazil, in a year, and since taxes fund the government and a host of other things, idk
That’s not how money works
Or Brazil. That’s the eight largest economy in the world. They headline BRICS for a reason. Sure, China is the true headliner there, but the fact is that Brazil is included in those 5 countries for a reason (multiple actually). There’s absolutely no way for a single individual to eclipse the value of the world’s 8th largest economy. Pick a country with a lower GDP than Hungary and then we’ll talk
The country of Brazil makes something like 20x Musk’s total net worth, but every year.
Plus net worth != actual money.
Good. May they do what is necessary.
Actually Brasil make 20x musk total net worth per trimester
People like musk don’t make money, they make credit.
Trevor Noah said it best.
Leveraged buyouts specifically should be outlawed.
EDIT: And billionaires should be taxed on the money they receive as loans.
The “buy borrow die” tax strategy should either be completely outlawed or the government should be able to get portions of those loan payments back as tax money.
As of 2024-09-03T22:10:25.545Z, Starlink is now complying with Brazil’s X ban [1].
References
- “Starlink says it will block X in Brazil”. Emma Roth. The Verge. Published: 2024-09-03T22:10:25.545Z. Accessed: 2024-09-04T04:17Z. https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/3/24235204/starlink-block-x-brazil-comply-elon-musk.
“We immediately initiated legal proceedings in the Brazilian Supreme Court explaining the gross illegality of this order and asking the Court to unfreeze our assets,” Starlink says in a post on X. “Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing of our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil.”
- “Starlink says it will block X in Brazil”. Emma Roth. The Verge. Published: 2024-09-03T22:10:25.545Z. Accessed: 2024-09-04T04:17Z. https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/3/24235204/starlink-block-x-brazil-comply-elon-musk.
Gonna be funny when Brazil bans starlink too.
**Update, September 3, 5:15PM ET: **Starlink has reversed course on its decision to not comply with Brazil’s block of X.
That was fast.
Usually Gwen Shotwell, SpaceX COO, is good at keeping Elon in check and not screwing up SpaceX business. I wonder what happened this time.
This is the intersection of Xitter and SpaceX and it looks like Xitter takes priority.
His ego is above all else
If you can only access Xitter through SpaceX, can we call the combination “SpaceXitter”?
Edit: Updated the title to reflect the update in the story. Seeing some comments from people who haven’t actually read the article.
They should kick his shit out of the country
Can’t really do that when his shit is quite literally in space floating above your country in orbit.
Bunch of space junk fucking up he world’s view of the stars.
Roundhouse kick then
His shit is also on the ground. Do you think the satellites beam an internet connection directly into a laptop or something? That said, finding and seizing the individual receivers seems unlikely. They’ve already instituted a hefty fine (equivalent to more a year’s average salary) for even using a VPN to little effect.
Beyond that, they’ve also threatened to seize all local assets/offices and emplacements if Starlink doesn’t comply. There’s several dozen as I recall.
My sweet child, do you think cocaine just appears? No, they need massive farms to produce. Brazil can’t even crack down on literal acres of fields of coca plants. You think they’re going to find some inconspicuous boxes that receive internet from space?
Also do you think your router is just a plastic box with magic inside?
No, I don’t think they’re going to bother finding the receivers, which is what I said?
Reading comprehension: it’s not for everybody.
I think it’s you that needs to go back to this thread and actually use your eyes little girl
K.
The plastic box with plastic probably has a notable RF signal which can be traced?
The plastic box with plastic is made from plastic.
So?
They can easily make it illegal for them to operate there.
Yeah they still rely on base stations to transmit/receive the signals.
It most probably can work directly with satellites, but I don’t think some user is going to put the effort into setting up a direct system (∵ high cost), just to use the bloated site, X is (∵ low throughput internet).
Like growing drugs? Good luck bro
Welcome to the world where money has more power than laws and governments. It’ll all work out fine, I’m sure.
Yeah the Brazilian space police is gonna shoot down them satellites.
And then they will clean up the fueltas.
I love fairytales about competence in Brazil.
deleted by creator
The problem is that this IS the blueprint.
Blocking twitter? That’s fine. People generally hate twitter so whatever.
But starlink? That is a genuinely okay product (so long as it isn’t too sunny where you live…) and actually does serve a niche for people who can’t get better internet. And it rapidly will go from “The government blocked twitter. I guess that is probably good?” to “The government is taking away internet from thousands of people and this is literally worse than china”
Yeah. It’s really sad that a lot of people on remote areas in the Amazon will be affected by a ban on starlink. They also spent quite a bit of money for Brazil’s standards on the equipment as well.
Still, this shouldn’t be the reason to put anyone above the law, no one should be above a county’s law.
If this actually happens it may really backfire on Elon and all companies he’s involved, at least in Brazil.
As you invested your money in one of his companies products and now because of his massive ego/lack of mental stability you either lost support, functionality or access to parts (for maintenance of hardware) and I doubt any of his companies would pay their users for this inconvenience. This would make using any of the products he’s involved with too risky, better to just use a more “mentally stable” competitor even if the service or product is slightly worse.
You are assuming people look at this rationally. Rather than “the politicians hate a guy and I suffer”
It is very similar to the logic by which people go out of their way to bend over backwards to support anti-consumer practices if ti is for the game or movie they want to watch.
Brazilian here, the court couldn’t find anyone in Brazil that represents X to pay the fines and to block the accounts spreading lies about the anti-democratic events of January of last year. Since Elon Musk is one of the major shareholder of both companies they connected the dots and Starlink has representatives in Brazil their account was frozen in order to get the fines owed by Musk’s other company. Later the government found out Starlink was not blocking access to X as any other internet provided was instructed to do so.
Musk is a big supporter of Far-right Brazilians including former president Bolsonaro and his political allies. It was during Bolsonaro’s government that Brazilian army switched to use Starlink.
The free speech agenda that Musk is advertising is not the main issue here but a government that goes against Musks interests and his companies.
Free speech has jack all to do with it.
What matters are people who suddenly can’t watch kitty cat videos… or organize military operations. They don’t care about misinformation campaigns and fines. They care that suddenly The Government has taken something away from them.
In this case, assuming Brazil made the right call, I’d look at it more as “Starlink is taking away internet from thousands of people” instead of “the government”. Nobody can or should expect any government to allow businesses to operate within their border that blatantly disregards legal orders. If people lose access to the internet the blame is on Starlink’s hubris, not the government’s insistence on the rule of law.
That said, I have not been following this story and am cautious enough about Brazil’s government that I’m not taking any stance here over which side is right or wrong.
