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Brazilian here. If anyone wants a great introduction to the context and the bigger picture, there's this great article from the NYT in 2022, written by an excel

• addicted 2y ago
  None of this is unique to Brazil and happens in countries all over the world where X continues to operate.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • jsheard 2y ago
    Regarding takedown demands, Twitter used to publish transparency reports on who was making them, but they stopped after Musk took over. https://transparency.x.com/en/reports/removal-requests https://transparency.x.com/en/reports/removal-requests In the final report 97% of all takedowns were made by Japan, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, and India (from most to least). They also broke down the number of takedowns against verified journalists and news outlets, which was led by India (114 takedowns), Turkey (78), Russia (55), and Pakistan (48), and Brazil was down the list with 8. It would be nice to have a more recent version of this report to see which way the tides have shifted.
    • acchow 2y ago
      In the context here, a takedown request would be preferred. It would indicate the judge being willing to accept a takedown in lieu of putting the poster in prison.
    • trte9343r4 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • mynameisvlad 2y ago
        > and number of people imprisoned or punished is far greater than Russia or other countries. Clearly not according to their source. Do you have any data to back up your claim?
        • trte9343r4 2y ago
          > In 2022, over 21,000 individuals in Russia were penalized for such “offences”, with 2,307 given administrative detention and the rest heavy fines > in year ending March 2022, there were 155,841 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/07/russia-20000-activists-subject-to-heavy-reprisals-as-russia-continues-to-crack-down-on-anti-war-movement-at-home/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/07/russia-20000-... https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2021-to-2022/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2021-to-2022 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-...
          • mynameisvlad 2y ago
            You’re comparing people penalized with number of recorded instances. Those are two wildly different statistics.
          • aguaviva 2y ago
            One figure refers to recorded "crimes", the other to actual imprisonments. Do you understand that the two are simply not comparable, and that there's obviously no analogy here? Even the alleged offenses aren't even comparable. This isn't just one extremely basic logical fallacy you're making, but two.
  • throwthrowuknow 2y ago
    Not surprising since the US is the only country in the world with freedom of speech.
  • akira2501 2y ago
    Yes, but Brazil has the most natural wealth available to steal.
• HPsquared 2y ago
  Looking in from outside, the judiciary in Brazil seems to have a lot of "hard power".
  • candiddevmike 2y ago
    More or less than the US?
    • ilikehurdles 2y ago
      Far more.
      • EuAndreh 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • ilikehurdles 2y ago
          A. This is the dissent from Sotomayor, panned by pretty much every major legal figure. It is not a ruling, it is not binding, and it is not necessarily accurate. Just like, I don't know, listen to a Supreme Court podcast if you're not going to read the ruling [1]. B. That has nothing to do with the power of the Supreme Court relative to Brazil's. Our Supreme Court doesn't arrest people or order the military around. [1]: https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/trump-is-absolutely-immune-kind-of/ https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/trump-is-ab...
          • anigbrowl 2y ago
            It was not 'panned by pretty much every major legal figure'. And yes I read the whole opinion as well as the dissents.
            • Izkata 2y ago
              The immunity is for official duties in his role as president, which doesn't include those examples.
• smrtinsert 2y ago
  At a quick glance the answer is yes. The power to silence speech the government speech the government deems fake is the power to silence speech the government doesn't agree with. The answer to fake news are outlets that allow free speech against the fake news like we have in the united states. Unless billionaires buy them all up and prevent the actual facts from coming out of course.
• atbpaca 2y ago
  The judiciary system in Brazil is a little different than the US one. It does not make Brazil a dictatorship as many of Bolsonaro's supporters claim, nor does an article in NYTimes.
  • mike_hearn 2y ago
    How can that be so? The article says this: > In Brazil, the 11 justices and the attorneys who work for them issued 505,000 rulings over the past five years. Can that really be right? That's an average of 276 rulings per day, or one ruling every five minutes around the clock 24/7/365 for five years straight. If that claim is true then it's clear that the Brazilian Supreme Court is not like supreme courts anywhere else in the world. It must be normally issuing rulings written by people who aren't the justices themselves. And, it must be a truly massive organization to create so many rulings on so many topics. Seeing as it appears to answer to nobody, nor follow any normal judicial procedure (being both accuser and judge in one body), it would seem fair to describe that as a parallel government acting as a dictatorship. How else could you describe it? What checks on their power do they recognize?
    • virgulino 2y ago
      > Can that really be right? That's an average of 276 rulings per day Yes. From the official website of the Supreme Court (STF - Supremo Tribunal Federal), real-time statistics: 65,173 rulings so far this year. https://transparencia.stf.jus.br/extensions/decisoes/decisoes.html https://transparencia.stf.jus.br/extensions/decisoes/decisoe...
      • fuzzbazz 2y ago
        65173 rulings in 230 days by 11 people. That's 25.76 rulings per person per day if we ignore holidays and weekends. They can't possibly read the cases, is this a kangaroo court?
        • speeder 2y ago
          Yes. For example, one time the federal police arrested a corrupt banker (Daniel Dantas). Somehow the Supreme Court was in session literally 4:00 am to immediately make a ruling that the banker should be released... Some of the current judges were literally lawyers of the current ruling party, there was even cases where they judged cases where they were themselves the lawyer in that case. I could mention more things but that is an invitation to get arrested.
• wredue 2y ago
  You get sent to X jail for criticism of Musk on X. It happens on X itself. In general, I agree with pulling out of a country that doesn’t exercise freedom of speech (as in criticism, not threats). But the hypocrisy is somewhat funny. There’s probably better (for society) ways such as providing higher anonymity for criticism (not threats). But that seems like a nightmare overall.
  • ineedaj0b 2y ago
    I am power user with a large following on X and I have never once had any trouble, despite numerous times criticizing Musk.
    • wredue 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • thephyber 2y ago
        Personally, I agree with you. But there’s also a possibility that users are getting banned for other activity/content, not the public criticism. Perhaps that what the parent could be highlighting by weighing in with an anecdata. Similarly, something recently happened with Richard Dawkins on FB, IIRC. His account was banned following unusual activity, but Dawkins publicly announced that he was banned for his stupid (and factually wrong) ideas about the sex/gender of one of the female Olympic boxers. It turns out his account was either directly phished or the account of a moderator was phished and his FB Page (not his account) was banned (pending account recovery and cleanup).
        • meiraleal 2y ago
          > But there’s also a possibility that users are getting banned for other activity/content, not the public criticism. Guess what? That's the same case for the criminals that twitter is defending.
      • arandomusername 2y ago
• EuAndreh 2y ago
  From the same article: > Brazil’s Supreme Court has drastically expanded its power to counter the antidemocratic stances of Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters. The title is a leading question. I can come up with different titles for the same article or topic, that could be leading somewhere else: 1. Brazil Top Court's Actions to Defend Democracy 2. A View On Moraes' Decisions In Face Of The Crisis Created By Bolsonaro 3. Brazil's Supreme Court Reaction After The Presidency Went Too Far --- A legitimate question I have is: What other institutions (or democratic tools) should have acted to halt the extremist anti-democratic movement lead by Bolsonaro? (Not a trick question, an honest one given the crisis)
  • HDThoreaun 2y ago
    No one is saying the court shouldnt defend democracy. We're saying that censorship is not the way to do that.
    • lrem 2y ago
      Seems to have worked pretty well in Europe. Many countries here ban praise of past mistakes.
      • robertlagrant 2y ago
        I personally don't allow anyone in my immediate family to say anything good about the Norman Conquest.
        • sweettea 2y ago
          Harand Godwinsson still reigns in my heart.
      • throwthrowuknow 2y ago
        Was that meant to be a laugh line?
        • 2y ago
• TacticalCoder 2y ago
  > Rumble has been blocked in Brazil for over a year, and WhatsApp and Telegram have been briefly blocked multiple times. It's a near certainty those who are still operating are obeying censorship / takedown requests by the Brazilian government. Elon Musk said the EU Commission tried to attack X: "It'd be too bad if you were to get big fines uh!? So take down any content we ask you to take down and in exchange we'll make sure you don't get those fines". These are mafia tactics and it makes me ashamed to be an EU citizen. This has nothing to do with democracy: it's its opposite. Dictatorship. "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech..." People, worldwide, are beginning to understand the importance of the first amendment. I do genuinely fear that very soon people in several countries (including mine) may learn the hard way what the lack of the second amendment leads to.
  • Barrin92 2y ago
    I don't think there's a lot of democracy in having some gazillionaire buy a social media platform and then interfere in the politics of other sovereign nations/continents. As a EU citizen I hope we get rid of Twitter at some point and build a sovereign communications infrastructure and domestic firms abiding by our local laws, because that is what a democracy is about.
    • brightball 2y ago
      But that’s happening everywhere on every social platform isn’t it? The very act of going along with censorship requests interferes with the politics of a nation by silencing opposition.
      • Barrin92 2y ago
        Not any more, most social media platforms nowadays seem to be capable of enforcing local laws. The act of following lawful takedown requests isn't political, it's literally just enforcing the law of the land, the bare minimum any foreign company has to do if it wants to do business anywhere. There's obviously also no reason to assume this has anything to do with any opposition, Twitter can't even make sure anything that's posted on that site is even posted by people, let alone citizens of their respective jurisdictions. Having Elon Musk on the one side and bots from a basement in Moscow on the other set your country's conversation is many things but certainly not democratic.
• throwupo 2y ago
  UK courts are sentencing people over social media posts too. M
  • com 2y ago
    If they said it over a megaphone during an incipient riot, and it would have led to an arrest warrant and charges laid, it would probably have happened as well. A good thing too. Social media isn’t a consequence free zone.
• matheusmoreira 2y ago
  A related article which I submitted to HN before the elections. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/world/americas/brazil-online-content-misinformation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/world/americas/brazil-onl... Good comments from fellow brazilian HNers which provide the appropriate context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36543423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36543423
• jalapenos 2y ago
  Well it's not quite sentencing people to death for blasphemy, but you've got to walk before you run I guess. Perhaps "failed state" just takes a while to bake.
• johnea 2y ago
  The specific Brazilian issues aside, it would be great if we coiuld shut down these platforms in the US! Proprietary mis-information platforms aren't helping anyone except their over compensated ownership...