6 ms·

Apparently Brazil only asked for Twitter/X to have a local office (so they could be dealt with inside Brazilian law) and ban like 7 accounts.

koolba 2y ago
> … and ban like 7 accounts I’m sure that number will never increase.
- marcinzm 2y ago
  Didn't seem to stop Twitter in India and Turkey.
  - anon291 2y ago
    Why not just be glad they're taking a stand now? I'm so confused. Edit: also looking at the history here... They fought those bans too. I'm guessing, due to Indias importance to the IT industry, twitter was unable to pull out entirely, leaving their employees vulnerable if they didn't comply. Not sure about turkey, but it looks like in this case, they are able to avoid censorship by pulling out entirely. Brazil is an inconsequential country.
    - marcinzm 2y ago
      They're not taking a stand. Turkey and India have right wing authoritarian governments that Musk is literal friends with. Brazil does not. I don't want un-elected social media billionaires making political decisions for me.
      - anon291 2y ago
        Twitter isn't a government and doesn't make political decisions. The more pressing issue is governments censoring opposition
        marcinzm 2y ago
        > doesn't make political decisions. Twitter is made of people and owned by people who use it to make political decisions. That was the case before Musk and is still the case after Musk.
    - BadHumans 2y ago
      If you are only willing to stand on your principles when it is inconsequential then that is just virtue signaling.
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      > Edit: also looking at the history here... They fought those bans too. Pre-Musk. July 2022: https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/05/twitter-sues-india-government/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/05/twitter-sues-india-governm... October 2022: Musk buys Twitter.
    - xenospn 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - timeon 2y ago
      Somehow free speech applies only when hate speech needs to be protected.
  - brightball 2y ago
    The issue in Brazil, based on what I read, was that Twitter’s lawyers in Brazil and Elon believed that the requests being made violate Brazil’s constitution. In Turkey and India, there was no such concern.
    - marcinzm 2y ago
      That's for the nations courts to decide and not Elon. It's just an excuse to support authoritarian governments that have no checks and balances in their constitutions at all.
    - atwrk 2y ago
      That is not an argument in a nation of law. If twitter thinks this is unconstitutional in Brazil, then they can by all means sue! Courts are the institutions that rule whether that is true or not, not some billionaire with a bad day.
      - red-iron-pine 2y ago
        and they did sue. it went to court, and then the Brazilian supreme court -- and they lost.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
gruez 2y ago
>for Twitter/X to have a local office (so they could be dealt with inside Brazilian law) ...and so they have someone to hold ~hostage~ responsible if something goes wrong >and ban like 7 accounts And you think they're going to stop there?
- kranke155 2y ago
  No, so what. It's their business what accounts are allowed under local law.
  - ripjaygn 2y ago
    Just like these laws https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nuremberg-race-laws https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nuremb...
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    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 accounts engaged in speech of a political nature. They cannot be censored. What do you do when the guy who's supposed to interpret and apply the constitution starts blatantly violating it? I have no idea. People actually tried asking the brazilian military to intervene. This guy called that an antidemocratic act despite the fact not one soul voted for him. Called it a coup attempt. Then he put those people in a gulag.
    - kranke155 2y ago
      You seem misinformed. Sources ? They literally just approved a law against misinformation.
      - matheusmoreira 2y ago
welshwelsh 2y ago
I'm glad they didn't comply. I don't want social media platforms banning people just because some national government told them to.
- prepend 2y ago
  I also don’t want companies to have to have offices in every country where they operate. X is big enough but it’s silly of Brazil to require a literal physical presence. They can serve whatever they need electronically to wherever X is these days.
  - wslh 2y ago
    It may seem strange, at least to me, but the company Lumen Orbit (YCS24) [1] aims to offer data centers in space. If they, or another similar company, succeed in the future, it could change jurisdictional rules. [1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/lumen-orbit https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/lumen-orbit
    - basementcat 2y ago
      Lots of companies are (or will be) offering "cloud services" in LEO, including SpaceX. However, none of that is relevant to this situation.
    - tmottabr 2y ago
      not at all.. twitter servers are in the US yet they are having problems in brazil.. If server are in space and company refuse to abide to each country laws they will have the access to their servers blocked just the same..
    - Qem 2y ago
      Their servers may be in space, but they'll still need to collect ad money from somewhere on Earth.
  - guhcampos 2y ago
    It's not about serving them. They have already been served multiple times, refused to comply, got fined and refused to pay the fines. Pulling out their office was simply a means to avoid paying fines, that's all. There's no big motive there but cash. One can argue about the politics of this all day. There are political views to be discussed about the morality of the requests to ban accounts versus the morality of keeping the accounts online, but the law is the law. If you want to operate on a certain country you need to abide by that country's laws, there aren't really any exceptions anywhere in the World. Lots of platforms operate in Brazil without a legal representative, the country is actually very lax about that. There's no Substack or Medium office as far as I know, and I'm writing this comment on Hackernews without any issue. Generally, the legal representation is only required when someone takes legal action against the platform for some reason. Obviously larger platforms like Twitter, Instagram and their likes have lots of legal actions in local courts. They also collect a shitload of ad revenue from local companies, and in both cases they are required to have a local representation. Twitter has laid-off all their engineering and marketing in Brazil when Musk bought it, and just recently decided to close down their legal and finance office to avoid paying the said fines. Whatever the political stand-off that brought them to this, there's no reasonable justification to stand with Twitter now. "I don't aggree with your laws" is not a valid reason for a company to break these laws in any country, for any law.
kolanos 2y ago
Apparently Twitter/X did have such a representative and this judge froze her bank accounts and threatened to imprison her. > “When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the post from X Global Government Affairs notes.
hu3 2y ago
They threatened X employees with jail time. Bunch of reasonable folks these Brazilian judges.
- kranke155 2y ago
  Brazil is big on lawfare, not defending it.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  Big Tech representatives have been jailed for failing to comply with judge orders. I remember those news... They were told to do things like wipe out a woman's nude pictures off of search results if not the entire internet. Judges even used their success against them. What do you mean it's hard? You're Google right? Maybe use your smart people and your trillions to figure out a way to comply? In Brazil, Judges = Gods.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
sickofparadox 2y ago
I can't believe that no one has mentioned that one of those accounts is a sitting Brazilian Senator.
- kranke155 2y ago
  If he’s responsible for hate speech then the local law applies ? I have seen the barbarities that some people say in Brazil . It’s an incredibly racist and classist country sometimes.
KaseetaKen 2y ago
The judge threatened the company's legal representative with incarceration for a failure to comply, so Musk unappointed the company's legal representative. The judge demands that Musk now appoint a legal representative, which Musk refuses to do. Why would Musk appoint someone for the judge to incarcerate?
- kranke155 2y ago
  Source. Also you can get arrested for breaking the law?

koolba 2y ago

> … and ban like 7 accounts I’m sure that number will never increase.

marcinzm 2y ago
Didn't seem to stop Twitter in India and Turkey.
- anon291 2y ago
  Why not just be glad they're taking a stand now? I'm so confused. Edit: also looking at the history here... They fought those bans too. I'm guessing, due to Indias importance to the IT industry, twitter was unable to pull out entirely, leaving their employees vulnerable if they didn't comply. Not sure about turkey, but it looks like in this case, they are able to avoid censorship by pulling out entirely. Brazil is an inconsequential country.
  - marcinzm 2y ago
    They're not taking a stand. Turkey and India have right wing authoritarian governments that Musk is literal friends with. Brazil does not. I don't want un-elected social media billionaires making political decisions for me.
    - anon291 2y ago
      Twitter isn't a government and doesn't make political decisions. The more pressing issue is governments censoring opposition
      - marcinzm 2y ago
        > doesn't make political decisions. Twitter is made of people and owned by people who use it to make political decisions. That was the case before Musk and is still the case after Musk.
  - BadHumans 2y ago
    If you are only willing to stand on your principles when it is inconsequential then that is just virtue signaling.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    > Edit: also looking at the history here... They fought those bans too. Pre-Musk. July 2022: https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/05/twitter-sues-india-government/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/05/twitter-sues-india-governm... October 2022: Musk buys Twitter.
  - xenospn 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - timeon 2y ago
    Somehow free speech applies only when hate speech needs to be protected.
- brightball 2y ago
  The issue in Brazil, based on what I read, was that Twitter’s lawyers in Brazil and Elon believed that the requests being made violate Brazil’s constitution. In Turkey and India, there was no such concern.
  - marcinzm 2y ago
    That's for the nations courts to decide and not Elon. It's just an excuse to support authoritarian governments that have no checks and balances in their constitutions at all.
  - atwrk 2y ago
    That is not an argument in a nation of law. If twitter thinks this is unconstitutional in Brazil, then they can by all means sue! Courts are the institutions that rule whether that is true or not, not some billionaire with a bad day.
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      and they did sue. it went to court, and then the Brazilian supreme court -- and they lost.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

gruez 2y ago

>for Twitter/X to have a local office (so they could be dealt with inside Brazilian law) ...and so they have someone to hold ~hostage~ responsible if something goes wrong >and ban like 7 accounts And you think they're going to stop there?

kranke155 2y ago
No, so what. It's their business what accounts are allowed under local law.
- ripjaygn 2y ago
  Just like these laws https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nuremberg-race-laws https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nuremb...
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  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 accounts engaged in speech of a political nature. They cannot be censored. What do you do when the guy who's supposed to interpret and apply the constitution starts blatantly violating it? I have no idea. People actually tried asking the brazilian military to intervene. This guy called that an antidemocratic act despite the fact not one soul voted for him. Called it a coup attempt. Then he put those people in a gulag.
  - kranke155 2y ago
    You seem misinformed. Sources ? They literally just approved a law against misinformation.
    - matheusmoreira 2y ago

welshwelsh 2y ago

I'm glad they didn't comply. I don't want social media platforms banning people just because some national government told them to.

prepend 2y ago
I also don’t want companies to have to have offices in every country where they operate. X is big enough but it’s silly of Brazil to require a literal physical presence. They can serve whatever they need electronically to wherever X is these days.
- wslh 2y ago
  It may seem strange, at least to me, but the company Lumen Orbit (YCS24) [1] aims to offer data centers in space. If they, or another similar company, succeed in the future, it could change jurisdictional rules. [1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/lumen-orbit https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/lumen-orbit
  - basementcat 2y ago
    Lots of companies are (or will be) offering "cloud services" in LEO, including SpaceX. However, none of that is relevant to this situation.
  - tmottabr 2y ago
    not at all.. twitter servers are in the US yet they are having problems in brazil.. If server are in space and company refuse to abide to each country laws they will have the access to their servers blocked just the same..
  - Qem 2y ago
    Their servers may be in space, but they'll still need to collect ad money from somewhere on Earth.
- guhcampos 2y ago
  It's not about serving them. They have already been served multiple times, refused to comply, got fined and refused to pay the fines. Pulling out their office was simply a means to avoid paying fines, that's all. There's no big motive there but cash. One can argue about the politics of this all day. There are political views to be discussed about the morality of the requests to ban accounts versus the morality of keeping the accounts online, but the law is the law. If you want to operate on a certain country you need to abide by that country's laws, there aren't really any exceptions anywhere in the World. Lots of platforms operate in Brazil without a legal representative, the country is actually very lax about that. There's no Substack or Medium office as far as I know, and I'm writing this comment on Hackernews without any issue. Generally, the legal representation is only required when someone takes legal action against the platform for some reason. Obviously larger platforms like Twitter, Instagram and their likes have lots of legal actions in local courts. They also collect a shitload of ad revenue from local companies, and in both cases they are required to have a local representation. Twitter has laid-off all their engineering and marketing in Brazil when Musk bought it, and just recently decided to close down their legal and finance office to avoid paying the said fines. Whatever the political stand-off that brought them to this, there's no reasonable justification to stand with Twitter now. "I don't aggree with your laws" is not a valid reason for a company to break these laws in any country, for any law.

kolanos 2y ago

Apparently Twitter/X did have such a representative and this judge froze her bank accounts and threatened to imprison her. > “When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the post from X Global Government Affairs notes.

hu3 2y ago

They threatened X employees with jail time. Bunch of reasonable folks these Brazilian judges.

kranke155 2y ago
Brazil is big on lawfare, not defending it.
matheusmoreira 2y ago
Big Tech representatives have been jailed for failing to comply with judge orders. I remember those news... They were told to do things like wipe out a woman's nude pictures off of search results if not the entire internet. Judges even used their success against them. What do you mean it's hard? You're Google right? Maybe use your smart people and your trillions to figure out a way to comply? In Brazil, Judges = Gods.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

sickofparadox 2y ago

I can't believe that no one has mentioned that one of those accounts is a sitting Brazilian Senator.

kranke155 2y ago
If he’s responsible for hate speech then the local law applies ? I have seen the barbarities that some people say in Brazil . It’s an incredibly racist and classist country sometimes.

KaseetaKen 2y ago

The judge threatened the company's legal representative with incarceration for a failure to comply, so Musk unappointed the company's legal representative. The judge demands that Musk now appoint a legal representative, which Musk refuses to do. Why would Musk appoint someone for the judge to incarcerate?

kranke155 2y ago
Source. Also you can get arrested for breaking the law?