5 ms·

X capitulates to Brazil's Supreme Court

86 points by anigbrowl 2y ago

bbor 2y ago
lol, I know they’re just doing their job, but “in a surprising move” is funny commentary for this. Elon never had a plan at all other than vaguely rile people up — Brazil is a huge market, and despite his “go fuck yourselves” rhetoric, he’s still legally beholden to investors to try to make some of their money back. The only way he wouldn’t “capitulate” would be if Twitter folded before he could. This of course doesn’t help his election-time rhetoric, but eh I don’t think facts matter that much for that, anyway. He still gets to shout about being silenced by evil socialist Brazil, even if he’s capitulated. Hopefully Bluesky/the fediverse doesn’t lose the momentum they’ve gained there! I’m only familiar with Spanish-speaking South America, but I’m guessing Brazil still has a considerable anti-“imperialist west” (cough cough America) sentiment in the bedrock of its culture; intentionally and condescendingly flaunting their laws is not a good look, at all.
- chx 2y ago
  > he’s still legally beholden to investors Unless you have seen the contracts signed you can't know that. Xitter is no longer a public company and as a private company has absolutely no such requirement. While Burwell v. Hobby Lobby might be controversial it is still remarkable coming from such a high court to include this: > While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so.
  - exe34 2y ago
    > Unless you have seen the contracts signed you can't know that that's right, this is in fact a clever 4d chess move by Elon, who totally doesn't behave like a crack-addled loser, and he clearly won this round!
    - pessimizer 2y ago
      You sound like the worst of twitter, here.
      - klyrs 2y ago
        Elon Musk doesn't talk like that.
        exe34 2y ago
        he wouldn't want people deadnaming shitter, he reserves that honour for his own kid.
  - skybrian 2y ago
    I think that quote is common sense, or should be. It’s only news for people who subscribe to certain myths widely circulated on social media about what for-profit companies are legally required to do.
  - vuln 2y ago
    > Unless you have seen the contracts signed you can't know that. Xitter is no longer a public company and as a private company has absolutely no such requirement. Have you seen the contracts? How do you know there is _absolutely no such requirement_? Perhaps it’s not standard but private investment is private.
    - detourdog 2y ago
      Some of his business partners chop up journalists which is another form of business incentive.
    - chx 2y ago
      What I meant is that in general private companies have no requirements of making profit and I even have shown the SCOTUS stating so.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > anti-“imperialist west” (cough cough America) sentiment There's a difference between fringe rhetoric and actions. The only countries more pro-American than Brazil in polls are America and India [0], and ironically, the Anti-American rate is higher in America than in Brazil (where there's a large neutral/indifferent cohort in polls). In general, pro-American sentiment is somewhere between 63-73% in Brazil [0][1] Most political "anti-American" rhetoric in Brazil is due to agrarian protectionism - the same as India - as regional BigAg are major political player in both countries. Most Brazilians in the diaspora who can immigrate will immigrate to the US. American companies and Brazilian companies have very close relations with each other (ever had a Budwesier, Blue Moon, Burger King, or Popeye's? They're majority owned by Brazilian PE funds). Finally, most of the underlying support for Lula comes from his "Bolsa Familia" program in the 2000s. This lie of Brazilian or Indian anti-Americanism only went into overdrive on Reddit and then HN because of their indifference to the Russia-Ukraine war, as they have investments in both sides. [0] - https://pro.morningconsult.com/articles/united-states-favorability-global-countries-afghanistan https://pro.morningconsult.com/articles/united-states-favora... [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/11/06/comparing-views-of-the-us-and-china-in-24-countries/#favorable-views-of-the-us-and-china https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/11/06/comparing-view...
- mc32 2y ago
  Anti imperialist but if they had any chance they’d migrate to the great satan… oh people, such hypocrites.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    Made it would be to vote and form a more perfect union.
    - mc32 2y ago
      Yup, they’d make it in the image of the countries they come from because it’s they what they know and like. It’s hard to teach a dog new tricks. People don’t change in the face of a new environment. This is illustrated by the fact emigrants tend to preserve their home culture with less change than the home country itself.
      - detourdog 2y ago
        I guess we disagree because my grandfather is from somewhere else and I was raised wrong.
- greiskul 2y ago
  > anti-“imperialist west” America helped install the Brazilian military dictatorship, helped to train them in the use of torture against it's civilian population. You either are ignorant in not knowing the role the US has played around the world, in which case you need to be educated, or you support it, in which case you need to be fought.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    63-73% of Brazilians are pro-American [0][1] based on recent polls. This myth of the "Anti-American Global South" that seems to have originated on Reddit as well as selective interpretation of political rhetoric needs to end. [0] - https://pro.morningconsult.com/articles/united-states-favorability-global-countries-afghanistan https://pro.morningconsult.com/articles/united-states-favora... [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/11/06/comparing-views-of-the-us-and-china-in-24-countries/#favorable-views-of-the-us-and-china https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/11/06/comparing-view...
    - bbor 2y ago
      I think it's far more engrained and fundamental than can be captured in a simple poll. I can at least vouch first hand that it's a common sentiment in Spanish literature from the area and at least some people on the ground. I mean, they're still mad about Victor Jara, for good reason...
      - alephnerd 2y ago
        Brazil ain't Chile, let alone a more anti-American South American countries like Bolivia. And in general, most polls over the last several years using various different methodologies have shown how Brazil tends to have a stronger pro-American sentiment unlike the rest of South America. Spanish language literature and media might have had a stronger impact on building those views in the Hispanoblante world compared to Brazil's relative isolation.
  - bbor 2y ago
    lol. It's the former. Specifically, I was hedging my words, because I was too lazy to Kagi "Brazil wiki" and wasn't entirely sure that they suffered at the hands of the US. To be fair to little ol' me, I doubt the word "Brazil" was said once during the one World History class I took ever, 9-10 years ago. I guess I should just memorize the list of south american countries that we didn't get around to couping, if there are any...
- pessimizer 2y ago
  > He still gets to shout about being silenced by evil socialist Brazil, even if he’s capitulated. Socialist? This victim narrative is bizarre. There is almost no one outside of Brazil who supports what Moraes is doing, most people inside Brazil are against it (even on the face of it, Lula only won by a hair and half of the population are Bolsonaristas, and a significant number of the rest have free speech as a principle), and more than twice as many Senators in Brazil are for impeachment than are against*. Pretending that this is some crusade by the evil right wing of the world directed by their leader Elon Musk against the socialism is bizarre, bad faith, and encouraged by anyone who supports the ban. > He still gets to shout about being silenced by evil socialist Brazil, even if he’s capitulated. Brazil didn't silence Musk, who can speak and be heard wherever he wants, whenever he wants. Brazil silenced Brazilians, and cut them off from the world. Musk is just some dickhead whose business has been going extremely well over the past decade or two, and is not the world representative of free speech. He's a pretense whose use by antidemocratic forces almost managed the achievement of banning all VPN usage in Brazil. I wonder who is going to get the contract to build the Great Brazilian Firewall, seeing as the twitter ban was spotty and VPNs were still a way around it? Will it be a US company? [*] https://veja.abril.com.br/coluna/marcela-rahal/qual-placar-sobre-o-impeachment-de-moraes-no-senado-segundo-site/ https://veja.abril.com.br/coluna/marcela-rahal/qual-placar-s...
diego_moita 2y ago
10 million Brazilians flocking away from Twitter into BlueSky is an argument that even Elon can understand. In case anyone believes this is about "free speech": the jurisprudence for the Brazilian Supreme Court decision is American, in fact. It is a doctrine known as "clear and present danger" and was established by the SCOTUS in 1919, by Oliver Wendel Holmes Jr in "Schenk vs. United States"[1]. The U.S. Supreme Court already applied it a couple of times. De Moraes argued (correctly, IMO) that Musk's non-compliance was a "clear and present danger" to Brazilian democracy. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/clear_and_present_danger https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/clear_and_present_danger
- vt85 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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- bakugo 2y ago
  > De Moraes argued (correctly, IMO) that Musk's non-compliance was a "clear and present danger" to Brazilian democracy. Democracy is when the government censors free speech, got it.
  - exe34 2y ago
    as opposed to elon banning cisgender?
    - gordian-mind 2y ago
      It's just a word
      - exe34 2y ago
        you'd think as a free speech absolutist, he'd value the freedom behind each and every word. today it's just one word, tomorrow who knows?
jeffbee 2y ago
Yesterday, E. Musk quoted a Tweet that said if X capitulated to Brazil, we are all slaves. So I guess we are slaves now. I didn't make the rules. The entire affair was pursued by Musk solely as a way to turn the handle on the vast right-wing noise machine, to give Shellenberger something to do.
- loceng 2y ago
  Ad hominem is ad hominem even if you think it's clever.
BadHumans 2y ago
I mentioned before that I don't agree with how Brazil is going about this situation if you believe Musk's telling of the events but it is also impossible to believe that Musk is some free speech warrior given how readily he complies with the demands of countries like Turkey and India so I'm still trying to understand what exactly is the straw that broke the camel's back for Musk. Was it that he just didn't like his representation being allegedly threatened with jail?
- ivewonyoung 2y ago
  > but it is also impossible to believe that Musk is some free speech warrior given how readily he complies with the demands of countries like Turkey and India He didn't give up readily, those countries passed laws and even then Twitter sued the Indian government. "India calls X a 'habitual non-compliant platform'" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66805347 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66805347 People only think he gave up readily in India because of the all the echo chamber comments repeating misinformation to make Musk look bad. > I'm still trying to understand what exactly is the straw that broke the camel's back for Musk. Was it that he just didn't like his representation being allegedly threatened with jail He felt that the judge's secret orders weren't lawful in Brazil, unlike in other countries.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - p_j_w 2y ago
    > Twitter sued the Indian government. That happened before Musk bought Twitter.
- tux3 2y ago
  I think Musk is just selective in the causes he finds himself wanting to be a free speech warrior for. Free speech for me and mine, all others pay cash
- loceng 2y ago
  Have you tried thinking of his actions through a more than black and white perspective, from a military strategic perspective? E.g. Is it better for all Brazilians if there's a platform they are all already organized/organizing on to still have access to it, or none of them have access to it?
AlienRobot 2y ago
I wonder how many will remain on Bluesky. I've heard of a few key differences between Bluesky and Twitter that could be a deal breaker for many. 1. No trending topics, although there is a recommendation algorithm, so trending topics should be possible in the future. 2. No private profiles. This seems important to many, but it's probably not doable in federated social media. Other privacy problems include your followers, whom you follow, your likes, etc., being public information. 3. No way to make someone that follows you unfollow you. I don't get it either, but it seems in other platforms blocking makes them unfollow you whereas in Bluesky it just stops your posts from appearing. To be honest I'm not really sure how this even works since there are no private posts and you could just access it without being logged in, but I guess the average user is just going to use the main instance anyway. 4. No way to bookmark posts yet. This should be easy to implement. While using the web version, I found several usability problems, like being unable to right click hashtags and posts to open them in a new tab. Clicking on a post lets you reply without seeing existing replies, which seems like a bad idea, too. There are advanced search operators, but no interface to access them. If you search for "how to do" anything in Bluesky you get the API documentation for the AT Protocol. The only user facing documentation at the moment seems to be a FAQ page. Despite its influx of Brazilian users, parts of the interface are still missing translations, e.g. the "Discover" and "Following" tabs in the homepage weren't translated to Portuguese even though the sidebar was. Personally, I think just the fact that Bluesky has a recommendation feed already makes it better than Mastodon for most people, but it's still in development. I haven't used the app, so maybe things are better there.
- slater 2y ago
  > No way to bookmark posts yet. This should be easy to implement. Seems to be doable? Right-click & copy link on the time of a post, e.g. https://bsky.app/profile/brainnotonyet.bsky.social/post/3l4orlzvq3h23 https://bsky.app/profile/brainnotonyet.bsky.social/post/3l4o...
  - AlienRobot 2y ago
    Bookmarking in Twitter, Mastodon, and TikTok means to click a bookmark button in the post to save it to your bookmarks in your account, not to bookmark it in the browser.
cubefox 2y ago
If the Brazilian court had ordered a ban of far-left users, the reporting on this would have been very different.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - AzzyHN 2y ago
    The "fight" between Twitter and Brazil is inherently political. That's like saying Bethesda ruined Fallout by making it "woke" and "anti-American"
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  Because he wouldn't have fought it?
- Spivak 2y ago
  This is a not very useful breakdown of the political situation. There is only one thing that is required to have a democracy, and that is the peaceful transition of power. And that requires that people have to accept the results of elections. Elections don't have to be fair. They don't have to be free from corruption. They don't have to be accurate, lord knows the elections in the United States are horribly skewed due to the fact that we have such low voter turnout. If you wanted to accurately assess who would be the best elected official in a given position you could do a lot better by just getting a board of statisticians and sampling the hell out of your electorate. But the thing that is important is that we go through a process, that process terminates, and we go with whatever it says the winner was. If it was a bad choice c'est la vie I'll see you again next election and if there was shady shit that happened, we can address that in the interim. I don't give a shit what the far right views on like immigration or abortion or taxes are. I can disagree with them, but that's not like an existential threat to the country. What is in the US is the fact that we have a candidate for president who was still not conceded his loss in the 2020 election and is running again on the same premise that the elections are rigged. Like the bar is so low here.
dachworker 2y ago
Musk claimed on the All In podcast, that he was merely trying to abide by the law, and that the situation that arose was that the government was requesting action that went against the laws of the same country. I don't know how true that is, but it sounds plausible. He also made it clear that the policy was not "free speech by US standards" but rather allowing speech up till what is permitted by every respective country. That sounded way more reasonable to me than what I have heard before on the issue.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > the situation that arose was that the government was requesting action that went against the laws of the same country There is no jurisdiction in which blowing off a court is a legitimate reaction to perceived lawlessness. Or more accurately, there is no jurisdiction where doing so doesn’t legitimately bring down on you the full force of the state. To do anything else is to cede the rule of law.
  - dachworker 2y ago
    I'm not an expert on this topic. But I can conceive of a situation where the judiciary and the executive branches are butting head against each other and one finds it hard to figure out who to listen to. Didn't this exact situation arise in the US during the Trump administration?
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > can conceive of a situation where the judiciary and the executive branches are butting head against each other and one finds it hard to figure out who to listen to Sure. You still show up. If the executive orders you not to show, you have a constitutional crisis and the rule of law has broken down. But that didn’t happen here. (Note: the court’s orders may be illegal. But not showing up and then complaining about sanctions is incoherent.)
  - _3u10 2y ago
    There's lot of jurisdictions, United States has great jurisprudence on this dating back to July 4th, 1776. France, Great Britain, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, all of latin america in fact, have examples of using this legal strategy effectively. Venezuela may overrule the courts later this year. Judge not lest ye be judged yourself.
sourraspberry 2y ago
X follows the law of a country it's operating in*
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] Earlier, as referenced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41610745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41610745
CLiED 2y ago
And to Turkey, India and...
silexia 2y ago
Elon was defending free speech in Brazil under Brazil's own laws. If this article is true (many from the verge are false in my opinion), then this is a sad day.

86 points by anigbrowl 2y ago

bbor 2y ago

lol, I know they’re just doing their job, but “in a surprising move” is funny commentary for this. Elon never had a plan at all other than vaguely rile people up — Brazil is a huge market, and despite his “go fuck yourselves” rhetoric, he’s still legally beholden to investors to try to make some of their money back. The only way he wouldn’t “capitulate” would be if Twitter folded before he could. This of course doesn’t help his election-time rhetoric, but eh I don’t think facts matter that much for that, anyway. He still gets to shout about being silenced by evil socialist Brazil, even if he’s capitulated. Hopefully Bluesky/the fediverse doesn’t lose the momentum they’ve gained there! I’m only familiar with Spanish-speaking South America, but I’m guessing Brazil still has a considerable anti-“imperialist west” (cough cough America) sentiment in the bedrock of its culture; intentionally and condescendingly flaunting their laws is not a good look, at all.

chx 2y ago
> he’s still legally beholden to investors Unless you have seen the contracts signed you can't know that. Xitter is no longer a public company and as a private company has absolutely no such requirement. While Burwell v. Hobby Lobby might be controversial it is still remarkable coming from such a high court to include this: > While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so.
- exe34 2y ago
  > Unless you have seen the contracts signed you can't know that that's right, this is in fact a clever 4d chess move by Elon, who totally doesn't behave like a crack-addled loser, and he clearly won this round!
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    You sound like the worst of twitter, here.
    - klyrs 2y ago
      Elon Musk doesn't talk like that.
      - exe34 2y ago
        he wouldn't want people deadnaming shitter, he reserves that honour for his own kid.
- skybrian 2y ago
  I think that quote is common sense, or should be. It’s only news for people who subscribe to certain myths widely circulated on social media about what for-profit companies are legally required to do.
- vuln 2y ago
  > Unless you have seen the contracts signed you can't know that. Xitter is no longer a public company and as a private company has absolutely no such requirement. Have you seen the contracts? How do you know there is _absolutely no such requirement_? Perhaps it’s not standard but private investment is private.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    Some of his business partners chop up journalists which is another form of business incentive.
  - chx 2y ago
    What I meant is that in general private companies have no requirements of making profit and I even have shown the SCOTUS stating so.
alephnerd 2y ago
> anti-“imperialist west” (cough cough America) sentiment There's a difference between fringe rhetoric and actions. The only countries more pro-American than Brazil in polls are America and India [0], and ironically, the Anti-American rate is higher in America than in Brazil (where there's a large neutral/indifferent cohort in polls). In general, pro-American sentiment is somewhere between 63-73% in Brazil [0][1] Most political "anti-American" rhetoric in Brazil is due to agrarian protectionism - the same as India - as regional BigAg are major political player in both countries. Most Brazilians in the diaspora who can immigrate will immigrate to the US. American companies and Brazilian companies have very close relations with each other (ever had a Budwesier, Blue Moon, Burger King, or Popeye's? They're majority owned by Brazilian PE funds). Finally, most of the underlying support for Lula comes from his "Bolsa Familia" program in the 2000s. This lie of Brazilian or Indian anti-Americanism only went into overdrive on Reddit and then HN because of their indifference to the Russia-Ukraine war, as they have investments in both sides. [0] - https://pro.morningconsult.com/articles/united-states-favorability-global-countries-afghanistan https://pro.morningconsult.com/articles/united-states-favora... [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/11/06/comparing-views-of-the-us-and-china-in-24-countries/#favorable-views-of-the-us-and-china https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/11/06/comparing-view...
mc32 2y ago
Anti imperialist but if they had any chance they’d migrate to the great satan… oh people, such hypocrites.
- detourdog 2y ago
  Made it would be to vote and form a more perfect union.
  - mc32 2y ago
    Yup, they’d make it in the image of the countries they come from because it’s they what they know and like. It’s hard to teach a dog new tricks. People don’t change in the face of a new environment. This is illustrated by the fact emigrants tend to preserve their home culture with less change than the home country itself.
    - detourdog 2y ago
      I guess we disagree because my grandfather is from somewhere else and I was raised wrong.
greiskul 2y ago
> anti-“imperialist west” America helped install the Brazilian military dictatorship, helped to train them in the use of torture against it's civilian population. You either are ignorant in not knowing the role the US has played around the world, in which case you need to be educated, or you support it, in which case you need to be fought.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  63-73% of Brazilians are pro-American [0][1] based on recent polls. This myth of the "Anti-American Global South" that seems to have originated on Reddit as well as selective interpretation of political rhetoric needs to end. [0] - https://pro.morningconsult.com/articles/united-states-favorability-global-countries-afghanistan https://pro.morningconsult.com/articles/united-states-favora... [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/11/06/comparing-views-of-the-us-and-china-in-24-countries/#favorable-views-of-the-us-and-china https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/11/06/comparing-view...
  - bbor 2y ago
    I think it's far more engrained and fundamental than can be captured in a simple poll. I can at least vouch first hand that it's a common sentiment in Spanish literature from the area and at least some people on the ground. I mean, they're still mad about Victor Jara, for good reason...
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      Brazil ain't Chile, let alone a more anti-American South American countries like Bolivia. And in general, most polls over the last several years using various different methodologies have shown how Brazil tends to have a stronger pro-American sentiment unlike the rest of South America. Spanish language literature and media might have had a stronger impact on building those views in the Hispanoblante world compared to Brazil's relative isolation.
- bbor 2y ago
  lol. It's the former. Specifically, I was hedging my words, because I was too lazy to Kagi "Brazil wiki" and wasn't entirely sure that they suffered at the hands of the US. To be fair to little ol' me, I doubt the word "Brazil" was said once during the one World History class I took ever, 9-10 years ago. I guess I should just memorize the list of south american countries that we didn't get around to couping, if there are any...
pessimizer 2y ago
> He still gets to shout about being silenced by evil socialist Brazil, even if he’s capitulated. Socialist? This victim narrative is bizarre. There is almost no one outside of Brazil who supports what Moraes is doing, most people inside Brazil are against it (even on the face of it, Lula only won by a hair and half of the population are Bolsonaristas, and a significant number of the rest have free speech as a principle), and more than twice as many Senators in Brazil are for impeachment than are against*. Pretending that this is some crusade by the evil right wing of the world directed by their leader Elon Musk against the socialism is bizarre, bad faith, and encouraged by anyone who supports the ban. > He still gets to shout about being silenced by evil socialist Brazil, even if he’s capitulated. Brazil didn't silence Musk, who can speak and be heard wherever he wants, whenever he wants. Brazil silenced Brazilians, and cut them off from the world. Musk is just some dickhead whose business has been going extremely well over the past decade or two, and is not the world representative of free speech. He's a pretense whose use by antidemocratic forces almost managed the achievement of banning all VPN usage in Brazil. I wonder who is going to get the contract to build the Great Brazilian Firewall, seeing as the twitter ban was spotty and VPNs were still a way around it? Will it be a US company? [*] https://veja.abril.com.br/coluna/marcela-rahal/qual-placar-sobre-o-impeachment-de-moraes-no-senado-segundo-site/ https://veja.abril.com.br/coluna/marcela-rahal/qual-placar-s...

diego_moita 2y ago

10 million Brazilians flocking away from Twitter into BlueSky is an argument that even Elon can understand. In case anyone believes this is about "free speech": the jurisprudence for the Brazilian Supreme Court decision is American, in fact. It is a doctrine known as "clear and present danger" and was established by the SCOTUS in 1919, by Oliver Wendel Holmes Jr in "Schenk vs. United States"[1]. The U.S. Supreme Court already applied it a couple of times. De Moraes argued (correctly, IMO) that Musk's non-compliance was a "clear and present danger" to Brazilian democracy. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/clear_and_present_danger https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/clear_and_present_danger

vt85 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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bakugo 2y ago
> De Moraes argued (correctly, IMO) that Musk's non-compliance was a "clear and present danger" to Brazilian democracy. Democracy is when the government censors free speech, got it.
- exe34 2y ago
  as opposed to elon banning cisgender?
  - gordian-mind 2y ago
    It's just a word
    - exe34 2y ago
      you'd think as a free speech absolutist, he'd value the freedom behind each and every word. today it's just one word, tomorrow who knows?

jeffbee 2y ago

Yesterday, E. Musk quoted a Tweet that said if X capitulated to Brazil, we are all slaves. So I guess we are slaves now. I didn't make the rules. The entire affair was pursued by Musk solely as a way to turn the handle on the vast right-wing noise machine, to give Shellenberger something to do.

loceng 2y ago
Ad hominem is ad hominem even if you think it's clever.

BadHumans 2y ago

I mentioned before that I don't agree with how Brazil is going about this situation if you believe Musk's telling of the events but it is also impossible to believe that Musk is some free speech warrior given how readily he complies with the demands of countries like Turkey and India so I'm still trying to understand what exactly is the straw that broke the camel's back for Musk. Was it that he just didn't like his representation being allegedly threatened with jail?

ivewonyoung 2y ago
> but it is also impossible to believe that Musk is some free speech warrior given how readily he complies with the demands of countries like Turkey and India He didn't give up readily, those countries passed laws and even then Twitter sued the Indian government. "India calls X a 'habitual non-compliant platform'" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66805347 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66805347 People only think he gave up readily in India because of the all the echo chamber comments repeating misinformation to make Musk look bad. > I'm still trying to understand what exactly is the straw that broke the camel's back for Musk. Was it that he just didn't like his representation being allegedly threatened with jail He felt that the judge's secret orders weren't lawful in Brazil, unlike in other countries.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- p_j_w 2y ago
  > Twitter sued the Indian government. That happened before Musk bought Twitter.
tux3 2y ago
I think Musk is just selective in the causes he finds himself wanting to be a free speech warrior for. Free speech for me and mine, all others pay cash
loceng 2y ago
Have you tried thinking of his actions through a more than black and white perspective, from a military strategic perspective? E.g. Is it better for all Brazilians if there's a platform they are all already organized/organizing on to still have access to it, or none of them have access to it?

AlienRobot 2y ago

I wonder how many will remain on Bluesky. I've heard of a few key differences between Bluesky and Twitter that could be a deal breaker for many. 1. No trending topics, although there is a recommendation algorithm, so trending topics should be possible in the future. 2. No private profiles. This seems important to many, but it's probably not doable in federated social media. Other privacy problems include your followers, whom you follow, your likes, etc., being public information. 3. No way to make someone that follows you unfollow you. I don't get it either, but it seems in other platforms blocking makes them unfollow you whereas in Bluesky it just stops your posts from appearing. To be honest I'm not really sure how this even works since there are no private posts and you could just access it without being logged in, but I guess the average user is just going to use the main instance anyway. 4. No way to bookmark posts yet. This should be easy to implement. While using the web version, I found several usability problems, like being unable to right click hashtags and posts to open them in a new tab. Clicking on a post lets you reply without seeing existing replies, which seems like a bad idea, too. There are advanced search operators, but no interface to access them. If you search for "how to do" anything in Bluesky you get the API documentation for the AT Protocol. The only user facing documentation at the moment seems to be a FAQ page. Despite its influx of Brazilian users, parts of the interface are still missing translations, e.g. the "Discover" and "Following" tabs in the homepage weren't translated to Portuguese even though the sidebar was. Personally, I think just the fact that Bluesky has a recommendation feed already makes it better than Mastodon for most people, but it's still in development. I haven't used the app, so maybe things are better there.

slater 2y ago
> No way to bookmark posts yet. This should be easy to implement. Seems to be doable? Right-click & copy link on the time of a post, e.g. https://bsky.app/profile/brainnotonyet.bsky.social/post/3l4orlzvq3h23 https://bsky.app/profile/brainnotonyet.bsky.social/post/3l4o...
- AlienRobot 2y ago
  Bookmarking in Twitter, Mastodon, and TikTok means to click a bookmark button in the post to save it to your bookmarks in your account, not to bookmark it in the browser.

cubefox 2y ago

If the Brazilian court had ordered a ban of far-left users, the reporting on this would have been very different.

dgfitz 2y ago
[flagged]
- AzzyHN 2y ago
  The "fight" between Twitter and Brazil is inherently political. That's like saying Bethesda ruined Fallout by making it "woke" and "anti-American"
giraffe_lady 2y ago
Because he wouldn't have fought it?
Spivak 2y ago
This is a not very useful breakdown of the political situation. There is only one thing that is required to have a democracy, and that is the peaceful transition of power. And that requires that people have to accept the results of elections. Elections don't have to be fair. They don't have to be free from corruption. They don't have to be accurate, lord knows the elections in the United States are horribly skewed due to the fact that we have such low voter turnout. If you wanted to accurately assess who would be the best elected official in a given position you could do a lot better by just getting a board of statisticians and sampling the hell out of your electorate. But the thing that is important is that we go through a process, that process terminates, and we go with whatever it says the winner was. If it was a bad choice c'est la vie I'll see you again next election and if there was shady shit that happened, we can address that in the interim. I don't give a shit what the far right views on like immigration or abortion or taxes are. I can disagree with them, but that's not like an existential threat to the country. What is in the US is the fact that we have a candidate for president who was still not conceded his loss in the 2020 election and is running again on the same premise that the elections are rigged. Like the bar is so low here.

dachworker 2y ago

Musk claimed on the All In podcast, that he was merely trying to abide by the law, and that the situation that arose was that the government was requesting action that went against the laws of the same country. I don't know how true that is, but it sounds plausible. He also made it clear that the policy was not "free speech by US standards" but rather allowing speech up till what is permitted by every respective country. That sounded way more reasonable to me than what I have heard before on the issue.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> the situation that arose was that the government was requesting action that went against the laws of the same country There is no jurisdiction in which blowing off a court is a legitimate reaction to perceived lawlessness. Or more accurately, there is no jurisdiction where doing so doesn’t legitimately bring down on you the full force of the state. To do anything else is to cede the rule of law.
- dachworker 2y ago
  I'm not an expert on this topic. But I can conceive of a situation where the judiciary and the executive branches are butting head against each other and one finds it hard to figure out who to listen to. Didn't this exact situation arise in the US during the Trump administration?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > can conceive of a situation where the judiciary and the executive branches are butting head against each other and one finds it hard to figure out who to listen to Sure. You still show up. If the executive orders you not to show, you have a constitutional crisis and the rule of law has broken down. But that didn’t happen here. (Note: the court’s orders may be illegal. But not showing up and then complaining about sanctions is incoherent.)
- _3u10 2y ago
  There's lot of jurisdictions, United States has great jurisprudence on this dating back to July 4th, 1776. France, Great Britain, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, all of latin america in fact, have examples of using this legal strategy effectively. Venezuela may overrule the courts later this year. Judge not lest ye be judged yourself.

sourraspberry 2y ago

X follows the law of a country it's operating in*

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] Earlier, as referenced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41610745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41610745

CLiED 2y ago

And to Turkey, India and...

silexia 2y ago

Elon was defending free speech in Brazil under Brazil's own laws. If this article is true (many from the verge are false in my opinion), then this is a sad day.