opello 10 hours ago | next |

> Brazil's national telecommunication agency, Anatel, has been ordered by de Moraes to prevent access to the platform by blocking Cloudflare as well as Fastly and EdgeUno servers, and others that the court said had been "created to circumvent" a suspension of X in Brazil.

Blocking Cloudflare and Fastly seems like a reactionary measure that is not exactly well conceived.

toomuchtodo 10 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Nation states will always win against a corporation. They are authorized to use force, both physical and economical. They also control access to their market.

opello 9 hours ago | root | parent |

I don't think it's always true. It seems like it would have to depend on how the nation state responds to its citizens when the nation state does things like break large portions of the web. And what actual economic leverage the state has (or could bring to bear) over the company.

Losing the citizenry might be more politically damaging faster than economically damaging to X/Starlink.

toomuchtodo 9 hours ago | root | parent |

> Losing the citizenry might be more politically damaging faster than economically damaging to X/Starlink.

Provide evidence Brazil will lose the citizenry over this. It appears that Brazil has been surgical in directing access restrictions to X; millions of X social followers have moved to Bluesky [1], and while Starlink customers might be impacted (~250k terminals) who cannot access X, they are not a majority in any sense (based on ground station count; 250k vs a Brazil population of 215.3 million people).

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It's also easy to get caught in the trap to believe that other people think how one's own self thinks [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41550053

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect

matheusmoreira 7 hours ago | root | parent |

> Provide evidence Brazil will lose the citizenry over this.

Just this month, people literally got out of their homes, went out and onto the street, assembled and protested this judge, demanding his impeachment. This happened in seven of our capitals.

https://www.ft.com/content/142a6d95-b06e-47e3-a605-a203e2bc4...

https://apnews.com/article/brazil-musk-x-moraes-bolsonaro-sa...

https://g1.globo.com/jornal-nacional/noticia/2024/09/07/mani...

While this was going down, the judge was apparently attending a barbecue with the ruling party. They made fun of the protesters. "Your homages have already begun", they are reported to have said to him.

vitorgrs 8 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

They are not blocking Cloudflare or Fastly.

They are blocking X IPs being used on Cloudflare and Fastly.

These CDNs agreed with Anatel, to reserve IPs exclusively to X, so IPs can block X without collateral damage, that's all.

That said, Cloudflare is also blocking X. Cloudflare Warp doesn't open X.com anymore, neither iCloud Relay's (which seems to use Cloudflare).

ein0p 10 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

None of this is “well conceived”. De Moraes is way too high on his own supply.

IntelMiner 10 hours ago | root | parent |

[flagged]

jdminhbg 9 hours ago | root | parent | next |

> He's just enforcing the law in Brazil

It's really instructive to see how quickly people will abandon any pretense of liberal society when they have a personal animus against the ox currently being gored.

Veserv 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

Exactly. Elon Musk said you have to be braindead [1] to prefer being banned in a country over honoring censorship requests by the government. But he immediately abandoned any pretense of that position due to his personal animus against the government of Brazil.

[1] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1657422401754259461

ivewonyoung 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Here's a good explanation of how the Brazilian Supreme Court did a creative and novel interpretation of the law to give itself powers to investigate and regulate the internet without law enforcement or legislative/executive involvent.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

That's not enforcing the law.

As documented by the New York Times, the first thing the judge did after getting powers to censor was to call a Brazilian magazine article about the person that gave him those powers 'fake news' and got it removed. It later turned out that article was true so he had egg on his face and had to retract his censorship order.

> To run the investigation, Mr. Toffoli tapped Mr. Moraes, 53, an intense former federal justice minister and constitutional law professor who had joined the court in 2017.

> In his first action, Mr. Moraes ordered a Brazilian magazine, Crusoé, to remove an online article that showed links between Mr. Toffoli and a corruption investigation. Mr. Moraes called it “fake news.”

> Mr. Moraes later lifted the order after legal documents proved the article was accurate.

https://archive.is/plQFT

johndevor 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

A fascist who is incredibly productive in the free market. That's a first!

matheusmoreira 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Political censorship is unconstitutional in Brazil. These judges are after Bolsonaro and his supporters for the political speech they engaged in. Blatant political censorship.

The constitution literally contains the words:

> Any and all censorship of political and artistic nature is prohibited

It's really not that hard to understand. Any citizen can understand this. It's just that it doesn't matter what the law says. Because there's no court above them, the law becomes whatever they say it is.

defrost 9 hours ago | root | parent | next |

Which parágrafos or incisos of the Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil

> literally contains the words:

cited in English?

Isn't political debate in Brazil sharply divided by selective absolute Constitionalism in any case?

Why leap to the defence of bad faith falsehoods spread by bad losers of a democratic election?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Brazil

matheusmoreira 4 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country. Obviously, the brazilian constitution is not written in English. I took the liberty of translating the passage so that people from this community would understand it.

You don't have to believe my translation. Here's a completely independent source I found by searching the web:

https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Brazil_2017

I will cite and copy the relevant parts from it.

  TITLE II. FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND GUARANTEES
  CHAPTER I. INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE RIGHTS AND DUTIES
  Article 5
  Everyone is equal before the law, with no distinction whatsoever,
  guaranteeing to Brazilians and foreigners residing in the Country
  the inviolability of the rights to life, liberty, equality, security
  and property, on the following terms:

  Term IX.
  expression of intellectual, artistic, scientific, and communication activity
  is free, independent of any censorship or license;

  CHAPTER V. SOCIAL COMMUNICATION
  Article 220
  The expression of thoughts, creation, speech and information,
  through whatever form, process or vehicle,
  shall not be subject to any restrictions,
  observing the provisions of this Constitution.

  Paragraph 1.
  No law shall contain any provision that may constitute
  an impediment to full freedom of the press,
  in any medium of social communication,
  observing the provisions of art. 5°, IV, V, X, XIII and XIV.

  Paragraph 2.
  Any and all censorship of a political, ideological and artistic nature
  is forbidden.
The terms referenced by the above paragraph:

  Term IV.
  manifestation of thought is free, but anonymity is forbidden;

  Term V.
  the right of reply is assured, in proportion to the offense,
  as well as compensation for pecuniary or moral damages
  or damages to reputation;

  Term X.
  personal intimacy, private life, honor and reputation are inviolable,
  guaranteeing the right to compensation for pecuniary or moral damages
  resulting from the violation thereof;

  Term XIII.
  exercise of any job, trade or profession is free,
  observing the professional qualifications that
  the law establishes;

  Term XIV.
  access to information is assured to everyone,
  protecting the confidentiality of sources
  when necessary for professional activity;
It's really not that hard to read and understand these words. Surely you'll agree that there is not a single case here that says these judges get to censor anyone for any reason at all. If a brazilian is harmed by speech, he gets to answer and to be made whole by compensation, financial or otherwise. He does not get to censor the other guy. I simply cannot find in this entire text a single exception that would allow censorship.

Debating these points here on HN, I've had people cite lesser laws than the constitution, I've had people get into incredibly pedantic arguments over how it's ackshually not really censorship when you delete the political opposition's social media, I've had people appeal to authority, I've had people call me a moron. I've never, not once, had them point out to me where in the fuck it says, in the above text, that these judges can do what they're doing.

> Isn't political debate in Brazil sharply divided by selective absolute Constitionalism in any case?

The whole point of my comments is that everything in this country is like that. Even the supreme court judges, whose literal job is to interpret and apply the constitution, are like that. They "selectively and creatively interpret" the constitution.

This country has no laws. Only the whims of these judges.

> Why leap to the defence of bad faith falsehoods spread by bad losers of a democratic election?

I "leap" to the defense of so called "falsehoods" because I see several things wrong with your loaded question.

This country is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship of the judiciary. Calling what we had an "election" is an insult to elections, it was more like a circus. I do not believe for a second that there was fraud in the US elections, but here the "bad losers" had plenty of reasons to doubt the results, among them the blatant political censorship perpetrated by the very same judges involved in this case.

I was going to elaborate on the above points but ultimately decided against it due to how fruitless it usually is. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if I saw HNers defending the communist Venezuelan dictator's "reelection" and calling the opposition he murdered and exiled "bad losers".

littlestymaar 7 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

> Blatant political censorship.

Shutting down businesses (not speeches, they aren't keeping pro-lula Twitter accounts up while censoring conservative ones) for refusing to comply with the law isn't censorship.

Censoring books in public library is censorship though, and Musk supported De Santis anyway.

matheusmoreira 6 hours ago | root | parent |

> keeping pro-lula Twitter accounts up while censoring conservative ones

Funny. Among the accounts targeted by this judge, not a single one is pro-Lula. Really curious, indeed. Are these guys saints? Are they literally never wrong on the internet?

Not too long ago, one of Lula's ministers "disseminated" some serious "misinformation". She literally said about a hundred million brazilians are starving to death right now. Where's the judge's fact checking? I wonder.

I mean, Lula himself has admitted to journalists that he just makes up statistics on the spot. You'd think he'd be this judge's worst enemy, given how gung-ho he is about "misinformation"... Oh shit, is that the judge attending a barbecue with Lula and his allies? Whew, lad. What do you know?

littlestymaar 5 hours ago | root | parent |

You're conflating two different things:

- broad Twitter ban (which is the topic of TFA), which itself results from Twitter refusal to cooperate with Brazilian justice.

- prosecutions related to the attempted coup in Brasilia, which includes activities on Twitter (and obviously there isn't a single pro-lula in the list of people involved, like there's no Bidden supporters among the people charged for Jan 6th, and it's not a conspiracy against republicans …).

Big corporations aren't exempted from laws and they cannot unilaterally decide not to comply with Court's order, whatever you think about the order in the first place. And the reason why Musk doesn't comply with Brazilian justice isn't free speech, as he's eager to comply with authoritarian regimes all around the world, he's just doing that for political motives.

Reminder: you'll get censored on Twitter if you type the word “cisgender" and Musk supported Ron De Santis censoring books in libraries, and also canceled Tesla orders from people after they criticized him personally: Musk doesn't give a shit about freedom of speech, he just claim he does hopping enough idiots will buy it against all evidence.

matheusmoreira 4 hours ago | root | parent |

I'm not "conflating" anything. The "fake news" nonsense has been on-going since 2019. The persecution of the brazilian right has been on-going since the lead up to the 2022 elections at the very least, possibly earlier. The events that led to the order to ban X began in 2019 and accelerated in 2022. He's been ordering the banishment of political accounts since before the election. I know because I was commenting on the situation here on HN the whole time.

None of these things should have happened in the first place. Twitter should never have been banned because the judge should never have ordered the censorship of those accounts to begin with. There should have been no order for him to defy in the first place.

You may legally object to what Musk did based on the judge's authority. The point is I have zero moral objections to it. Illegal orders must not be obeyed. "Just following orders" has not been a valid excuse for anything since nazis were hanged at Nuremberg. And I do believe this judge's orders are illegal. He just gets away with it because there's nobody above him to put a stop to it.

I don't particularly care about Twitter or how hypocritical Musk is. No doubt he has plenty of self-serving reasons for defying the judge. The fact that a judge ordered him to censor political accounts over "misinformation" nonsense is what matters here. Musk can do whatever he wants on his platform, I don't care. Judges ordering censorship of politicians? I absolutely do care. Censorship is when the government shows up and deletes what you said. And censorship equals dictatorship, it's that simple. It's undeniable evidence that brazilians are living under a dictatorship.

bryant 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

There's an argument to be made that lying to the public is not political speech.

Relevant analysis: https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/framing-disinf...

ImJamal 9 hours ago | root | parent | next |

I didn't read your link, but if political speech has to be honest then I'm sure all of the politicians in Brazil are going to have their speech censored, right?

matheusmoreira 7 hours ago | root | parent |

Of course. Brazilian politicians, even the literal brazilian government's official accounts, used to get fact checked on X on a pretty much daily basis. I have videos of our current president straight up admitting to a journalist that he invents numbers on the spot.

These are the "authorities" who would presume to condemn you for posting "fake news". In the 2022 elections, I witnessed these judge-kings censor people for associating Lula with the Venezuelan dictator. Then I had to watch him literally roll out the red carpet for that very same dictator only months into his mandate. More recently I watched as he supported the dictator's "election".

ein0p 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

You’re misunderstanding who’s the “fascist” here. It’s not Musk. We get it, you don’t like his tweets or success, but he’s right in this case.

redundantly 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

I don't know much about Brazil , nor the background on this story, however even if Musk is in the right here, that doesn't make him any less of a fascist.

There isn't always a good and bad guy in these situations. Corrupt people and organisations can and often do oppose each other.

rvz 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

> "How? He's just enforcing the law in Brazil"

> "Elon is the one who cut off Twitter's 5th biggest market because misinformation is the opium of fascist-wannabees like him"

You don't seem to be sure on what is going on or even know what 'fascist' means.

Anything can be declared as "misinformation" these days which is the what many governments commonly use to enforce censorship and for its citizens to continue to believe one narrative for governments to then continue to lie to its citizens.

Why do you want this?

IntelMiner 9 hours ago | root | parent |

If someone tells me the sky is blue, and then someone else tells me the sky is purple, I'm not going to believe it's purple just because "the government" tells me the weather forecast

HideousKojima 9 hours ago | root | parent |

That's something you can vetify yourself though. What if the government claimed that Polish soldiers attacked the German border, you claimed that it was actually German soldiers in Polish uniforms to give Germany a casus belli to invade, and a court censored your claim because they insist it's misinformation? How the hell is the average citizen going to determine what is misinformation or not there if any counterarguments or evidence are censored?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident

I have a hard time believing you're this naive about this. Either you really haven't thought through the repercussions, or you're in favor of it because it's being used against your political enemies (for now).

jsight 10 hours ago | prev | next |

This seems like a worthwhile fight. I'm surprised to see someone taking it up, though, most of the time company's just seem to comply with government mandated censorship.

o11c 9 hours ago | root | parent | next |

You do realize that the "censorship" being mentioned is of literal terrorists?

Terrorism: the use of violence to achieve political aims (if you are not yourself a recognized nation).

This is exactly what these people did in their coup attempt. I for one would rather not have another coup organized on Twitter, thank you very much.

(and before anyone brings it up - even if someone works for the PR or leadership arms of a terrorist organization, rather than actually performing the violence personally, that does not mean they stop being a terrorist)

andsoitis 9 hours ago | root | parent | next |

> you do realize that the "censorship" being mentioned is of literal terrorists?

I don't follow this very closely, but I wonder: if the Brazilian state or justice system consider them terrorists, what is getting in the way of bringing them to justice?

o11c 9 hours ago | root | parent |

Their version of January 6 took place after ours, so they're still going through early stages of the process. At least 86 have been convicted and sent to prison so far, likely low-level stooges since the higher-ups take longer.

matheusmoreira 7 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

There was no "coup attempt". There was a protest. Like many before it. Brazilians occupying Brasília buildings is essentially the standard brazilian protest. There's just no way you can convincingly claim that a thousand people armed with flags and bibles amounts to a coup or even an attempt at one. The only thing they did which you might object to was beg the military to launch an intervention.

The legal basis for that is a bit of brazilian law that dates back to our independence. It says the military is the so called "4th power", the "moderator power" which is supposed to intervene if the balance between the other three democratic powers gets too screwed up. That's exactly the situation we find ourselves in: unelected judge-kings that legislate and run the country. These protesters tried to invoke that bit of law by asking the brazilian military to intervene and put an end to it. They did not try to seize power for themselves, they asked the military to do it. The military refused to do it. Then they were arrested. Then the judges put them in a gulag.

Your comments have helped me in the past. Sad to see that you believe in this narrative.

o11c 6 hours ago | root | parent |

If it looks like a coup and quacks like a coup, don't tell me it's actually a sedan.

matheusmoreira 4 hours ago | root | parent |

Can we not use duck typing logic to interpret the politics of a nation?

They called the impeachment of one of our former presidents in 2016 a coup too. In fact, they still call it that to this day. It led to one of the Brasília protests to which I alluded in my reply. Amusingly, even back then there were calls for mililitary intervention. Those were never a big deal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_protests_in_Brazil

What these judges did certainly looks like a coup to me. As far as I'm concerned, they gave themselves limitless powers and installed a dictatorship of the judiciary in this country. There's no point in electing representatives when these unelected judge-kings "creatively interpret" the laws they create however they want. What you're calling a coup, I see as a desperate failed attempt to restore order to this place.

See how fruitless it is? Everything looks like a coup to somebody.

infotainment 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

Remember kids, free speech means that everyone is contractually obligated to algorithmically broadcast everything you say, even if it is literal terrorism, to as many people as possible. Failure to do this is literally 1984.

(/s)

holmesworcester 9 hours ago | root | parent |

So you think only government censorship is a speech violation?

Well cool! You'll happen to be on the right side in this case, because in this case the censor is a government.

infotainment 9 hours ago | root | parent |

Well, perhaps I layered in too much sarcasm, but the idea is that it's not a free speech violation for the government to say someone can't post on social media. That person is still free to say it, just not to have it broadcast to everyone.

IntelMiner 10 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

"Censoring" literal misinformation is a bad thing now?

johndevor 9 hours ago | root | parent | next |

Putting "literal" in front of a word does not clarify the definition of that word.

IntelMiner 9 hours ago | root | parent |

https://time.com/7016537/brazil-blocks-elon-musk-x-twitter-c...

Brazil's judge lays it out quite reasonably?

HideousKojima 9 hours ago | root | parent |

I don't see any explanation in that article about what illegal "literal misinformation" Musk is allowing on X, so no it's not very reasonable.

IntelMiner 9 hours ago | root | parent |

Apologies, it was a link from another article (hooray posting while on mobile!)

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3rnl5qv3o

>The row began in April, with the judge ordering the suspension of dozens of X accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation.

>Justice Moraes had ordered that X accounts accused of spreading disinformation - many supporters of the former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro - must be blocked while they are under investigation.

HideousKojima 9 hours ago | root | parent |

Still not seeing any explanation of what the supposed "literal misinformation" was in that article either.

IntelMiner 9 hours ago | root | parent |

"Justice Moraes had ordered that X accounts accused of spreading disinformation"

Not sure how I can make it any clearer for you than that. Surely if they're innocent then the accounts can simply be reinstated?

ImJamal 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

It is. What you think is truth today can easily be considered misinformation tomorrow.

1270018080 9 hours ago | root | parent |

I know in the post-truth era everyone can pretend their bubble is fact, but come on. Some things actually are misinformation.

ImJamal 9 hours ago | root | parent |

Sure, somethings are actually misinformation. Nobody is denying that. The problem is giving the government the ability to determine what is and isn't misinformation.

If [politican you don't like] had the power to consider his misinformation to be truthful and truthful information to be misinformation would you still be in support of this? He could supress all the negative information about him calling it misinformation and prevent his misinformation from being banned.

IntelMiner 9 hours ago | root | parent | next |

So what happens when misinformation is posted and the corporation won't act to remove it?

In twitter's case, what happens when the corporation actively works to avoid accountability for it?

ImJamal 8 hours ago | root | parent |

Nothing negative should happen to the company. In an ideal world the company should be lauded by everybody who values free speech for not bowing down to government censorship. The politicans supporting censorship should be voted out and the government should pay back any money it took in fines with interest. Those in the company who stood up for free speech should be given a medal by the new government.

Of course, we live in a society which loves censorship and hates free speech. Given the hatred of free speech we are seeing in this thread, I am guessing the ideal situation won't happen anytime soon.

1270018080 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

The misinformation and regulation dodging is happening right now, and the functioning Brazilian government is taking steps to stop it. So we should just be happy with the small win as a citizens of the world.

> If [politican you don't like] had the power to consider his misinformation to be truthful and truthful information to be misinformation would you still be in support of this?

If an evil person is trying to rewrite reality from their position of power, you'd hope the checks and balances in the government prevent them from doing so. While the Brazilian government can stop misinformation from spreading, they can also allow real information to continue to spread.

But if we go down this reductive doomsday scenario all the way to the bottom, where there are evil people stacked from top to bottom, your nation failed a long time ago. And maybe part of the blame sits on the people preaching do-nothingness and requiring a perfect system of laws and governance before taking action.

ImJamal 8 hours ago | root | parent |

The constitution of Brazil explicitly protects political speech and makes no mention of exempting misinformation.

> Any and all censorship of a political, ideological and artistic nature is forbidden.

We should not be happy seeing a judge going after free speech that is explicitly protected by the constitution. This is a loss for the citizens of Brazil, not a win.

matheusmoreira 7 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

Misinformation... According to whom?

You?

These partisan judge-kings?

Politicians who lie pathologically?

So who gets the honor of being the ministry of truth?

littlestymaar 5 hours ago | root | parent |

> Politicians who lie pathologically?

Hilarious coming from a Bolsonarist.

matheusmoreira 4 hours ago | root | parent |

There goes good faith.

For the record, I don't really support that coward. I had all but forgotten about his existence until you posted this reply. My opinion of him is the only thing he's got going for him is the fact he's not a socialist, and that this alone makes him better than Lula or any of his communists any day of the week. Make no mistake: this is very faint praise. Being better than literal socialists and communists is a very low bar to clear.

HideousKojima 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

Yes, because who gets to decide what is or is not misinformation?

Emiledel 8 hours ago | root | parent | next |

I feel for your pain, and I'm interested in paths that overcome the collapse of trust we're going through. I think your question matters a lot, to reach solutions all of us need (and not quit until we find a positive one)

nathanaldensr 7 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

Essentially, the larger the scope/influence is of the body of people deciding what speech to censor, the more dangerous it is to give them that power. This is irrespective of the actual information being censored.

dhosek 10 hours ago | prev | next |

The tone of the responses from X have changed a great deal since the whole thing began. There’s much less of a confrontational approach, presumably because given the declines in revenues, they’re realizing they can’t afford more of it.

mmooss 9 hours ago | root | parent |

What should be shocking business is right in front of our noses: Other reports say investors in Musk's aquisition of Twitter are on the hook for billions of dollars.

How do they (and other investors in X) stand by while Musk sacrifices large markets for personal political battles? It's not just Brazil - look at how he gives up advertising revenue in order to promote far-right hate speech on X.

More broadly, if a corporation invests in DEI or ESG, which are relatively cheap, there's an uproar that it's not appropriate for businesses. If Musk (or others) lose large amounts for partisan political battles, it's accepted. In part I'm just saying the obvious: the uproars about DEI and ESG is has nothing to do with business or profits, and is really about reactionary politics. On the other hand, it's still shocking that investors give sacrifice this much money for Musk's and other people's partisan 'cause'.

Perhaps they feel they have much wealth to gain from the 'cause', which arguably is about big business and wealth seizing political power (see the Lewis Powell memo and, for example: https://the.levernews.com/master-plan/ ).

vesrah 10 hours ago | prev | next |

How do they plan on collecting on that if the money is moved out of Brazilian accounts?

davidsojevic 10 hours ago | root | parent | next |

According to the article, they've previously collected by just withdrawing money directly from X's and/or Starlink's local accounts:

> Brazil previously withdrew money for fines it levied against X from the accounts of X and Starlink at financial institutions in the country.