> 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.
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).
Cloudflare already isolated X on their network so that Brazil can block just X again.
It would be interesting to see how fast Brazilian network operators are changing things to implement the blocking and responding to things like that.
Most ISPs already blocked X again in this morning.
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.
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.
> 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].
None of this is “well conceived”. De Moraes is way too high on his own supply.
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
EDIT: Perhaps some context of what Elon did is in order?
https://time.com/7016537/brazil-blocks-elon-musk-x-twitter-c...
> 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.
When the person named is spending their days making childish AI images of the judge behind bars, is it not reasonable to cite them directly?
No, it's not reasonable to abandon the pretense of liberal society because someone made childish AI images.
I mean if you need to set up a straw man that large I suppose it isn't
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.
Don't forget them quietly deleting Elon's "secret master plan" about climate change [1] because Elon decided that oil and gas are OK, actually [2]
[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-deletes-elon-musk-master...
[2] https://www.bncnnews.com/2023/12/elon-musk-asserts-oil-and-g...
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.
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.
What success? Twitter is down nearly 90% since he took over!
https://fortune.com/2024/08/15/elon-musk-tesla-stock-sale-tw...
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.
A fascist who is incredibly productive in the free market. That's a first!
Incredibly productive? Twitter's value is down almost 90% since he took over
https://fortune.com/2024/08/15/elon-musk-tesla-stock-sale-tw...
Henry Ford anyone?
Haha, or just about any other oligarch. Also, "free market" is equally laughable.
Such a silly comment.
Musk is very unproductive in the social media market.
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.
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?
Article 220, Paragraph 2 of the official English version says that verbatim
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...
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?
"An argument to be made" is weasel chickenshit language. Are you making the argument or not?
> "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?
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
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).
I'd counter that simply asserting that the Brazilian government is in the wrong over Elon Musk is a fools errand.
I'm far more concerned about disinformation peddled by oligarchs like Rupert Murdoch. But while we're citing history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Opinion_(book)
This book is so old it's legally in the public domain. Perhaps give it a read
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.
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)
> 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?
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.
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)
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.
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.
"Censoring" literal misinformation is a bad thing now?
Putting "literal" in front of a word does not clarify the definition of that word.
https://time.com/7016537/brazil-blocks-elon-musk-x-twitter-c...
Brazil's judge lays it out quite reasonably?
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.
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.
Still not seeing any explanation of what the supposed "literal misinformation" was in that article either.
"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?
Oh, Judge Moraes said it's misinformation, so clearly it must actually be misinformation! Thank you so much for clearing that up!
Why do we have silly laws and courts? Obviously the world is black and white and puddle deep :)
Yes, because who gets to decide what is or is not misinformation?
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)
It is. What you think is truth today can easily be considered misinformation tomorrow.
I know in the post-truth era everyone can pretend their bubble is fact, but come on. Some things actually are misinformation.
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.
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?
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.
That's a very American view of "free speech"
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.
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.
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.
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/ ).
How do they plan on collecting on that if the money is moved out of Brazilian accounts?
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.
I saw that, but I was curious once X decides to pull the money from the accounts (assuming they can, which I guess is a big assumption at this point).
Starlink is still active in Brazil.
If the fines don't get paid those Space X ground stations can possibly go away too.
Could they get sued in a different country? I know when Argentina defaulted on bonds a naval ship was impounded in Ghana https://archive.is/Q7pB9
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