Presumably refusing to censor things that the government there wanted censored? AIUI most of the rest of the world doesn't have our legal prohibitions against the government doing that.
No need to presume: you can read the article. "dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization."
Anyone who accuses X of hosting disinformation and fake news will 100% win in court. It’s at least 75%of the content I see when I dare to go to the “for you” algo feed.
Obviously there's a lot more detail in all the prosecutions and investigations. Most, or all of it, should be publicly available if you really care to understand the problem.
Laws have been broken, and this is the justice system's reaction to that. This is not censorship. Brazil (and most of the world) don't subscribe to the idea that freedom of expression and freedom of press are unbound.
This is censorship. Just because it's being done within a legal framework doesn't mean it's not censorship. The Brazilian people will have to decide whether they want their judiciary to have such excessive control over freedom of expression.
The rest of the world should subscribe to the idea that freedom of expression and freedom of expression are (nearly) unbound. The USA is the only major country which gets this right.
> The Brazilian people will have to decide whether they want their judiciary to have such excessive control over freedom of expression.
This is a very loaded comment, full of personal opinions. Which is fine, but let's not pretend it's factual truth.
In any case, we have. At least within the limits of our USA-inspired representative democracy. Federal law goes through 3 houses of elected representatives: the National Congress, the Senate and the Union Executive.
The Constitution goes through even more scrutiny.
> The rest of the world should
More personal opinions. Which, again, is fine. But it's not factual truth.
> The USA is the only major country which gets this right
I think this says it all. We have very little common basis for discussion. I would say the USA is the main major country that gets the _most_ things wrong.
When any party, either government or private, blocks free expression then that is literally censorship. It might be legally or morally justified in some circumstances, but it is still censorship.
Words mean things. You don't get to redefine words to support your argument.
Sure but you'd also have to define free expression.
Article 10 of the Human Rights Act [0] says:
> 2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
I will charitably assume that you aren't a native English speaker and are honestly confused about the nuances of the language rather than trying to derail the discussion with incorrect and irrelevant semantic arguments. Just because a particular act of censorship might be legal within a certain framework doesn't mean it isn't censorship.
Although I can't imagine why you would cite a UK law in a discussion about censorship in Brazil. It's sad how the UK has been growing ever more authoritarian and totalitarian, but that's an entirely separate discussion.
> Just because a particular act of censorship might be legal within a certain framework doesn't mean it isn't censorship.
For the record, I would like to note that this sort of censorship is utterly unconstitutional here in Brazil too.
Every single time this gets discussed, I cite the literal words from the constitution:
> Any and all censorship of political, ideological and artistic nature is prohibited
These are very simple words that any citizen can understand. There is no room for misinterpretation here. Yet every single time people respond with impressive mental gynmnastics to justify the judge-king's actions. I've had people argue with me by citing laws lower than the constitution, by getting into asinine arguments over the definition of free speech and censorship, by arguing about "isonomy" as if it somehow invalidated the very simple words written above, and also by calling me a moron for presuming to do the judge-king's job as if the contradictions weren't there in plain sight for all to see. The guy you're replying to once called me a sterotypical reactionary WhatsApp uncle right here on HN.
In the eve of the 2022 elections I witnessed this judge censor a documentary a priori. Without even watching it, before it was even released, he judged it was "fake news" and ordered its censorship. This is the sort of thing that used to happen in last century's military dictatorship. There is no justification for this whatsoever.
If a brazilian is harmed by someone's speech, they get to answer. They get to be made whole by legal means. They don't get to straight up censor the other guy or in any way prevent them from speaking. I see this all the time, even in politics. Some guy insults another, gets sued and is made to pay damages or whatever. That's all there is to it. The original insult is not censored. This is fine.
With these judges it's different. Some magazine ran some damning article on them back in 2019 and they granted themselves virtually limitless power to investigate, prosecute, judge and punish "fake news" of all kinds, with themselves as the victims. They determine what's fake of course. Their powers just kept expanding until they essentially usurped all power in this country. It got to the point the judge started proposing changes to laws directly to our representatives. The changes were rejected but he just rammed the "fake news" nonsense down our throats anyway via his "resolutions".
This is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship of the judiciary. Unelected judge-kings with lifetime mandates whose pens directly make the people with guns do their bidding. It's kind of ridiculous to even discuss "laws" at this point. These guys could write whatever they want on a piece of paper and it becomes law.
And yet big companies bow to countries such as China under the ‘it’s all just business’ mantra. Brazil isn’t China but they’re not some small islands either, they can challenge SV and that is a good thing.
Twitter’s argument, which they’re trying to make in Brazil through the justice system, is that the orders to censor (by one Supreme Court justice) aren’t constitutional under Brazilian law. In those other cases, Twitter abided by local law as they claimed they would.
The greater point to my comment is that they have a track record of siding with the Mohdi's, Bolsonaro's, Erdoğan's et al when it comes to blocking accounts and otherwise standing on principal as "free speech absolutists" when they like the disinfomation being spread.
So your response to me is a question for the very thing that I asked you for, this is very bad discussion form when you throw such serious accusations around. Merely giving examples of Erdogan or Modi is obviously not good enough because Musk says that he follows local national laws. So according to that personal rule, all his behavior is consistent. You said that he breaks his own rules, so where does it happen? Are you assuming that disobeying the Brazil order is such a case? Then you have to say so and show why Elon's reason for doing so is wrong because yes, he has given reasons for that. I personally don't know them, I don't care about every single case that affects Twitter. I do care about the social media circus arriving at HN where people think that they can just throw these easy accusations and then not even bother actually touching on the core issue.
I don’t know ask Elon, he has been pretty consistently censoring the left. Just last week he blocked the “whitedudesforkamala” account. Is that not censorship?
That account was automatically flagged for spam and then reinstated.
Even if it wasn't, censorship by an individual or a company is not a crime, are you confused by the first amendment which is a restriction on the government?
That's a strange way of saying you completely lost the argument so you had to resort to digging into comment history to try and find something, but I'll take it.
Address the topic, not the commenter, stop violating HN guidelines.
It's not about liking or not - it's about breaking the law. Hate speech is qualified in Brazilian criminal law. Nazism and anti-democratic aggitation are crimes, for instance.
> While certain restrictions on freedom of expression may be motivated by principles of equality and non-discrimination, “direct and public incitement to genocide” and “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence” are strictly prohibited under international law, and are considered the “severest forms of hate speech”.
There’s no legitimate definition of hate speech. It’s just an ever expansive label used to undermine political speech and justify censorship or criminal charges. Free speech is the most fundamental civil liberty.
Also no one cares what the UN’s “international law” is. They just all support it or ignore it as convenient, because it means nothing.
It's a dispute between Brazil supreme court and a US based company. I didn't want to refer to Brazilian law because it seemed circumstantial, nor could I refer to US law because the first amendment defeats it. Falling back to international law only seemed natural so I didn't think I should have explained my rationale.
But that was only to say, responding to who asked me the original question, that it doesn't matter what I think. I'm not a legislator. What matters is what's enforceable.
Isn't all law* outside of natural laws essentially an agreed upon framework of convenience? Sovereignty itself only works in consensus (see the failures of the sovereign citizen movement in the US).
*I'm deliberately side-stepping religious law because there's no way to reasonably debate it logically. So this is meant to read "all secular law"
> So you think it's a crime to allow people speak things you don't like?
That was the original question which was clearly designed to trap me in an opinion pitfall. I was making sure I was referencing external sources when responding to that, but nobody seemed willing to take what I wrote in context.
> However, to date there is no universal definition of hate speech under international human rights law. The concept is still under discussion, especially in relation to freedom of opinion and expression, non-discrimination and equality.
Ah, the ever popular "hey, can you re-create Einstein's theory of relativity for me right now? No? I guess physics must be fake, then" argument, popular with bad-faith conversationalists of all stripes.
Links from the BBC article you appear to have missed:
"Antisemitism on Twitter Before and After Elon Musk’s Acquisition"[1]
"The Musk Bump: Quantifying the rise in hate speech under Elon Musk"[2]
Additional studies:
"Hate Speech Spikes on Twitter After Elon Musk Acquires the Platform" [3]
"Auditing Elon Musk’s Impact on Hate Speech and Bots" [4]
> But there are both in-depth studies and anecdotal evidence that suggest hate speech has been growing under Mr Musk's tenure.
> Several fringe characters that were banned under the previous management have been reinstated.
> They include Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, and Liz Crokin, one of the biggest propagators of the QAnon conspiracy theory.
:shrug: I don't use X, so I don't get caught up in it. I am just making an outsider's perspective to both X and the Brazilian Supreme Court. I see articles posted constantly about both, and they both stir up controversy.
