Well, yes, fiat is extraordinarily useful, and used, including for crime. However, there are many rules and mechanisms in place to stop fiat being used for crime (KYC, AML, CTF, ...). So, it is better suited to legitimate transactions, and worse for illegitimate ones. Lastly, fiat is indispensable in running a modern economy.
In contrast, crypto is designed (qua permissionlessness) to evade regulation. Since it's fairly crappy technology, it's also slow and inefficient and cumbersome. So, it is better suited to illegitimate transactions than to legitimate ones. Lastly, crypto is entirely dispensable.
I was actually going to bring that up, but thought it would overly complicate my point. The connection between WW1 and WW2 is very strong, though, just as the connection between WW2 and the cold war is very strong.
We really need to avoid a future where censorship is regarded as a virtue and monopolized transit providers are "cancelled" or shamed into being the judge/jury/executioner.
The far better solution is just to ignore stuff you don't agree with, go outside, and move on with life.
lol, no we don't. Hosting providers have always had terms of service, and private enterprise does not need to adhere to government-level definitions of free speech.
The current state of Hacker News, where an audience that should know better advocates for censorship with vague reasons. No, censorship is never good, you are not able to have a free society with it.
Hosting Kiwi Farms wasn't likely to get Cloudflares ASN null-routed by the 7th most populous state on Earth though. There's the potential for serious collateral damage to Cloudflares business here if Brazil calls their bluff.
Well, yes it's always possible that Cloudflare will comply with a demand to block Twitter. GP specifically raised the possibility of null-routing and I'm just pointing out it's probably not a good idea.
Roskomnadzor's 2018 escapade with Telegram under a rather similar situation - their attempts to block it ended up taking out vast sections of the internet (for Russians) that didn't have anything to do with Telegram.
Tying your service to vital internet infrastructure can work. It doesn't even have to be a particularly ironclad solution. In 2018, the powers that be in Russia decided it's cheaper to flood Telegram with their own propaganda, rather than block it.
> Null-routing Cloudflare is also going to do a fair bit of collateral damage to the people of the 7th most populous state on Earth though.
I wish... That sort of massive economic damage is exactly what this country deserves. It's gotten to the point I'm hoping Trump wins and sanctions this place for stealing millions from american companies via arbitrary fines.
Google Ads took Twitter on, too. Google now delivers ads directly into Twitter that /sort of/ look like tweets, but just off enough to tell they’re ads. The “Why this ad” sends you off to Google.
Right, maybe we should all just take your word for it and believe you know Brazil's constitution better than the majority of Brazilian Supreme Court judges.
These judge-kings are only humans. They are no doubt prone to corruption, to incompetence, to power trips. These are supposedly impartial judges... Who go to lunches with the ruling party and make fun of the people protesting them.
Normal judges in Brazil are selected by competition. Lawyers compete with each other for the position by taking standardized tests. The smartest ones are supposed to become judges.
These supreme court judges have not been so selected. They were all put there by political appointment. One of them is literally the lawyer who defended the current president against corruption claims. Another is a communist who the president appointed to the supreme court precisely because he needed somebody to advance his socialist agenda.
So whenever you read "brazilian supreme court", remember that they aren't really authorities. It's entirely possible that these "lesser" judges have a better understanding of brazilian law than these supreme court judges. It's even possible that "mere" lawyers, and even ordinary citizens have better understanding of the law than they do. The only reason they are there is political appointment.
Even normal people, who still have their sanities intact, are capable of recognizing this absurd situation. They even have a popular saying for it: "here in Brazil, the utility pole pees on the dog". Everything's backwards here. The less qualified judges are above the more qualified judges.
These judges are after Bolsonaro and his supporters for the political speech they engaged in. All this Twitter business happened because the judges wanted account of his supporters censored for "fake news".
Blatant political censorship. Which is unconstitutional.
The constitution literally contains the words:
> Any and all censorship of political and artistic nature is prohibited
It's 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. These unelected judges make the laws, and their pens send police to our homes. This is a judiciary dictatorship. Our elected repesentatives do not matter.
Forget the idea that they are "authorities" and start looking at what they are doing, why they are doing it and the arguments they use. You'll see there's plenty wrong with all of it.
It all began in 2019 when a brazilian magazine ran some kind of article on one of these judges. They created a "fake news" inquisition and appointed this Alexandre de Moraes guy the head of it. An inquisition where the supreme court is the victim and simultaneously investigates, prosecutes, judges and sentences crimes against itself. First thing he did is censor the magazine. The "fake news" nonsense is still active to this day, and it's because of it that Twitter was banned in our country. A completely illegal and unconstitutional investigation whose result was an expansion of the supreme court's powers to the point I believe this country is no longer a democracy but a dictatorship of the judiciary.
You don't even have to take my word for it. Other HN users have written about their abuses before:
I'm terribly sorry but nothing in your lengthy reply convinces me that you know more about Brazilian constitutional law than the Brazilian Supreme Court judges. You seem to have some kind of political agenda, the topic is clearly moving you personally, and this is all very fine, but all you present in terms of knowledge of Brazilian constitutional law are other HN comments and unsupported claims that I'm supposed to take for granted.
Unsupported? We literally cited the words from the constitution...
Your comment is further proof that this country doesn't have actual laws. Whatever this judge decides is law. Because he's the ultimate dictator, the ultimate authority. Doesn't matter how much I write, doesn't matter what references I cite, it won't convince you because I'm not a judge. Doesn't matter what the literal words written onto the constitution say, he gets to "selectively and creatively" interpret them and nobody questions it because he's a judge.
I'll cite the judges themselves then. Just yesterday one of then made news when he spoke of "recivilizing the country" and "ending the fake news inquiry headed by Moraes" which led to Twitter's ban. This is the same supposedly impartial judge who went to public events to showboat about having personally defeated an entire political party.
Interesting choice of words. The judge thinks this country is not civilized. Just like me.
The problem is that civilizing it requires their resignation and the passage of laws severely limiting their powers. That's the most peaceful path to civilization. We can't go back to the way things were: citizens blissfully unaware of the fact that the judiciary could instantly usurp all power in a second if they wanted to.
A Supreme Court is a political organ that delivers the final legally binding interpretation of a country's constitution. It's an integral part of the power division needed to keep a democracy working. Just disagreeing with a Supreme Court ruling is pretty much meaningless, people disagree with court rulings all the time. There is no problem with that at all.
People sometimes erroneously believe that Supreme Courts primarily have a legal function. That's not true, that's the purpose of the highest instances of ordinary courts. A Supreme Court is called when there are doubts if the highest legal instance has judged according to the constitution. That's why they are political organs and Supreme Court judges are appointed by a political process.
I’m fascinated by folks that, upon seeing something mundane like “fuck nazis”, are compelled to post “Ho ho! You must mean me then!”
Like, no? People online don’t know who you are or why you would feel targeted. Unless you know and care about the person making a point like that the post is literally just noise.
It's funny how nazis here in Brazil go straight to jail, while communists and socialists are allowed to walk this soil completely unpunished. Hell, they get to openly form parties. They don't even need to employ any subterfuge to do it, we have so many parties with "socialist" and "communist" literally in their names. They even get to be elected. Our current president is a socialist, and he put a communist judge in the supreme court.
This is despite the fact that socialism and communism are demonstrably worse than nazism in literally every way. If we were to be ruled by literal nazis, there's actually a chance we might prosper and become a real country. Socialists? I don't think so.
So why is it that you call for censorship of nazism? Only to immediately afterwards defend this socialist communist judiciary dictatorship nonsense? What a sick joke.
This isn't even about "nazis" to begin with. These judges are after Bolsonaro and his supporters for the political speech they engaged in. Blatant political censorship. Which is unconstitutional.
The restrictions apply to X, so you can use your vpn to anything else. I use it daily on my job (it’s being hard to resist the temptation of take a look on X).
Also, I saw many people saying that a read only access is fine, but posting could be more problematic.
