Rough times for figuring out how to deal with so much information.
I wonder how much other platform providers do. I feel they all have their hearts in the right place, but eventually I’d get sick of the headache and just bow my head to advertisers and governments.
I have a lot of respect to all the platform providers who are rolling in cash and could be rolling in more but decide to try to do the right thing. I do expect them to do more than the many who are not rolling in cash and fumbling it all up but I’m an optimistic guy.
We live in interesting times.
(hacker news, yes this website, was? probably still is? monitored by US authorities because it used the keyword ‘hacker’)
The vagaries of operating a US corporation in other countries is quite intriguing. But what's even more interesting is that the Network State is beginning to supersede legacy institutions in terms of both soft and hard power. It must be terrifying to the stakeholders of legacy institutions globally, not just here in the United States.
I'm uncertain what you mean by this. 'Hard power' generally refers to military and economic actions such as sanctions - ie where governments forbid third parties in the private sector (or indeed other countries, if they have the heft) to do business with the sanctioned entities. Can't see how that applies. The internet as a political factor is of course new, but transnational organization/ideology explicitly directed at displacement of the existing order goes back centuries.
Hard power is also the ability to police & coral & force not just far off people but your own people too.
In the network state era, there are forces far beyond your borders that the majority of your citizens are dealing with regularly. You can keep a very tight grasp on your own citizen, effect all the moderately high firewalls you want & dabble in banning cryptography as you please, perhaps, but it'll usually be a pretty leaky defense, and no matter how much hard power you have in your state there's probably very little your hard power is going to do to stop or reduce the overwhelming presence of Facebook or Google or far more modest sized internet services in the world. They will certainly keep influencing the world. And they will keep creeping in and influencing your people.
Power used to have geographic limitations, which gave local power enormity & presence. In the fiber optic age, that hard power buys you a lot less. And requires far more pressure & vigilance to apply even within your border.
Governments are not legacy and are rarely terrified by anything.
This is the mistake that arrogant tech players make up until they are smacked down and are either put in jail e.g. crypto space, heavily regulated e.g. EU or coerced into submission e.g. China.
And whilst they allow companies to push the limits e.g. Uber, Airbnb it is only up to a certain point where they have provided the maximum benefit to society at which they are swiftly reigned back in.
Thought experiment: would a blockchain-like twitter app be possible? i.e. an uncensorable micro-blog, with the exact same rules for every individual and government. Perhaps a plugin ecosystem where users could add their own plugins akin to they may extend browsers (for things like filtering unwanted content).
I wonder if something like that could work. It could be unbiased to a cryptographic standard (at least in theory).
A relevant corollary to this story is that Michael Shellenberger, a Musk-adjacent journalist who alleged that de Moraes had made illegitimate requests to Twitter for information, has now admitted (in Portuguese) to factual errors in his story.
I'm not clear on why a US House committee considers itself to have jurisdiction over civil matters in Brazil, or why their report is distributed from Dropbox rather than a .gov page, but for the sake of completeness (because it's not linked in the AP story) here's the report: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/glo4rprup479k3mn8whsk/2024-04...
The person being interviewed in that first link seems very biased, and obviously is for the authoritarian actions of the current Brazilian regime. She seems to take the stance that the secret unilateral censorship orders are “technically legal” while Musk and others take the stance that they are in conflict with Brazil’s own constitution. But leaving aside legality, obviously secret censorship orders based on political speech are very anti democratic - in the least such actions must be done in the open in full view of the public and not based on the sole judgment of one person. Even if it’s technically legal it should be debated and the law should be changed.
As an example of Aranha being biased, take this bit:
> So at the moment when were were managing to finally hold the main leaders of this attempted coup accountable, Elon Musk and Michael Shellenberger came onto the scene to attack the institutions that are prosecuting them, to usurp their power so they can’t convict them anymore. That was clearly their short term goal and in the long run Elon Musk obviously wants to be a player in the international far right and interfere in elections around the world, especially in the US.
What evidence is there that Musk wants to “interfere in elections”? If anything, he is seeking to remove interference from elections by advocating for less censorship and more neutrality.
Shellenberger didn’t “come onto the scene”. He’s been doing great research and journalism for a long time. Also pointing out one factual error that he readily admitted to doesn’t invalidate everything else the Twitter files uncovered. Even if you dismiss Shellenberger, there’s everything Glenn Greenwald has reported on what’s going on - is he also looking to support a coup? He faced attacks on his journalistic freedoms from the previous (Bolsonaro) administration and now the same from the present administration, for brave reporting.
Take that interview with a huge grain of salt. It’s Brasil Wire - which is a leftist (and therefore pro Lula) organization, and they’re not shy about their ideological bias:
“De Moraes’ critics claim he has abused his powers and shouldn’t be allowed to unilaterally ban social media accounts, including those of democratically elected legislators. But most legal experts see his brash tactics as legally sound and furthermore justified by extraordinary circumstances of democracy imperiled. They note his decisions have been either upheld by his fellow justices or gone unchallenged.”
The point is not that he shouldn’t be allowed to unilaterally ban social media accounts.
The point is that he shouldn’t be allowed to do that in secrecy, without providing any public justification, and not respecting the right of the accused to defend themselves.
People are getting silenced without knowing why they are getting silenced, and without proper due process/right to respond.
Of course, it's ok to persecute my opponents, because they are the intolerant bad people, but it's not ok to prosecute me, because I am extremely tolerant and only prosecute my opponents, who, as we already established, are bad people and are ok to prosecute.
Popper's proposed remedy isn't a carte blanche for institutional censorship. Some excerpts from Popper's book that those who cite the paradox of tolerance typically ignore:
"I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise."
"All these paradoxes can easily be avoided if we frame our political demands in the way suggested in section ii of this chapter, or perhaps in some such manner as this. We demand a government that rules according to the principles of equalitarianism and protectionism; that tolerates all who are prepared to reciprocate, i.e. who are tolerant; that is controlled by, and accountable to, the public. And we may add that some form of majority vote, together with institutions for keeping the public well informed, is the best, though not infallible, means of controlling such a government. (No infallible means exist.)"
Notes: By equalitarianism he meant the classic liberal notion of equal rights to everyone. By protectionism he meant that the state should ensure people's rights (protect people).
What the Brazilian supreme court is doing is the opposite, it's unaccountable and widespread censorship by non-elected judges.
And what if both side in this dispute "bolsonaristas" and "petistas" are intolerant?
Personally I saw worst cases of intolerance from "petistas" than from "bolsonaristas". Like accusing me of being a "bolsonarista" just because I didn't agree with his extremist political or was wearing and green & yellow shirt. Like leftists openly inciting violence against those they disagree with and receiving praises from their peers.
The worst I received from "bolsonaristas" was being called a "communist" (which I'm not and deem offensive). And ironically the groups they are mostly intolerant towards (besides leftists) are criminals, corrupt politicians, pedophiles (those that are intolerant). Were "petistas" are typically intolerant towards businessmen, policemen, Christians (specially from evangelic congregations), the wealthy and famous (but only those that don't share their views lol). But despite all the majority of "bolsonaristas" and "petistas" aren't bad, just normal people brainwashed with vicious ideologies.
You know, during the entire 90s when the people that wrote it were around, they used to say that the Article 5 said this. But nowadays it's consensus over all the influential judges that it doesn't and only registered journalists can say things, and only congresspeople can have their opinions. So, who knows...
Anyway, it still says that decisions should be informed to the punished party and people should be able to defend themselves in a court.
Joseph Stalin's critics claim that he abused his power and should not be allowed to put political opponents into gulags. However, most Soviet legal experts see his brash tactics as legally sound, and furthermore justified by extraordinary circumstances of the State of Workers and Peasants imperiled. They note his decisions have been either upheld by the Politburo or gone unchallenged.
Not surprisingly Americans think the first amendment is a thing that exists in every single country and are surprised when other countries have laws that are not the exact copy of the US constitution.
Just look at the other comments here saying "oh, this is not a democracy, that's now how democracy works, you can't do that" and, actually, you can, different countries have different laws, electoral law in Brazil is very strict, to the point that if you're campaigning close to voting places on election day you will be arrested and it's all fine, people mostly follow the law and don't get in trouble for it.
Who claimed Brazil is is a proper democracy? The country is largely messed up and controlled by cartels or other outside influences, similar to much of South America. Even the United States is not a true democracy, it's a cheap clone, at best -- *A Representative Republic.
There's a reason mant Brazilians have migrated the United States -- Basic safety.
Edit: Can anyone recover the link to the phone pole maintenance worker who was taken hostage in south America? I think it happened in Mexico, but memory is fuzzy. The government didn't do shit to help that guy. Terrifying.
While other countries may not have exactly the same legal institute as the American Constitution's First Amendment, Freedom of Speech is not only enshrined on the Brazilian Constitution but is also a part of the United Nations declaration of Human Rights (General Assembly resolution 217 A) from which Brazil is one of the signatories, ratified by the Brazilian Congress.
You probably don't know it, but international agreements signed by the chief of the executive and ratified by the congress ARE law in Brazil.
Maybe you are really a lot smarter and knowledgeable than the Americans you condescendingly cite in your comment, but apparently on this particular matter your level of knowledge is not as vast as you seem to think.
That's not a thing at all. Multiple signatories of the UN Declaration of Human Rights restrict freedom of speech.
In Germany, for instance, the penal code forbids denying the Holocaust and Nazi Propaganda, multiple other countries have laws that cover hate speech and racism, like Brazil does.
Unrestricted freedom of speech is very much a US thing, and even in the US there is a lot of case law for when there are restrictions.
Germany is sadly not a good role model for speech protection. But for that matter, in society it is usually seen as a sign that someone lost an argument if an opinion is censored.
Yes, there are exceptions for the Holocaust, but the an exception proves the presence of a rule.
Brazilian Constitution does not provide the same liberties as the First Amendment in the USA, there are limits to free speech like in many other countries. The USA is the odd one out with unrestricted free speech.
> offering a glimpse into decisions that have spurred complaints of alleged censorship from the company and its billionaire owner
In other words, decisions not made by the company or its "billionaire owner" at all but falsely attributed to them.
> the company under [Musk's] ownership has bowed to government requests from around the world
Under duress! Damned if you do, banned if you don't. In this case they actually did stand up to a government and are of course being criticized for that too.
> [Musk's] crusade has been cheered on by supporters of far-right
> most legal experts see [the judge's] brash tactics as legally sound and furthermore justified
Could this article possibly be written in a more slanted way? To me what's going on with these orders is absurd and obviously shouldn't be allowed in a sensible democracy. Is AP really on the side of the idea that one person should have unilateral, unchecked secret ban power over every social media account in the country?
IMO, as the CEO of Tesla, Musk should have never bought X imo from a business standpoint, even if he fully believes in full speech, because it simply traps him (most of the world has no where near as strong free speech laws as the US).
In India for example, if he doesn't kowtow to the authoritarian trending Indian government in power, he risks sinking any chance of Tesla expanding its marketshare in a democracy critical to Tesla's future.
You don't need to look to countries outside the western sphere. There are the same restrictions to privacy and speech where fear based decisions were made with the exact same excuses. It invalidates these laws in the end.
Something precious is given up for marginal or even negative gain.
51 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadI wonder how much other platform providers do. I feel they all have their hearts in the right place, but eventually I’d get sick of the headache and just bow my head to advertisers and governments.
I have a lot of respect to all the platform providers who are rolling in cash and could be rolling in more but decide to try to do the right thing. I do expect them to do more than the many who are not rolling in cash and fumbling it all up but I’m an optimistic guy.
We live in interesting times.
(hacker news, yes this website, was? probably still is? monitored by US authorities because it used the keyword ‘hacker’)
In the network state era, there are forces far beyond your borders that the majority of your citizens are dealing with regularly. You can keep a very tight grasp on your own citizen, effect all the moderately high firewalls you want & dabble in banning cryptography as you please, perhaps, but it'll usually be a pretty leaky defense, and no matter how much hard power you have in your state there's probably very little your hard power is going to do to stop or reduce the overwhelming presence of Facebook or Google or far more modest sized internet services in the world. They will certainly keep influencing the world. And they will keep creeping in and influencing your people.
Power used to have geographic limitations, which gave local power enormity & presence. In the fiber optic age, that hard power buys you a lot less. And requires far more pressure & vigilance to apply even within your border.
This is the mistake that arrogant tech players make up until they are smacked down and are either put in jail e.g. crypto space, heavily regulated e.g. EU or coerced into submission e.g. China.
And whilst they allow companies to push the limits e.g. Uber, Airbnb it is only up to a certain point where they have provided the maximum benefit to society at which they are swiftly reigned back in.
I wonder if something like that could work. It could be unbiased to a cryptographic standard (at least in theory).
Yes, its possible. No, people won't use it. Fediverse seems like its kind of a thing though.
https://www.brasilwire.com/brazilian-lawyer-exposes-deceit-a...
I'm not clear on why a US House committee considers itself to have jurisdiction over civil matters in Brazil, or why their report is distributed from Dropbox rather than a .gov page, but for the sake of completeness (because it's not linked in the AP story) here's the report: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/glo4rprup479k3mn8whsk/2024-04...
Linked from https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/brazilian-g...
EDIT: love to get downvoted for providing additional information relevant to the original submission!
As an example of Aranha being biased, take this bit:
> So at the moment when were were managing to finally hold the main leaders of this attempted coup accountable, Elon Musk and Michael Shellenberger came onto the scene to attack the institutions that are prosecuting them, to usurp their power so they can’t convict them anymore. That was clearly their short term goal and in the long run Elon Musk obviously wants to be a player in the international far right and interfere in elections around the world, especially in the US.
What evidence is there that Musk wants to “interfere in elections”? If anything, he is seeking to remove interference from elections by advocating for less censorship and more neutrality.
Shellenberger didn’t “come onto the scene”. He’s been doing great research and journalism for a long time. Also pointing out one factual error that he readily admitted to doesn’t invalidate everything else the Twitter files uncovered. Even if you dismiss Shellenberger, there’s everything Glenn Greenwald has reported on what’s going on - is he also looking to support a coup? He faced attacks on his journalistic freedoms from the previous (Bolsonaro) administration and now the same from the present administration, for brave reporting.
Take that interview with a huge grain of salt. It’s Brasil Wire - which is a leftist (and therefore pro Lula) organization, and they’re not shy about their ideological bias:
https://www.brasilwire.com/about/
The point is not that he shouldn’t be allowed to unilaterally ban social media accounts.
The point is that he shouldn’t be allowed to do that in secrecy, without providing any public justification, and not respecting the right of the accused to defend themselves.
People are getting silenced without knowing why they are getting silenced, and without proper due process/right to respond.
It’s maybe not that simple:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
"I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise."
"All these paradoxes can easily be avoided if we frame our political demands in the way suggested in section ii of this chapter, or perhaps in some such manner as this. We demand a government that rules according to the principles of equalitarianism and protectionism; that tolerates all who are prepared to reciprocate, i.e. who are tolerant; that is controlled by, and accountable to, the public. And we may add that some form of majority vote, together with institutions for keeping the public well informed, is the best, though not infallible, means of controlling such a government. (No infallible means exist.)"
Notes: By equalitarianism he meant the classic liberal notion of equal rights to everyone. By protectionism he meant that the state should ensure people's rights (protect people).
What the Brazilian supreme court is doing is the opposite, it's unaccountable and widespread censorship by non-elected judges.
And what if both side in this dispute "bolsonaristas" and "petistas" are intolerant?
Personally I saw worst cases of intolerance from "petistas" than from "bolsonaristas". Like accusing me of being a "bolsonarista" just because I didn't agree with his extremist political or was wearing and green & yellow shirt. Like leftists openly inciting violence against those they disagree with and receiving praises from their peers.
The worst I received from "bolsonaristas" was being called a "communist" (which I'm not and deem offensive). And ironically the groups they are mostly intolerant towards (besides leftists) are criminals, corrupt politicians, pedophiles (those that are intolerant). Were "petistas" are typically intolerant towards businessmen, policemen, Christians (specially from evangelic congregations), the wealthy and famous (but only those that don't share their views lol). But despite all the majority of "bolsonaristas" and "petistas" aren't bad, just normal people brainwashed with vicious ideologies.
"IV - é livre a manifestação do pensamento, sendo vedado o anonimato;"
"IX - é livre a expressão da atividade intelectual, artística, científica e de comunicação, independentemente de censura ou licença;"
You can see translated versions under "Art 5" here: https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Brazil_2017
Anyway, it still says that decisions should be informed to the punished party and people should be able to defend themselves in a court.
There's a reason mant Brazilians have migrated the United States -- Basic safety.
Sources:
https://www.saltwire.com/halifax/news/in-brazil-your-interne...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/14o2i...
Edit: Can anyone recover the link to the phone pole maintenance worker who was taken hostage in south America? I think it happened in Mexico, but memory is fuzzy. The government didn't do shit to help that guy. Terrifying.
Special Report: Drug cartel ‘narco-antennas’ make life dangerous for Mexico’s cell tower repairmen
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN24G1DM/
This was also discussed on HN at the time:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23876847 (July 2020)
https://www.gov.br/pt-br/temas/immigration-public-services
You probably don't know it, but international agreements signed by the chief of the executive and ratified by the congress ARE law in Brazil.
Maybe you are really a lot smarter and knowledgeable than the Americans you condescendingly cite in your comment, but apparently on this particular matter your level of knowledge is not as vast as you seem to think.
In Germany, for instance, the penal code forbids denying the Holocaust and Nazi Propaganda, multiple other countries have laws that cover hate speech and racism, like Brazil does.
Unrestricted freedom of speech is very much a US thing, and even in the US there is a lot of case law for when there are restrictions.
Yes, there are exceptions for the Holocaust, but the an exception proves the presence of a rule.
In other words, decisions not made by the company or its "billionaire owner" at all but falsely attributed to them.
> the company under [Musk's] ownership has bowed to government requests from around the world
Under duress! Damned if you do, banned if you don't. In this case they actually did stand up to a government and are of course being criticized for that too.
> [Musk's] crusade has been cheered on by supporters of far-right
> most legal experts see [the judge's] brash tactics as legally sound and furthermore justified
Could this article possibly be written in a more slanted way? To me what's going on with these orders is absurd and obviously shouldn't be allowed in a sensible democracy. Is AP really on the side of the idea that one person should have unilateral, unchecked secret ban power over every social media account in the country?
In India for example, if he doesn't kowtow to the authoritarian trending Indian government in power, he risks sinking any chance of Tesla expanding its marketshare in a democracy critical to Tesla's future.
The same goes for Tesla in Turkey. https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-erdogan-asks-us-elon-... . If X starts standing up for speech there, this could sink their future plans in another valuable market.
I think the fact that he backtracked on Brazil ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-16/musk-s-x-... ) might also show that he also worries about Tesla's future in Brazil.
What Elon is offering is similar what google was 2 decades ago, but even they went 200% into DEI so ultimately it’s foolish.
> The expression of thought is free
> The expression of intellectual, artistic, scientific and communication activities are free, independently of censure or license
> The manifestation of thought, of creation, of expression and of information, in any form and by any process or vehicle, shall suffer no restriction
> Any and all censorship of political, ideological and artistic nature is prohibited
The problem is the judge who insists on "relativizing" what those words mean.
Something precious is given up for marginal or even negative gain.