We can debate principles and even the legality of these actions. But they weren't done in secret. (EDIT: I may be mistaken in this claim.)
> Article 5 of the Brasil constitution guarantees a right to free speech without censorship
Would this also ban spam filters? Fraud convictions? If not then there are obviously caveats to when and how one can censor. (No right can be absolute. If it were, it would merit infinite sacrifice to uphold.)
Also, why isn’t Article 220 ¶ 5 the relevant one [1]? Article 5 has 74 sections. Genuine question, I have no knowledge of Brazilian law.
> taking money out of them - let’s call this what it is, theft
A court that can’t find people in contempt isn’t a court.
Again, we can debate the principles. But these are straw men.
People miss the fact the judge gave orders to suppress his personal misdeeds and that the orders to Twitter asked them to take down accounts and posts without revealing it was a judicial order. Or even the reason for the ban.
Imagine getting banned from social media, the operator tells you it's for a TOS violation or tells you nothing. You don't realize it's from a court. That's what's this is about.
You did include both of these in the same comment, though:
> Would this also ban spam filters? Fraud convictions?
> But these are straw men
Anyway, at least in the US (but I also assume similar provisions in other countries as well) the 5th amendment generally only applies to the government, not companies and private individuals (in a way you deciding to "censor" someone is an expression of your free speech).
> We can debate principles and even the legality of these actions. But they weren't done in secret.
The gag orders were only released by X, not by the court. The only reason we know what they contain at all is because of X. You can read them here: https://nitter.poast.org/AlexandreFiles
They gave X just hours to censor a sitting Brazilian senator and censored entire accounts without identifying any specific posts alleged to violate the law. It's interesting that the current version of this news article does not appear to mention the actual orders at all, instead linking to some secondary reporting by a Brazilian outlet.
Note that Brazilian Portuguese uses exactly the same word we do in English, though it's pronounced slightly differently, the end of the word sounding like see-al.
I can confirm this due to having a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese right next to me at this very second, who also confirmed to me that yes, the CONFIDENTIAL stamp on the order really does mean that X was not permitted to release this order.
> Would this also ban spam filters? Fraud convictions? If not then there are obviously caveats to when and how one can censor.
It would ban a government spam filter yes. I am not sure how fraud matters here, but I am guessing you’re saying that speech that constitutes fraud can be censored. But this is a lot more basic - the banning of currently sitting elected officials from social media.
> Also, why isn’t Article 220 ¶ 5 the relevant one [1]? Article 5 has 74 sections. Genuine question, I have no knowledge of Brazilian law.
Brazil’s constitution isn’t as well written as some other countries like the US. It is really long and there are many redundant and conflicting sections. Article 220 is in Title 8 (social order). Article 5 is in Title 2 (fundamental rights) and is more important. In article 5, look at 9 or 37 as examples that the actions of Alexandre de Moraes violates.
One of those oddities of the current experience there is that you can't see that there's another message in the thread if you're viewing it while not logged in.
Their right to free speech was not taken away. Their access was blocked for failure to comply with the law. E.g. it wouldn't be the first time if I tried to visit a website and see the domain was seized by the US government for breaking a US law, which is even more egregious because it blocks a page from the whole world and not just US. I have yet to hear Musk complain about this being the man of strong principles he tries to make himself to be. Twitter under Musk routinely bans users that mock Musk, see e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junlper
You’re mixing different unrelated issues and making this about Musk, which I don’t think is on topic. I’ll just say that Brazil has local laws that make secret censorship orders unconstitutional. Twitter complies with government orders to censor if it is legal, for example in Australia. But it isn’t legal in Brazil. Elsewhere they’ve even fought such orders - for example shortly after Musk acquired Twitter they had a legal battle with the government of India, which they lost and ended up complying, in part because laws were passed that made those censorship orders legal. No law has been passed in Brazil to give any court the power that Moraes assumed.
Twitter doesn't get to decide what is legal or what isn't in Brazil. If they feel something is illegal, Brazil has a judicial system they can use, but until then they are expected to comply with court orders like in any other country in the world. Instead Musk announced they will not comply, pulled the representatives of Twitter in Brazil and now has his service banned. So it very much is about Musk because it was his decision to defy the court on the basis of protecting free speech, although again he routinely bans users from Twitter that mock him.
He's complied with Indian and Turkish authorities, choosing to censor. I'm sure he'd comply if asked by the trump admin and fight if asked by the Harris admin.
The dude burned a huge pile of money and fought a lot of opposition just to end censorship on Twitter, at least in the US. He does have his pet issues that face very minor censorship but I think he would fight any further attempts for illegal and unconstitutional government censorship. If he censors now, it will defeat his stated purpose and be just as bland as other establishment-run social media.
I think all instances of censorship are bad, personally. However, it isn’t as simple as comparing cases in different countries. Twitter/X has a policy of abiding by local laws. So if they feel government ordered censorship is legal, they’ll comply. Otherwise, they’ll refuse and challenge it. If there is no way to challenge an illegal order, they’ll refuse it and go public as they have in Brazil.
One difference in India is that the orders are not secret - they don’t come with gag orders to hide censorship from the public. Another difference is that they are legal, due to a number of regulations their government passed over the last several years. That doesn’t mean Twitter accepted these censorship demands because they (or Musk) are friendly with that government, which is a conspiracy theory I’ve seen spreading in recent times. Twitter/X literally sued the Indian government over these orders and lost back in 2023 (note Musk acquired the company in 2022), at which point they had to pay fines and comply. It’s not just Twitter/X either - Google also complies with the same orders in India and other countries, for example removing content from YouTube.
Would you even have a way to know if he fought a secret order or not without someone breaking the law? Also, a Brazilian judge can't do much harm to him personally. On the other hand, even a lower court in your own country can put you in jail (for at least a little while) for essentially nothing.
What do you think you're saying here? If Elon's companies were ever served a US warrant, it wouldn't be a FISA warrant. Telecommunications providers are compelled to provide information under FISA, but this has nothing to do with FISA warrants. FISA warrants are simply a method for government agencies to obtain permission to perform surveillance on the entity specified by the warrant. They aren't served to domestic companies. The idea doesn't even make sense.
What you linked isn’t the censorship order but a subsequent public order to X after X went public with its non compliance and complaints. Here’s an example censorship order to X that literally instructs them to perform the censorship in secret - this is the official Twitter account where they’re exposing the censorship scheme they were subject to from this one judge:
The fact that twitter revealed the (supposed to be secret) order is the exact reason why they got banned.
Imagine if Clarence Thomas orders Facebook that they have to censor any negative posts about him, and they cannot reveal the reason the reason for censoring, with the threat of getting shut down.
You are being incredibly obtuse here. Imagine if a top secret document was published. The fact of the document being published does not mean that the document is no longer classified as top secret, just because it has been viewed by people without requisite clearance. Here, the order was secret and due to being a secret order, the public was not aware of it until X released documentation of the order. Documentation being released on the order does not mean that it was not a secret order.
But X doesn’t stand up for free speech? Musk loves nothing more than groveling for rightwing strongmen like Trump or Erdogan or Modi. He only had a problem with Brazil because it’s led by a leftist government.
Well... the estimation for 2024 [1] is 212 million...
So it seems very likely that the 2022 census was also wrong (there was budget cuts on the institute who do the census, and it had several problems on doing it).
It's absolutely amazing to see a large fraction of of otherwise reasonable people supporting censorship by fairly problematic governments because 'musk bad'.
Is there a name for this phenomenon? Kind of seems like a reverse ad hominem.
There is zero possibility in your mind not that the Brazilian government is indeed correct, but that Elon Musk is a huge hypocrite and that how he navigates this bad situation displays how dangerous he is?
Elon Musk being a huge hypocrite/ dangerous/etc doesn't have any bearing on whether governments should have the power to snoop on private conversations online and block out voices they disagree with on a case by case basis.
Well, tell that to Elon Musk, who folded to the Turkish and Indian governments (both right-wing and aligned towards Musk I might add) and removed content worldwide on orders from the Indian government.
Suddenly when Brazil wants censorship, who's not bending the knee to Musk, it's a whole problem for him?
Yes they are each separate entities with a different mix of owners and investors. This is happening because this judge is waging a corrupt personal war against Musk instead of acting professionally.
71 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadThey didn't unblock Twitter, they unblocked their assets held in the country.
They are just unfreezing because they already got the fines.
We can debate principles and even the legality of these actions. But they weren't done in secret. (EDIT: I may be mistaken in this claim.)
> Article 5 of the Brasil constitution guarantees a right to free speech without censorship
Would this also ban spam filters? Fraud convictions? If not then there are obviously caveats to when and how one can censor. (No right can be absolute. If it were, it would merit infinite sacrifice to uphold.)
Also, why isn’t Article 220 ¶ 5 the relevant one [1]? Article 5 has 74 sections. Genuine question, I have no knowledge of Brazilian law.
> taking money out of them - let’s call this what it is, theft
A court that can’t find people in contempt isn’t a court.
Again, we can debate the principles. But these are straw men.
[1] https://www.oas.org/es/sla/ddi/docs/acceso_informacion_base_...
Why do people still repeat this?
People miss the fact the judge gave orders to suppress his personal misdeeds and that the orders to Twitter asked them to take down accounts and posts without revealing it was a judicial order. Or even the reason for the ban.
Imagine getting banned from social media, the operator tells you it's for a TOS violation or tells you nothing. You don't realize it's from a court. That's what's this is about.
> Would this also ban spam filters? Fraud convictions? > But these are straw men
Anyway, at least in the US (but I also assume similar provisions in other countries as well) the 5th amendment generally only applies to the government, not companies and private individuals (in a way you deciding to "censor" someone is an expression of your free speech).
The gag orders were only released by X, not by the court. The only reason we know what they contain at all is because of X. You can read them here: https://nitter.poast.org/AlexandreFiles
They gave X just hours to censor a sitting Brazilian senator and censored entire accounts without identifying any specific posts alleged to violate the law. It's interesting that the current version of this news article does not appear to mention the actual orders at all, instead linking to some secondary reporting by a Brazilian outlet.
Thank you. Was X prohibited from releasing them by the orders?
Yes, you can see the CONFIDENTIAL stamps on them in the lower left corner of the orders. For example, look at the bottom left of this image:
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGWzpltMWQAAosr3.pn...
Note that Brazilian Portuguese uses exactly the same word we do in English, though it's pronounced slightly differently, the end of the word sounding like see-al.
I can confirm this due to having a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese right next to me at this very second, who also confirmed to me that yes, the CONFIDENTIAL stamp on the order really does mean that X was not permitted to release this order.
They were literally in secret - as in, the orders tell Twitter to comply and to do so in secret. See the actual order for yourself:
https://x.com/AlexandreFiles/status/1829979981130416479
> Would this also ban spam filters? Fraud convictions? If not then there are obviously caveats to when and how one can censor.
It would ban a government spam filter yes. I am not sure how fraud matters here, but I am guessing you’re saying that speech that constitutes fraud can be censored. But this is a lot more basic - the banning of currently sitting elected officials from social media.
> Also, why isn’t Article 220 ¶ 5 the relevant one [1]? Article 5 has 74 sections. Genuine question, I have no knowledge of Brazilian law.
Brazil’s constitution isn’t as well written as some other countries like the US. It is really long and there are many redundant and conflicting sections. Article 220 is in Title 8 (social order). Article 5 is in Title 2 (fundamental rights) and is more important. In article 5, look at 9 or 37 as examples that the actions of Alexandre de Moraes violates.
Is the first image the actual order? Seems weird for it to say “including that of a sitting Brazilian senator.”
One of those oddities of the current experience there is that you can't see that there's another message in the thread if you're viewing it while not logged in.
Him screaming “free speech”, through the mega-megaphone of his own platform is PR. Let’s not confuse PR with reality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intell...
One difference in India is that the orders are not secret - they don’t come with gag orders to hide censorship from the public. Another difference is that they are legal, due to a number of regulations their government passed over the last several years. That doesn’t mean Twitter accepted these censorship demands because they (or Musk) are friendly with that government, which is a conspiracy theory I’ve seen spreading in recent times. Twitter/X literally sued the Indian government over these orders and lost back in 2023 (note Musk acquired the company in 2022), at which point they had to pay fines and comply. It’s not just Twitter/X either - Google also complies with the same orders in India and other countries, for example removing content from YouTube.
Is there any similarly-sized tech company doing as much for free speech as X, including not complying with court orders?
Not to mention they did post court documents on twitter and tagged musk himself
https://twitter.com/STF_oficial/status/1828932387117392265
https://x.com/AlexandreFiles/status/1829979981130416479
Imagine if Clarence Thomas orders Facebook that they have to censor any negative posts about him, and they cannot reveal the reason the reason for censoring, with the threat of getting shut down.
Actually, 203 million. The 2018 estimate was 214 million, which was corrected in the 2022 census. Kinda crazy that it was overestimated by 11M.
So it seems very likely that the 2022 census was also wrong (there was budget cuts on the institute who do the census, and it had several problems on doing it).
This was a big discussion here...
¹https://agenciadenoticias.ibge.gov.br/agencia-noticias/2012-...
> "Brazil unfreezes Starlink, X assets after $3.3M transfer"
But is that the case with IRS in US?
(1) IRS warns you a lot
(2) You ignore
(3) IRS takes money from the bank
(4) you can prob take them to court, but court isn't required for them to pull your money
Any time you owe someone money it works similar
(1) you owe someone money
(2) you never pay them
(3) they are angry/rich enough to sue you for that money
(4) the court orders you to pay them
(5) you still never pay them
(6) they are angry/rich enough to go back to the court, show all the times you demanded payment and never got paid
(7) court may or may not order the money forcefully returned
Is there a name for this phenomenon? Kind of seems like a reverse ad hominem.
X (government abuse of online censorship, not Twitter) is bad. Bad person Y says X is bad. Now suddenly X is good.
The irony being that everyone equated Y with batman a year or two ago.
Suddenly when Brazil wants censorship, who's not bending the knee to Musk, it's a whole problem for him?
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/4/24235213/x-brazil-suppress...
Your opinion about censorship should not depend on whether Elon Musk is a hypocrite.
Maybe it'll help to think in terms of fictional characters to get over your Elon Musk obsession.
If Voldemort suddenly started criticizing Umbridge, it doesn't automatically make Umbridge a great character, no matter how much you hate Voldemort.