I agree completely and I've said that here on HN many times even despite downvotes. The censorship here began with last year's elections and has only been ramping up since then. The government wants what it wants and it will corrupt, destroy or silence anyone who opposes them. We're living under some sort of quasi-communist judiciary dictatorship. It sickens me to my soul to hear the word "democracy" come out of these people's mouths. Even North Korea calls itself a democracy...
> the court can just ban all the others for misinformation and give power to the party they agree with
That's exactly what they're doing. They've removed from office and made ineligible politicians over "disinformation". They accuse their opponents of the crime of "fake news" and then deplatform them. These all powerful judges who never received a single vote and are aligned with the ruling party.
I wonder if one of these days dang's gonna get a message from these fucking people because of my posts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33312582
Other brazilians here on HN have also corrected me on points where I was wrong, I learned plenty from them even in in cases where I didn't agree.
When I realized just how much of an echo chamber I built myself a few years ago, I essentially forced myself to develop a habit of seeking out "the other sides" opinions. One of the better decisions in my life.
In political science Liberal/Illiberal doesn't mean socially Progressive/Conservative, it means Open/Restricted from a civil liberties standpoint.
This is why you can have right leaning Illiberal Democracies like Turkïye, Serbia, and Hungary as well as left leaning Illiberal Democracies like Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico, and also why you can have conservative leaning liberal democracies like South Korea, Denmark, or Japan and progressive leaning liberal democracies like Canada, Norway, or New Zealand.
>There is a lack of consensus among experts about the exact definition of illiberal democracy or whether it even exists
I would stop using left/right as a description in politics. For example ruling party in Hungary is socialist, which means it cannot be right wing party no matter what they claim.
I've heard the term from Steven Kotkin.
I think it's pretty clear what the term means. It means that nominally the institutions that are meant to protect civil liberties exist, but some person or group has managed to put their hands on enough levers that they can dictate the workings of those institutions.
Like Russia, for example. They have elections for government, and they have institutions that are meant to ensure that the government doesn't have a monopoly on power. In practice however one person has an absolute hold on power, to the point that people who criticize him tend to fall out of windows a lot. That doesn't happen in the US for example. You can trash Biden all you want, no one's gonna show up at your house to murder you.
2. "Socialism" is an economic not a social philosophy. Note how I said "Socially Progressive/Conservative" not economically.
Outside the US+Canada and increasingly the UK, there is a consensus among both Cultural Progressive and Cultural Conservatives that welfare programs can and should be expanded. It is a major pillar of both Christian and Islamic religious political thought (traditionally, capitalism was viewed as negatively due to ursury being a sin - this was the position of the Catholic Church until the 60s).
This is why the German Welfare state (Staatssozialismus) was started by Otto con Bismarck [1] with support from the Prussian nobility as a way to undercut the labor movement in late 19th century Germany. This same doctrinal evolution is used to this day by Socially Conservative parties like the CDU, Likud, BJP, AKP, Fidesz, and the PiS, as well as by Socially Right leaning autocratic leaders like Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin.
[0] - https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~lebelp/FZakariaIlliberalDemocr...
[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Socialism_(Germany)
Democracy means more than elections. Majoritarianism is a known failure mode of elected governments, going all the way back to Athens.
I think you get the point
I just don't see how that makes any sense whatsoever.
Telegram may not be some shining paragon of freedom, but it seems pretty obvious that Brazil (like many other nations) is shifting towards naked despotism.
The misinformation and populist propaganda is those platforms, it’s so spread out that has real world consequences. That’s why the current powers have to acknowledge the problem.
The world views and “post-democracy” stuff spread by ( mostly) Russian and Chinese operations are wild!! And they are sophisticated enough to craft their message to different parts of the world. ( in Europe and the Us, is posts fomenting racial divisions) the other parts of the world as far as I can tell it’s how the West it’s bad, controls everything and turns your son gay.
The solution? I don’t know. Probably none.
If Telegram was a social media company with algorithmic content recommendation systems, you could argue it was penalizing one side in favor of the other one. If that was the case I'd agree with you but it's not the case. Telegram is a messaging app, like signal and whatsapp. Its users are the ones doing the influencing, not the company itself.
The election is already over anyway. This episode is just Lula and his people making good on his campaign promise to "regulate" the internet by censoring it.
> Its users are the ones doing the influencing, not the company itself.
I don't think those can both be true.
Mind you, I'm not on Brazil's side here. I'm just saying that your two statements seem contradictory.
This has also happened to WhatsApp by the way. Judges blocked WhatsApp nation wide for days because it failed to provide plain text user messages in a criminal investigation. Zuckerberg posted his opinion about it on Facebook.
That is absolutely not true. Telegram the company itself (not a user or users) mass-sent the propaganda message to all users of the platform in the country. That is a chilling overstep by a company that is supposed to be a neutral carrier.
They were forced to send a new message to users saying "the previous message was flagrant and illicit disinformation against national congress, the judiciary, the state and brazilian democracy" because it "fraudulently distorted the discussion and debate" in an attempt to "induce users to coerce their representatives".
The "talk to your representatives" calls to action I usually see here on HN in discussions of US political matters? That's coercion now. They're making users coerce their representatives, apparently.