Initially, consequences were not that bad (take down of some illegal posts), then they went to removal of recurring offender profiles.X ignored those Supreme Court Justice orders - their only legal course of action being to comply and file an appeal to the Supreme Court as a whole. That led to further escalation against their legal representation in Brazil and their executives (which is according to Brazilian law), which led to Musk shutting down the local representation rather than following the local law. Which put X in a non-compliance state and led to the order for its blocking.
If you understand the initial order to take down posts of defamation and illegal speech as censorship, you comply and appeal. Ignoring a court order is not a legal option.
In Brazil you can go to jail for a slur against a queer person. That is not the case in the U.S.
The question is not about Freedom of Speech, it is about changing the laws on what is protected and illegal speech. I do not like Musk as a person, but what he is doing is an act of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is the active, and professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government.
I am wary of the tightening fence around what is protected speech. I am a historian, and the censors never end up being the good guys.
The moment that something is deemed "illegal" to express, there inherently is no more free expression present.
You can have freedom of speech, but there’s no country were it’s absolute. You’re always responsible for consequences of what you say.
Article 19
1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
(b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.
The general rule is that you have the freedom to do and say whatever you want as long as you don't harm others.
Unrestricted free speech simply does not exist and any free society will have mild censorship, otherwise a lot of terrorists, criminals and fraudsters could defend themselves under free speech.
If there are "election rules" that regulate what can be posted online, that's censorship. Even if people are inciting violence or formenting revolution, banning them is censorship.
Most governments participate in censorship, and most people are OK with some level of censorship. But Brazil's constitution guarantees freedom of speech without censorship, so their courts have no business issuing orders to censor social media.
This is a bad litmus test. Courts order fraudsters to stop doing fraud all the time. It's censorship. But it's acceptable censorship, even in America where we have a uniquely-potent First Amendment.
That can't work in reality though. So at best it can only be a theoretical ideal, merely a guideline for practical legislation. Same way French constitution has equal rights for all citizen baked into its constitution for more than a century.
Each day the popular vocabulary shrinks more and more, until we're back at cave man levels. Tower of Babylon.
False, there was no due process. Twitter/X’s appeals were not even heard by the Supreme Court, which is probably in part because of the inherent conflict of interest given that the illegal secret censorship orders come from a Supreme Court justice. And also, why are you saying “Musk” did not comply - he’s not CEO of Twitter/X, just someone criticizing Alexandre de Moraes and the state of censorship and democracy in Brazil.
> It's not, in the slightest, censorship at all.
Now that some of the secret orders have been published, we see that it is indeed literal censorship as claimed by Twitter/X. De Moraes unilaterally decided that accounts belonging to current elected officials should be deleted in secret. That is literally, completely, censorship.
> The continuous disregard of Brazilian laws meant that Musk, which in addition do not paid the fines, also removed his legal representatives from the country, which is not permitted by our legislation.
Stop being dishonest about the situation. You know full well that Twitter/X removed their legal representative because Alexandre de Moraes threatened them personally, with fines, jail time, and even froze their personal financial assets. That is an incredibly authoritarian action. Twitter/X had to close their office to avoid having their staff similarly persecuted. It is a giant embarrassment to Brazil in the world’s eye but also a gross violation of civil liberties.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.