Add in a bit of personality dramas, corruption and typical billionaire and politician bullshit and you have the full picture.

Flávio Dino (Appointed by Lula) Cármen Lúcia (Appointed by Lula) Cristiano Zanin (Appointed by Lula) Luiz Fux (Appointed by Lula)

These are the only ones that voted.

What I did do was quote EuroNews who reported (as was linked on HN yesterday) that:

    Brazil's Supreme Court voted unanimously on Monday to uphold the decision by one of its justices to ban Elon Musk’s social media platform, X. [1]

    The panel that voted in a virtual session was comprised of five of the full bench's 11 justices, including de Moraes, who last Friday ordered the platform blocked for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law [2]

[1] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/09/02/brazilian-court-to-...

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/2/ban-on-elon-musks-x-...

https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/c0l82k39x28o Here is the BBC Brasil article on the topic. The ban has been upheld by the entire court, not just its more activist judges.

A. The law in Brazil says any company needs a legal representative in the country. X does not.

B. Under hate speech and misinformation laws some accounts were asked to be removed. They did not.

C. Because the company wasn’t replying at all to court requests, they consider that obstruction of justice vs trying to appeal the court

D. As far as Starlink they consider it a “de facto economic group under the control of Elon Musk” which is mostly true.

Now as far as the Constitution, this is the Supreme court. So saying X has the right to judge the Supreme Court to be in breach of the Constitution, when they themselves are meant to make those decisions, is pretty nutty to me. It's like saying I don't agree with the abortion ban in Texas/Florida so I will continue to do them, since I don't accept Roe V Wave was overturned by Dobbs, so I will just do my own thing, keep doing abortions and f the court.

That's a good way to get yourself arrested, which is what happened here.

Instead you should look into why do you think this to be the truth?

No, you misunderstand what the conversation we just had was. I was showing everyone else here that you are not arguing in good faith.

The orders in Brazil were issued in secret. X couldn't even show that the accounts were withheld by legal demand. Turkey government is considered authoritarian by most where in Brazil the waters are still shallow.

Read @AlexandreFiles.

The scans from the secret court ordes published by X on @AlexandrFiles. Note, if these are fabrications why haven't the STF denied their content? It's not just talk, evidence was presented.

> Only justice will officially decide on that and here justice decided, whether somebody (you, me, twitter) likes it or not.

You're assuming the rule of law as a premise which isn't the case. This is a heavily politicized case from a judge that is know to be political. Would you have a different opinion if this was a Russian judge instead of Brazilian judge?

> There's always the appeal path, and if all exhausted and I still don't like it, well, there.

There's no way to appeal to an independent court/judge. The appeal is judged by the supreme court and the other judges have strong incentives to not go against their colleague.

What do you mean by "blue-eyed logic"? Do you really need to put race in eveything?

> "I don't like a legal decision so I will not respect it and expect impunity"

What's your instace on Lula being arrested for corruption? What's your instance on leftists invading and setting fire to public buildings in Brazilian in 2006?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlC3xO1KOBE (news from state TV)

Damn, let's be honest! It's beyond censorship! It's an authoritarian judge censoring congressman and random people on X (one account had 50 followers) because he is personally angered by some posts. If he's addicted to social media and that was taking a toll on his mental health he could've used LeechBlock NG or NextDNS. No need to block it for everyone just because you can or to harass an unrelated company because one of the owners pissed you off.

Since right-wingers are pretty much the core audience of Twitter nowadays, they complained, it reached Musk, he decided to take a bold stance, he lost the entire market. Simple as that.

I know 100% crap things happened before social media, but the scale of the nonsense is for sure unprecedented.

Elon just thinks he can make Brazil into an example, while he knows he would get blocked in Turkey in 2 seconds.

See here: https://www.thefp.com/p/matt-taibbi-on-the-global-censorship...

For him the ends justify the means. Such people are more political and emotional than truthful and rational. When the current president, Lula, was (rightfully) arrested for corruption they put a show about right to due process. But clearly they don't care about right to due process and it's just another tool in a political toolbox.

Subsequent examination of the case pointed out the judge conspired with the accusation forging evidence causing many sentences, including Lula's, to be nullified. Lula's was nullified because the judge in question didn't even have jurisdiction over the case, so the forgery of evidence wasn't even litigated. The judge was subsequently named to head the Ministry of Justice for Bolsonaro, who won the election since Lula was unable to run.

Under duress. Prosecutors were threatening to arrest their families if they didn’t comply.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbQFNp_y1F0

The law is the law. The Supreme Court has voted unanimously. If he doesn't want to offer service there due to his morals, that's up to him.

Let's be honest, the Steve Bannon connection to Brazil is probably a factor here.

When the supreme court is the victim, the prosecutor, the law maker, and the law aprover all at once, the only thing you need to do to break the law is not do as they say.

I guarantee Turkey is a minuscule revenue source for Twitter and that he doesn't care. His position is that he obeys lawful orders rather than the extralegal and often obviously illegal means centrist administrations have been using to surveil and censor. Starlink may have changed direction simply because the Supreme Court confirmed the dictator's twitter ban.

Dubious. He was born in 55. Military dictatorship was from 64 and 79. At 64 he was 9 years old.

What do you mean by that?

The constitution on article 5 and 220 is clear on freedom of expression being a guaranteed right. e.g "manifestations of thought, creation, expression, and information may not be subject to any restrictions"

> responding specifically to the notion that Brazil was a thriving democracy before Lula took office, which is clearly absurd

Brazil has a long history of authoritarian and populist governments yet it's a democracy since 1988 despite the erosion. And certainly more thriving than Cuba or Venezuela. This notion isn't absurd at all. If you think that a party that is part of an ideological block of authoritarians like Castro, Chavez, Maduro, Xi, Putin et cetera and that has stayed in power for 16 of the last 22 years has done nothing to consolidate and perpetuate power you are beyond naivety.

Don't talk as if this guy actually tried something. He ran away to the USA like a coward, like the rat he is. Literally abandoned everyone who ever supported him.

> they literally asked for a "military intervention"

You bet they did.

What are you supposed to do when the supreme court usurps all power and installs a dictatorship of the judiciary in your country?

There's actually a device in brazilian law that lists the military as a superior "moderating power" that's supposed to intervene and bring order to things if the balance between the other three powers gets too fucked up.

Why, that's the exact situation we found ourselves in back in 2022. Hell it's the situation we still find ourselves in. Unelected, unaccountable judge-kings not only censoring political speech but getting away with it.

So they tried asking the military to bring order to this mess. Not only did the military refuse, when the military actually showed up, it was to arrest them.

That's what happened on January 8th. That's the story of the "heroic" brazilian military, and the complete fools who actually believed in them.

So let's drop this silly "coup" narrative. There was no "coup". There was not even an attempt at a "coup". There was a protest where they asked the military to sort this mess out. The result of that protest was the protesters ended up in a gulag.

If you're confused by the self-righteous of upper-middle class Brazilians about this, they had the same reaction to disappearances and torture during the dictatorship. You wouldn't dare take over a country without the support of the upper-middle class who will have to administer it. You can convince them of anything that doesn't affect their comfort at all. They supported Bolsonaro's coup, and now they'll support the destruction of freedom of speech in their country to keep Bolsonaro from speaking. They're actually beaming with pride about how they're not free to speak, similar to neocons in the US.

I thought Lula was mostly a good guy, but he seems more a passenger than a president at this point. The administration must be very confident of being able to prevent future elections, because they won my a tiny margin (just as Labour in the UK and the Democrats in the US), but they think they have the mandate to come down hard. Brasil nunca mais?

[*] the evil of Elon Musk being a bit libertarian means that all Brazilians should be censored.

You may be technically correct but the comment above has a point. It’s not a strong mandate, and it’s more fair to emphasize that the Tories collapsed than that Labour won.

Why did they do a 180?

Bolsonaro has his supporters and a share of then did ask for a military coup, but those are minority..

Majority of the country was against a coup.. But popular support changed nothing..

The military coup did not worked because the US send messages indicating they would not support it, so the air force and army commanders backed out of it..

If that’s the argument being made, then fine. Let’s just accept that Brazil shouldn’t be treated like a democracy anymore and that Musk should be coherent and accept Brazil’s autocratic whims the same way he accepts Russia’s, China’s and Turkey’s ones.

Twitter is following the law in all cases.

In Brazil's case, the orders are illegal and in some cases contradict the law of other countries. This was all explained pretty well by X Global Affairs: https://x.com/GlobalAffairs

All of Latin America is like this, and if X wants to do business there, this is the cost of business.

Twitter was happy to do this in Turkey and other countries. But Brazil has Steve Bannon and Bob Mercer with their hands there, so that should be a factor.

And blaming companies that produce weapons for the deaths caused by them is silly.

Even if we include all tobacco and opiate related deaths, governments are winning in the death toll game by a lot. And if we factor in pollution related deaths we will also need to factor in lives saved from products produced by businesses as well.

So I don't think you are winning this argument.

But... Yeah... They were a bit more subtle.

Moral relativism at its finest, when a person selling cigarettes at a gas station is equal to Pol Pot.

I'm curious where would you rather live:

1. A place where they sell cigarettes and deceive you how dangerous they are, but you don't have to buy them if you don't want to.

2. A place where you and you family can be disappeared in the middle of the night. Mind you you can still get cigarettes here as well, but with a lot less variety.

Philip Morris? Purdue Pharma? American auto industry and seatbelts?

Governments however, will be corrupt even when corruption loses them money and is contrary to their own self-interest.

Now, this does suggest either that they completely ignored their Brazilian legal team, didn't have one, or said team was incompetent. So this is not an excuse for their behavior so much as an explanation.

An average American in the US expects this from Turkey and expects different from Brazil. That's apparently a rather ignorant perspective, but such is life.

Huh? If the team is in Brazil, why would they oppose something that "would fly" in Brazil but not in the US? Doesn't matter if the entity itself (Twitter in this case) is in the US, if you're doing business in another country, even with a office there, you follow that country's laws and regulations.

This happens almost by rule when US companies operate outside of the US, this is not some exception to this rule, so hardly surprising that it also happened here.

I'm not sure sure it's "incompetence" as much as just a cultural difference.

This is one example, also conservative satire/humor from the Bee was banned.

The conservative-leaning parody site, The Babylon Bee, was suspended by Twitter for 12 hours, after it had mockingly awarded transgender government official Rachel Levine the title "Man of the Year."

Bit hyperbolic ?

Anyway, that link you sen is hilarious, Twitter is a private company and platform, they can stop showing useless stories if they want too, there is no law against removing total rubbish from the platform.

Twitter also had a right to "free speech".

I'd only really any of this as a problem if laws were passed banning discussion about..."the holy laptop".

The bee is lame, I'd remove that from my platform too.

I don't think Elon is the authoritarian one.

Could it be because Steve Bannon is a personal friend of the Bolsonaro family?

Additionally, Musk complies prolifically with censorship requests when they come from racist fascists like Narendra Modi. The source for that is literally Twitter itself in its report on removal requests (the link is in this article): https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-or... .

What's the difference? Well, Musk likes Modi and his vicious crackdown on Muslims, and he doesn't like Lula's government because he's a popular leftist. Like, you don't have to agree with either side to see that the only principle at play here is Musk's personal political grievances.

This was never true, and you could have easily checked before posting this. People who are really concerned about misinformation seem to spread it around casually about their enemies.

>Elon Musk has deemed the words “cis” and “cisgender” slurs on Twitter and warned that anyone who harasses others on Twitter will receive at least temporary suspension.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2023/07/02/elon-mus...

https://www.fastcompany.com/91126082/elon-musk-x-cisgender-c...

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/x-cisgender-slur-cis-elon...

That is quite different from claiming that if you say “cisgender” you get banned…

Just clarifying the truth of the matter is between what the two posters above me said.

Twitter is not a bastion if free speech. It's a Nazi bar where a certain type ideologically violent free speech is encouraged.