[virgulino]

I did NOT violate the law.

How come he is deleting the VPN apps on my phone??? That I need to remote to my overseas job???

How come I I'm now banned from reading what Zelensky, Kasparov, Yann LeCun, and thousands of others world leaders have to say?

How come my neighbor, who makes a honest living through X-Twitter, has now lost her job?

[NomDePlum]

Things deemed illegal or not compliant by a jurisdictional entity often have negative consequences for others.

Most legal judgements are blunt swords.

Fairness is seldom considered.

I'm not agreeing with the outcomes here. Just pointing out laws get enforced, if they don't they aren't laws.

[matheusmoreira]

There is no "fake news" law. One was proposed and rejected by our representatives. Then the judge-king published a resolution of sorts which basically rammed the law through anyway.

Brazilian constitution says:

> Any and all censorship of political, ideological and artistic nature is prohibited

What he's doing is censorship, plain and simple. And it's unconstitutional.

[perihelions]

- "How come I I'm now banned from reading what Zelensky, Kasparov, Yann LeCun, and thousands of others world leaders have to say?"

This is the single most important thing about tech censorship I wish more HN'ers would figure out on their own. It may be narrated as a fight between corporations and judges, but in addition to all of that, it's ordinary individuals' rights on the line. "To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker."

The right of an individual human to read what some individual account on a media platform wrote is a core civil right, and should be inviolate. It stands alone and apart from whatever other wrongs the platform is involved in.

The modern zeitgeist isn't merely burning books; it's burning down magnificent libraries of books in order to spite approximately five of them.

[foinker]

I think we should all just accept that these platforms are not suitable for the purposes of being a global bulletin board/library of human activity as long as they are owned and operated by private corporations who only care about your inviolable rights to speak freely when it suits them. There are other ways besides twitter to see what Zelensky says.

[tim333]

I disagree. I think the platforms are ok if not without imperfections. HN is owned by a private corporation. Should you ban yourself from reading this as a result?

[IG_Semmelweiss]

we should accept that government agencies are not suitable for the purpose of providing your basic food, medical, education, or security needs; who furthermore only care about your food, your healthcare, habeas corpus or rule of law when it suits them and maintains their job.

There are other ways besides the USDA, DoE, or FBI to get good food, health, education, and security.

[foinker]

Seriously? Governments' legitimacy is pinned to their ability to provide food and medical attention to their citizenry. It doesn't make any difference whether or not twitter exists or who has access to it.

[guhcampos]

They can't and won't delete any apps from your phone, but the apps would be gone from the stores, which does not make it much less of a bullshit.

Restricting access to X makes sense: the platform has removed themselves from the country, making it impossible to resolve legal and financial disputes in Brazil, so it makes sense they are not allowed to operate in the country anymore.

Then again, punishing users that access it through other means is baffling.

[sva_]

> They can't and won't delete any apps from your phone

Google can definitely install/delete apps from your phone remotely using Play Store.

[slowmovintarget]

No, it doesn't make sense. The reason they had to pull out of the country is that representatives of X were about to be thrown in jail for an American business not honoring censorship edicts written by this judge. Why not Meta or Google? Because they've honored the censorship orders.

When he couldn't find representatives of X, he went after SpaceX and StarLink, even though no law allows him to do so. The judge is simply on a personal vendetta against Elon Musk solely on the basis of political alignment.

This isn't baffling, this is leftist totalitarianism at work.

[guhcampos]

I was also baffled by them going after Starlink when it happened. Just like you, I found it absurd to go over a different company just because some person owns stakes on both of them.

Then, Starlink refused to block Twitter, and with that they kind of proved the Supreme Court's point that they operate under the same economic organization and are subject to the same leadership.

I guess they stepped into their own trap there.

[ImPostingOnHN]

This, except it's right-wing totalitarianism at work, seeking to silence the left wing (Lula et al), which appears to have won the election.

Indeed, before the election and subsequent fallout, the right-wing elmu was friendly towards the right-wing Bolsonaro, who these orders support.

[slowmovintarget]

No. The judge is attempting to silence anyone speaking out against the new leftist government. Meta and Google silently complied. X did not.

[guhcampos]

Not to being too much politics into the discussion, but Mr. Morais is hardly a leftist. In fact, he's been put there by the very president that removed Mrs. Dilma Rouseff, Michel Temer, who is quite obviously on the right side of the spectrum.

[ImPostingOnHN]

You're right, I confused 2 different South American elections and am dumb and sorry.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

Even if the goal of the brazilian judge makes sense, that doesn't make the judge's actions legal. In a country of laws, the end does not justify the means.

A thorough explanation of the applicable law, point by point, that demonstrates that everything that is happening here is outrageous :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

[guhcampos]

The actions are legal, in the sense they have been approved by the Supreme Court. We can argue about the morality of the Supreme Court deciding on the legality of their own actions, but in practice, they are, by all means, legal.

BBC has a decent article that estabilishes a critique of the same points you mentioned in your post: https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/c4n3wklk255o some of your complaints are quite fair, some don't.

In particular: "The Brazilian constitution specifies that the Supreme Court can only judge those with “privileged jurisdiction" isn't true at all. The Brazilian Constitution states a whole bunch of attributions to the Supreme Court, which you can read (in Portuguese) at:

https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constitui... (search for "DO SUPREMO TRIBUNAL FEDERAL")

The role you mention, about ruling over "privileged jurisdiction" is one of 20+ attributed roles, a small fraction of their attributions.

[swatcoder]

> How come I I'm now banned from reading what Zelensky, Kasparov, Yann LeCun, and thousands of others world leaders have to say?

> How come my neighbor, who makes a honest living through X-Twitter, has now lost her job?

Because the other party did violate the law. Unfortunately, Twitter got taken over by an international ideologue who likes to pick fights, and you and your neighbor are suffering the consequences of that. He doesn't care about you in the least, and you should be wary about asking your government to pick up the slack for his egotism as it would just position him to further ignore or exploit you and your community.

(The broader VPN ban is admittedly another thing, though.)

[hagbard_c]

> Twitter got taken over by an international ideologue

Twitter was bought from ideologues by someone who opened it up to other ideologies. While this may have increased the absolute ideological load on the platform it actually decreased the effective ideological charge since opposite sides cancel out each other, pulling the balance towards the centre where it used to tilt heavily towards a single side.

[nemo44x]

These people never seem to learn that when the table turns, and it will, that they won’t like it anymore. They lived when the censor suited them but cry foul when it’s in opposition.

It’s important to curate a culture and agreed set of norms that you can live with when you’re not in control.

[pkaeding]

I don't think opposing ideas cancel each other out, like so much electrical charge.

The more opposing ideas on a platform, the more ideas are spread, tested, strengthened, weakened, and grown.

An echo chamber is where ideas go to die.

[guhcampos]

> the effective ideological charge since opposite sides cancel out each other

I honestly, wholeheartedly wish that was true.

In reality, however, the ideology of whoever holds more economic power has orders of magnitude more weight than the one of the powerless masses.