The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said he hopes the crisis surrounding the social network X in Brazil might teach the world that “it isn’t obliged to put up with [Elon] Musk’s far-right free-for-all just because he is rich”.
Lula’s comments to the network CNN Brasil came after the supreme court voted unanimously on Monday to uphold the ban on X, which is now largely inaccessible in one of its biggest global markets.
The suspension was first ordered on Friday as a result of the company’s refusal to obey court orders requiring the removal of profiles accused of spreading disinformation and for the social network to name a local legal representative.
Lula is so fucking great. He’s literally just backing up the courts that are applying the law fairly and as-written, which is more than I can say for most leaders.
Don’t get me wrong, Lula is correct on this. But he’s still a scummy politician who has a questionable past
Raising 20 million Brazilians out of poverty, while making his country the 8th largest economy in the world? I’m sure he’s as corrupt as any Brazilian politician, but none of them have anything that comes even close to that to show for it.
He also got arrested for one of the largest corruption scandals in the history of Brazil. It’s a complex person. We can criticize his vices and praise his virtues at the same time.
Fucking thank you. It’s nice to see at least some heads of state actually have the stones to tell Phony Stark to fuck off.
And it doesn’t mean Musk has any valid and useful intelligence. He got handed money early in life, got lucky with PayPal, and now thinks because of all of that, his views on the world matter. They don’t. He’s a piece of shit and the world should reject him among many others.
And still salty enough to rename twitter to the company that merged with PayPal since PayPal was such a better name
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank)
Also ask Musk fanboys who Greg Kouri is and they have no idea
Over the past year Musk has removed all masks and clearly believes he can operate beyond the law. His motives are clearly to watch the world burn. He is an extremely dangerous, unpredictable and powerful man, threatening democracy across the globe.
Our governments need to protect us from him. Brazil’s being brave here, I hope they’re just the first.
No. You’re giving him too much credit and actually making it seem like mr. Musk is in any sense of the word capable of self-reflection. He is a burned out, incompetent tech-junkie and nothing but a hypeman for expensive toys someone else develops. He might be allegedly blackmailed by Russian kompromat or just plainly stupid enough to believe the propagandistic image of strong Putin/Russia. The only scary thing about him is, he never takes a fall for his numerous blunders. Yet, before first-worlders become the ones paying for his mistakes he will rest comfortably upon his dollar throne.
Be that as it may, the man has influence and it would be incredibly foolish to discount this because he’s a fucking moron. Sadly, the world is full of extremely incompetent billionaires, and they hold a shocking amount of influence over the world, whether it’s through collusion on layoffs, enforcing RTO in tandem, cutting green initiatives within a month of each other, etc.
His motives are clearly to watch the world burn.
His motives are money and power. He is indifferent to if the world burns in the process.
He’s already got all the money and most of the power. Now his hobby is far right extremism and anarchy.
At some point accumulating more money is no longer about added utility and more like a kind of cynical game score. And musky boy is clearly chasing that high score.
I’m an anarchist, and Musk’s behaviour is the farthest possible thing from anarchy. Anarchism is all about working together to build a better world where everyone has all of their needs met, not being a selfish, caustic, aggressive asshole. Elon would have no chance of getting consensus to join any commune anywhere in the world. Unless there’s some insane libertarian commune somewhere.
He doesn’t have all the money. I have some money, Brazilians have money. It’s not enough to have most of the money and power if there’s more he can get.
This is why it’s important to have decentralized social media. We cannot have anyone unilaterally deciding what gets talked about and what doesn’t.
Ordinarily, I might agree. However, this suspension is because musk refused to appoint a legal representative for the company in Brazil, IAW Brazilian law. That’s a reasonable ask for a company that’s actively doing business in the country. If a billionaire* crybaby refuses to follow the law, then he gets to deal with the consequences. FA meet FO.
That’s not what the article says, the article says it’s because X refused to ban users and because of that. Not just because of that
You should read up on the whole ordeal. The article is failing to summarize the lengthy legal battle that’s been happening between them for years since Musk’s takeover.
Your right to free speech ends when it turns into terrorism, racism or a call for a coup.
There are some things that should be banned, such as the twitter accounts that promoted the attempt at a coup in Brazil in Jan 8 2023.
These are the accounts that the judge asked to be banned. After Twitter didn’t comply they started sending fines and eventually outright banning it.
Free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything. It means the government cannot punish you for your political views. But they can, and must punish racism and anti-democracy speech.
Also, it’s a misconception that a decentralized service cannot be banned. In fact it’s not hard at all
it’s a misconception that a decentralized service cannot be banned. In fact it’s not hard at all
Could someone expand upon this? I’m don’t know much about tech, but the idea that FOSS decentralized platforms can’t be banned does seem to make sense right? Ban one, another one will pop up, etc. What am I not getting here?
I’ll admit I don’t know how Lemmy works in communicating to each other. However, Internet traffic is labeled in some manner. It has to be to ensure data traverses the web of routers we call the Internet. Lemmy instances have to identify each other to share their information to each other.
Just ban whatever traffic Lemmy instances are looking for.
Also, it’s a misconception that a decentralized service cannot be banned. In fact it’s not hard at all
Yes, if banning protocols is acceptable for you.
If what these accounts said was so dangerous then why didn’t the government go after the operators of the accounts and arrest them? Instead they tried to silence them by banning them from Twitter. That would only bring more validity to what these accounts were saying if the government has to tell foreign companies to silence them instead of challenging their speech.
If yelling “fire” in a movie theatre is so dangerous why not allow people to do it and don’t ban it and instead just arrest them after the stampede?
If what these accounts said was so dangerous then why didn’t the government go after the operators of the accounts and arrest them?
Oh, is X willing to help them find the operators of the accounts? Or are you suggesting they do something impossible instead of something actionable?
If the owners of the accounts aren’t operating in Brazil (likely) then there is little Brazil can do to go after them. X is operating in Brazil, so Brazil has the authority to go after X if they refuse to do anything about it.
