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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • Actually, Bolsonaro is a fraud. He only acts in the self-interest of himself and his immediate family members. As he’s being threatened by the dictator, with some speculation that he could be arrested at any time, he’s keeping silent during this whole X blocking incident so he doesn’t suffer retaliation from the dictator.

    As for Musk, I know that, like every businessman, he has his financial interests. I surely would if I were one, and I would not blame anyone for doing the same, as nobody gets rich spending money unwisely. However, I can recognize that his passion for free speech is genuine; otherwise, he wouldn’t have bought Twitter for $44 billion. Under the most reasonable analysis, this was a bad deal in terms of return on investment. Maybe it’ll bear fruit in the long term, but it’s a big, nebulous maybe. So as he decided to buy it anyway, he surely did so on principle, not for money.






  • Are we seeing the same thing? I’ve never seen as much activity from Brazilian users on X as now.

    I guess all this block did was teach the Brazilian population how to use VPNs. And most are just ignoring the threat of a US$ 8.900,00 daily fine from the dictator because, by its very nature, VPNs keep them anonymous. X is on bad terms with the dictator, so it will not expose anyone’s IP addresses even if requested by him. None of the major VPN companies are based in Brazil, and it would be hard to ask them for IP addresses too.

    Even some major news outlets are still posting on X, saying that they’re posting through “international staff members.” Some politicians and notable personalities are starting to use the same excuse: “someone out of the country is posting for me.” This block is looking pretty ineffective, and it’s serving as an educational incentive for people to start using VPNs. If any more social media platforms are also blocked, people are already well prepared to circumvent the blocks.

    So, what has the dictator gained from this temper tantrum? He forced X out of the country, leaving no local offices to receive his orders, even the reasonable ones like those related to normal (non-political persecution) crimes. And he strengthened the protests that were already scheduled for September 7th (Brazil Independence Day), which will turn into an event mainly asking for his impeachment.


  • Monomate@lemm.eetoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    1 month ago

    No minimally serious country destroys the legal separation between different companies so brazenly. If it is for such a thing to happen, it’s only on exceptional circunstances, and only after the a full lawsuit concludes its natural course, giving all affected parties the right to offer their defenses. Anything far from these basic civilizational principles is no more than a whim from a dictator’s inflated ego.



  • Monomate@lemm.eetoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    1 month ago

    Fighting crime is desirable, but within the limits of the law:

    Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework

    Art. 19. In order to ensure freedom of expression and prevent censorship, the internet application provider may only be held civilly liable for damages resulting from content generated by third parties if, after a specific court order, it fails to take steps to, within the scope and technical limits of its service and within the specified timeframe, make the content identified as infringing unavailable, except for legal provisions to the contrary.

    § 1º The court order referred to in the caput must contain, under penalty of nullity, clear and specific identification of the content identified as infringing, which allows the unequivocal location of the material.

    Note that the legislator took the trouble to say right at the beginning that the intention is to prevent censorship. Few laws are written in such detail as to reinforce their guiding principles in the middle of the provisions. If the legislator went to this trouble, it is because the intention of avoiding censorship is fundamental to this law. If judges are ignoring the law, they’re ignoring the will of the people.


  • Monomate@lemm.eetoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    1 month ago

    This freeze of Starlink’s financial assets is so absurd, that even Brazilian Speaker of the House (a big son of a bitch himself) criticized it. He made a comparison to another recent national scandal about retailer Americanas defrauding it’s accounting to hide the fact it is in deep debt. Its owner fled to Europe to avoid persecution. Under the same argument, they’d be authorized to freeze Ambev’s (beverage company which is partially owned by Americanas’ owner) assets to cover for Americanas’ debt.

    The insane judge that ordered the asset freeze is so blinded by his vendetta against Elon Musk that he does dumb shit like this, which is putting a big stain on Brazil credibility to foreign investors. If a single insane judge can do this on his whim, who would want to invest in Brazil?



  • Monomate@lemm.eetoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    1 month ago

    The Brazilian Internet Law (Marco Civil da Internet) says that the content to be removed via judicial intervention must be specified. It does not allow the blocking of entire accounts from a social media platform. In fact, Brazilian Constitution forbids this kind of censorship (Censura Prévia). The decision to block X nationwide is based on a series of decisions that blatantly violate Brazilian Law.

    By the way, the dictator-judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered Starlink’s asset freeze before Starlink wouldn’t comply with X blocking.



  • Your own link states that “in part” definitions may lead to highly subjective conclusions.

    By this measure, the death penalty in the US would be considered genocide “in part” (especially if the judge, jurors, or clerks are mostly white and the executed person is of color, so as to establish that a “group” is targeting another group). A person acting in self-defense with a resulting death to the aggressor may also fall into the genocide criteria.

    If Israel is only intent on destroying the Hamas terrorist organization (it is technically a political party, but they broadened their horizons on October 7th, I guess…), and not the whole Gazan/Palestinian population, could it really still be labeled as genocide? As I said, some people will even say a single death may be genocide “in part,” so this widening of the definition just weakens the term, unfortunately.




  • The fines were applied under illegal pretenses. It’s like a castle built on sand.

    And X is not entirely safe from being blocked. The messaging app Telegram suffered similar judicial abuses by the same judge during the 2022 elections. Telegram did not have legal representation in Brazil, but the judge threatened to block Telegram in Brazil anyway if they did not establish an office to officially receive his orders there. Then he began his usual judicial harassment campaign against Telegram: secret orders to block dissidents, daily fines, summoning the company’s representatives to testify before the Federal Police, and so on.

    At the time, the Supreme Court was openly promoting a legislative bill that would facilitate their censorship efforts. In practice, this proposed law would dismantle the DMCA-like takedown request system that shields platforms from responsibility for user-generated content, something U.S. users take for granted. Please note how absurd it is for the judicial branch to sponsor a legislative bill: it blurs the separation of powers.

    The same bill included provisions to appease big media conglomerates, as it would force Google to pay for news snippets on Google Search and Google News. It would also require Netflix to pay residuals to Brazilian actors, even if past contracts did not stipulate anything of the sort. And since the right-wing political spectrum would be the most negatively affected by a censored internet (traditional media is already pro-left), the left-wing portion of parliament also supported this bill. A large consortium was formed in defense of the bill: the Supreme Court, traditional media, artists, left-wing politicians, and the left-wing Executive government itself.

    However, Google and Telegram opposed the bill as it interfered with their business and would incentivize arbitrary censorship. Both companies published prominent Op-Eds on their homepages, warning about the severe consequences of this bill. In Telegram’s case, a message was sent to all users criticizing the bill. The Supreme Court judge was livid and ordered Google and Telegram to remove the Op-Eds, accusing them of political interference (as if the Supreme Court was not doing the same by advocating for the bill’s approval). Note that there is no law forbidding companies from expressing their opinions on their platforms; the judge was simply unhinged and fabricated this accusation. The judge even summoned Google’s local CEO to testify before the Federal Police to intimidate the company.