Brazil top judge accuses X of ‘willful’ circumvention of court-ordered block

MicroWave@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 378 points – Brazil top judge accuses X of ‘willful’ circumvention of court-ordered block
theguardian.com

In the latest round of the dispute between Elon Musk and Brazil’s top court, a senior judge has accused X of a “willful, illegal and persistent” effort to circumvent a court-ordered block – and imposed a fine of R$5m ($921,676) for each day the social network remains online.

The social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which has been banned by court order since 30 August, on Wednesday became accessible to many users in Brazil after an update that used cloud services offered by third parties, such as Cloudflare, Fastly and Edgeuno.

This allowed some Brazilian users to access X without the need for a VPN -- which is also prohibited in the country.

Late on Wednesday, X described its reappearance in Brazil as an "inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users".

But the influential supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes -- who ordered the original ban as part of an attempt to crack down on anti-democratic, far-right voices -- on Thursday described the move as a deliberate attempt "to circumvent the court's blocking order".

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I hope Musk listens to this. But on the off chance he doesn't I also hope the fines start doubling each and every day.

Issue a warrant for musk's arrest and request interpol to pick him up. A few days in a Brazilian prison waiting for his court appearance should make him get the point.

and request interpol to pick him up.

Criminal activity should be reported to your local or national police. INTERPOL does not carry out investigations or arrest people; this is the responsibility of national police.
https://www.interpol.int/Contacts/Contact-INTERPOL

I know.. the route has a few steps.

The 3rd country can reject arresting the person or not extradite him.

This is a bad idea. If breaking the law of any country can result in extradition to that country then people are going to be getting extradited for things like disrespecting the communist party.

Not really applicable here, since making Xitter accessible in Brazil is breaking Brazilian law in Brazil. You very much will get arrested for disrespecting the CCP in China.

Elon is not in Brazil, and making the service available via CloudFlare was not an action taken in Brazil. Brazil should be able to seize assets in Brazil and change how they block access to prevent Twitter from doing business in Brazil, but arresting people in other countries for something like this is extreme.

I don't think it's extreme at all. Elmo openly mocked the Brazilian justice system and its representatives, including posting offensive AI-generated images of Judge Moraes, and has demonstrated several times through his words and actions that he believes himself to be above the law and can do whatever he wants. He is responsible for the actions of his company. "Responsible" means "one who answers for".

It might be a different situation if this were a company whose CEO was unaware of the legal troubles in a country that isn't home to their HQ. But he became personally involved with the case and is using technicalities to sidestep his legal obligations without even pretending that's not what he's doing. This is a perfect picture of the absolute worst way in which plutocrats can flaunt the law and you're advocating for it.

We can all hate Elon and Twitter, but we're really arguing in favor of internet censorship and extraditions for foreign citizens living in their home country that, knowingly or unknowngly, assisted or has employees that assisted people in circumventing that censorship.

Internet censorship? Twitter was blocked for refusing to appoint a legal representative in Brazil, a legal requirement for any business that operates in the country above a certain size (and Twitter is very far from the threshold). Elmo claimed it was about censorship to make himself look good.

Why does Twitter need a legal representative? Precisely so that someone can answer for the sort of shit Elmo pulls on the regular. Or any other shit. Somebody needs to be accountable to the laws of a country if you're doing business in that country. Otherwise you could sell Fentanyl online from overseas and the worse that would happen would be geting the product seized at the border after you've already been paid. This isn't a radical concept and it has nothing to do with censorship.

No, that is why countries have extradition treaties, extradition hearings and/or sign up to other treaties. To make sure law is respected across borders but not simply abused by bad actors.

This also goes for bad actor sicophants that repeatedly and knowingly break a Brazilian law they don't agree with and then thumb their nose at their legal system.

And even without these treaties it's known to happen. Examples: The Netherlands does not have an extradition treaty with Dubai, but when the most wanted man of the Netherlands was verified to be there, the Dubai police arrested him, drove him to the airport and chucked him into a Dutch government plane waiting at the airport. That's the downside of hiding in a country that does not care about individual rights.. of their chief decides you should be "not here" they kick you out.. no due process, nothing. And just recently the kid of the same guy.. also very wanted was found and brought to the Netherlands in the same fashion.

Do you really think America will extradite Elon to Brazil over what amounts to a Free Speech argument?

It's not. Twitter needs to appoint a representative in brazil, according to their law. Twitter refuses this... An this caused the fine.

It is though, the whole problem started when Twitter refused to deplatform the current governments political rivals. They then began ignoring the government.

It should not be illegal nor extraditable to not want to do business in Brazil.

It isn't illegal or extraditable to not want to do business in Brazil. But Twitter wanted to do business there while ignoring a ruling from the Brazilian high court.. and that won't fly. They fought the ruling through the courts and ended up with an unfavorable final verdict and decided.. nah fuck them judges and their Brazilian law. That's when you cross the line into stuff that will get you fined, blocked and should get you extradited.

Edit: afaik the accounts that should have been banned, one was used to invite the military to rise up against the government, the other doxxed a police officer investigating the issue of the account advocating the military rise up. Both accounts where requested shutdown as part of these investigations.

Brazil has laws against dangerous lies. Just like the UK has serious libel laws.

Just because the dangerous lies were coming from a good friend of Bolsenaro does not mean they’re legal in Brazil.

Would you support Brazil if their government ordered a complete internet ban?

Brazil is not banning the Internet.

Brazil is revoking the permission of a company to do business in Brazil because it refuses to follow Brazilian law and is openly defying a court order.

God, you techno-feudalists are fucking weird.

You are absolutely right. Brazil is not banning the internet. Reading comprehension is not your strong suit.

Also, if the only way you can feel like you are "winning" a discussion is by changing what other people say, then you simply are not winning at all. You are writing fan fiction about yourself to try to feel clever. It backfired.

Love how you made it personal when someone responded rationally to you. If you can’t take that, you probably should not engage with other humans.

Yeah, commenting on someone's comment they made about my comment isn't personal. It's interesting how you know you dislike what I said but can't come up with anything to actually say about it. Maybe you should take that as an indication that you don't actually know why you parrot the things you do.

lol wow

Stop pushing your personal issues on others

Musk was all to happy to comply with Turkey and India to remove accounts critical of their right wing governments. His justification at the time? He has to comply with the laws of the country twitter operates in.

So odd that it he opts not do the above when its far right accounts attacking the left wing government of Brazil.

It's almost like Musk isn't doing this for free speech reasons at all and is just selectively censoring people.

That has nothing to do with what's happening. Twitter can't be fucked to appoint a legal team to comply with Brazilian law, so they don't get to operate there. Simple as.

would you support Brazil if they made a giant mecha of Spongebob?

Would you support Qo'noS if their government ordered a complete leola root ban?

See? I can make stuff up too!

Your point about making stuff up aside... yes, 100%. Who the Hell wouldn't support a leola root ban, other than Neelix‽

It is really great that you can make stuff up. Hypothetical questions have been useful for as long as people have discussed things. I'm sorry that this hypothetical question offended you so much, but it is entirely different than "making stuff up".

What about what about what about

Hypothetical. Look it up. It is commonly used in discussions. Don't let new words scare you.

Whataboutism, look it up.

Hypotheticals are not bad. Thought expirements are not bad. Repeating things you hear from people just because they tell you to, that's bad.

Hypotheticals and thought expirements can be used for valid purposes. But when you are using them to divert a conversation for the purposes of your personal agenda. To give a false impression of something that didn't happen. Then it becomes whataboutism. And given that you are not contributing anything to the discussion beyond whataboutism and insults. And being called out for it. I'd say you can stop trolling now. You're not convincing anybody.

And no that is not an echo chamber. That is people telling you what you are doing is wrong.

Yeah, except I have no agenda. I just find it interesting that people who act like a disgusting regime is somehow doing the lords work because they are shutting down millions of people from having discussions because people don't like musks' childish attitude. It's just that it is hip to see who can hate musk the most. X is a popular way to immediately get what you want out to millions of people. Some governments don't want people to openly discuss things, and siding with stopping discussion is disgusting.

Except that is not what has happened here. X has refused to follow Brazilian law. And was given ample opportunity to remedy the situation. They refused.

There are plenty of other fora on the Internet. Banning Twitter will not stop discussion.

It must be nice to have such an innocent view of the world. When powerful people stop average people from having conversations, it is not a good thing. It doesn't matter how much the internet tells you socialism and dictatorships are good, stopping discussion is bad.

lol lol lol really I promise that I’m far more educated than you

Clearly. The 3x lol really makes that obvious.

I'm not sure what you think you're getting out of this, but it really just feels sad.

It helps all of us if there are fewer echo chambers. I know, I know, to you it's not an echo chamber, but sadly that's exactly what it is when anyone who disagrees with the majority is ridiculed and their points are ignored. I understand the comfort of just agreeing with the majority to try to feel like you are always right, but it's simply not real.

You just keep throwing accusations. It’s unusual. It screams insecurity on your part and a need to feel powerful by being better than others. Real power comes from within, not from competition

I want to say to every Brazilian "Bem-vindo à nossa humilde parte da Fediverse !"

I mean, that's a literal statement of fact.

This guy is disgusting

You mean musk, right?

No

So if a company is required to have a legal representative in a country, so the government has someone to talk to instead of getting a poop emoji email. And the company says.. nah, we're good.. this is fine?

And if posts on a social media, active in a country, break the laws of a country, that's fine too?

Because if someone would start putting out tweets for selling suicide powder in the US, or a school shooting DIY kit.. that would be taken down too.

Probably making the tweets unavailable in Brazil/for Brazilian users would have been enough.. but Mr .. "I'm agitating for someone to try and assassinate harris" thinks it should be allowed.

Courts are there for a reason. If they (Twitter) do not want to follow Brazilian law, they should just withdraw from the Brazilian market. But they are already changing course.

Maybe they can get that AI generated robot lady with the hand gestures to make Another video.