Brazilian court orders suspension of X

"People who use VPN to access X will be subject to daily fines of US$8,900"

Edit: Thanks for this user https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41404325 for posting the court order and bringing this new information:

Apple and Google must remove all VPN apps from their stores!

Apple and Google must DELETE all VPN apps already installed on users' phones!!!

https://apnews.com/article/brazil-musk-x-suspended-de-moraes...

The same judge that is responsible for X's suspension ordered Apple and Google to take down VPN apps from their app stores as well.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240830201851/https://www.conju... (Page 49 and 50, document is in Portuguese)

Brazil is heading down a very dark path.

> The decision imposes a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800) on individuals and companies that attempt to continue using X via VPN.

Fining even users is a bit surprising.

This is a very, very sad day for the Internet. Unfortunately, you can expect that every app and every platform will get localized and blocking will be normalized.

Soon TikTok will be blocked in the USA. I expect this to serve as an example and an avalanche to follow across the globe.

Blocking a platform for alleged crimes committed the by operator or participants is a punishment for all the users. It’s ridiculous but unfortunately, it appears that the world is ready to accept this as a solution.

Not my words by an accurate statement:

"A Brazilian judge tells Elon that he has to block certain users of X. Elon says no. The judge says that he will then put X's legal representative in Brazil in jail. Elon closes the offices in Brazil. The judge says that he has to have a legal representative in Brazil, that is what the law says. Elon says "if I name another representative you will put him in jail". Then the judge orders X to be blocked in Brazil. And he threatens to fine those who try to use X in Brazil through VPNs. In other words, users who easily use X in Brazil to see memes become potential criminals when they did nothing illegal.

It's crazy. It's an abuse of authority. Because let's suppose that Carlinho Da Souza calls for burning all the kids alive, the one who commits a crime (let's suppose) is Carlinho, and Justice should be focused on him, not on the company that provides its platform without knowing beforehand that Carlinho is an idiot, and even knowing it later from his posts. And you shouldn't demand that the company prevent Carlinho from exposing his stupidity, that would be like telling the cell phone company not to let me talk on the phone because I threatened to break someone's face. And then, since the company says no, it won't prevent me from talking on the phone, then it blocks the cell phone signal throughout the country, for everyone.

Freedom of expression is being able to say what you want and take responsibility for the consequences. But the consequences are for the alleged offender, not for people who have nothing to do with it.

To make another cheap analogy, if someone stabs a neighbor, you can't ban knives and force butchers to cut meat with their teeth."

Related timeline:

Starlink will now be free in Brazil since remote hospitals, schools use it: Musk

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41397506

Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41392962

In case people are not aware, numerous professors of law in Brazil, pro democracy organizations, and journalists have called the change in Brazil as a lunge towards authoritarianism. This justice in particular, Alexandre de Moraes, has been called a threat to democracy many times even a few years ago. Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/world/americas/bolsonaro-...

Unfortunately the courts have made their own laws. De Moraes claims the court he previously served on gave him the power to issue secret unilateral censorship orders from the court he now serves on. It’s all convenient but obviously doesn’t pass the sniff test for legality. If the Brazilian governments wants new powers to censor the speech of political opponents, it must do so through constitutional change.

This is what Twitter/X is defending, and it is the right thing to defend. You cannot have democracy without free speech. And if businesses cannot conduct operations without threat of unreasonable fines and arrest of their legal representatives, then Brazil won’t be a good destination for business either. It is also very telling that Lula, who has a long history of corruption and scandals, came out to endorse Alexandre de Moraes’s actions. Meanwhile, other justices must either stay silent or support them to avoid retribution. It’s a scary time in Brazil.

This has been a bad week for Democracy/freedom of speech

I might not agree with Elon Musk on things he says and does these days, but he's very much in the right here, at least if you value freedom of speech, privacy, and democracy.

The judge tried to silence the political opposition on Twitter via shadowbans and removal, Elon didn't comply, so they decided to go after Twitter employees in Brazil, to which Elon shut everything down to prevent the employees from being jailed, then since Twitter has no bank accounts in Brazil, they went after Starlink's accounts, and now they've banned the platform, add to that that they're fining people exorbitant amounts of money for circumventing the ban.

I'm oversimplifying it, but the matter of a fact is that this judge and the political party in power are acting like fascists, they've even tried getting several popular VPN applications banned by asking Google and Apple to remove them.

EDIT: For those in the comments pointing towards India (Modi) and Turkey (Erdogan). I personally didn't like when Elon bent over for them, he likes to call himself a free speech absolutist, but he's a hypocrite, and those aren't the only two cases of him going against is so called morals, but that doesn't change the fact that this is wrong, and two wrongs don't make a right.

For those saying "just use a VPN" -- who is to say the BR government isn't going to use this as a cash extraction weapon against those critical of the state.

Pull up a list of all known BR notable people on twitter. See if they tweeted anything since the ban was in effect. Fine them and rake in the $$$.

The govt probably WANTS it to be circumvented.

I wonder what all the walled garden lovers have to say about this. Would have been nice to be able to install apps and VPNs on your phones without Apple's or the government's ability to block it right? Or are you still going to stick to the "it's for our own safety" party line?

Can someone explain the me what actual power do Brazilian supreme court justices have? Seems like Brazilian judges are like Judge Dredd.

> X and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in several countries — mostly authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest.

In judicial systems like the Brazilian (and sadly many European ones) a judge that’s sufficiently high up in the judicial ladder gets to be judge and jury.

He is technically bound by the law, but he also has the power to interpret the law as he sees fit (many such cases in Portugal for instance).

This system puts too much power in the hands of a single person and as such is ripe for abuse for personal causes… or worst, for personal gains. There’s nothing democratic about this.

It should be a jury of fellow peers to decide if someone is guilty of actually breaking a law.

For the curious, this is the main Brazilian legislation about the topic:

https://www.cgi.br/pagina/marco-civil-law-of-the-internet-in...

What starlink chooses to do will be most interesting, deny any connection, block X like the isps have been ordered and try and get their bank accounts reinstated.

Or pull out of Brazil on the ground and operate as a rogue isp whose money can be blocked, in the short term at least but not their service.

I hope it's the 2nd, be a lesson to all world leaders, and not just ultra authoritarian ones, that the Internet doesn't respect geographic boarder and you cannot control it like that.

The list below contains all the countries where the government is very worried about the information available on Twitter/X:

- Brazil

- Venezuela

- North Korea

- China

- Iran

- Myanmar

- Pakistan

- Russia

- Turkmenistan

Can anyone speak to the motivations of this judge?

Does he have a valid/legal/moral point under Brazilian law with attempts to ban those accounts on X? Or is he just a toady for da Silva?

for non-Brazilians trying to understand the situation:

(1) a supreme court judge ordered X to remove some political profiles saying they are spreading misinformation

(2) coincidentally (or not) most (if not all) profiles are from the opposition

(3) Elon said that that was censorship and closed the office in Brazil

(4) The judge applied hefty fines but those couldn't be fullfied since X doesnt have a bank account in Brazil anymore

(5) The judge orders a judicial blockage of Starlink's brazilian branch accounts to pay for X fines

(4) Finnally, Brazilian law demands a legal representative (a person who will be liable) and Elon say (very loudly) we would not comply

(5) X is now banned by all means

This seems similar to the fate TikTok has in store.

It is sad to see nation states taking the route of censorship, it seems like some super form of helicopter parenting.

Starlink will not block X-Twitter in Brazil:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41421531

I can't express in words how horrible it's been to see the country I loved go spiral downhill due to a corrupt president and an non elected judge with ties to the REDACTED faction. At least 30% of the country is in favor of that. The country is infected with corruption everywhere, from small scale to the core. I'm leaving the land my family has worked hard for 200 years and moving to Uruguai. At least I have the option. I always wanted to stay apart from political discussion and for the most of the time I was center-left. From now on, I do not help nor connect with any cockroach who endorse this (the brazilian left wing party).

Slippery slope is a fallacy, they said.

How would the Brazilian gov. know if a person is visiting X on a VPN, if the VPN is of good quality?

This might affect our ability to recruit talent from Brazil if the use of VPN is forbidden.

If you're in Brazil:

Tails [0] is surprisingly easy to use. Do your own research I guess, but it might help you out.

[0] https://tails.net/

Citing that it might be cumbersome for App Stores to implement the order then revert it, de Moraes reverted the order for Google and Apple to ban VPNs from Stores.

I bet it won't stop there. He won't be satisfied until he blocks Tor too, which X / Twitter could plausibly setup as an Onion service.

This is all because the National Assembly that promulgated the 1988 Brazilian Constitution chose to specifically ban anonymity. It's on paragraph IV, article 5 of Brazilian Constitution.

I got downvoted for posting the obvious topic here so once again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41316512

Maybe musk should bring back the onion link to Twitter that he purged.

It is funny how many people who, if Putin's Russia did this, would immediately understand what is going on here and not make complicated excuses about law or the subtle nature of free speech, instead when Brazil does this pretend that this is something different simply because they so vehemently disagree with Musk and his politics.

Of course most of those people also disagree with Putin's politics, but to them Musk is the "near enemy", which is more dangerous to them than the "far enemy".

If one sees any fundamental psychological drive in an average American's positive reaction to this news other than pure tribal/religious desire to annihilate their political opponents, one has not yet put on those nice sunglasses from They Live. Don't get me wrong, of course there is the occasional actually principled rational person, but overall the vast majority of reactions to this fall along tribal lines, even here at the orange site, which maybe once was full of geeky libertarian types but has clearly for a long time now been overrun by a different sort of person.

Gonna enjoy hearing from people defending this because they dislike Elon Musk

Somebody needs to patiently sit down with this judge and explain to him that the jurisdiction of his court (and his understanding of technology) has limits.

Good luck, Brazil.

“Twitter doesn’t have a choice but to obey local governments. If we don’t obey local government laws, we will get shut down"

- Elon Musk on decision to follow Modi's requests for censorship

https://www.business-standard.com/technology/tech-news/twitt...

Well this is fun. Nice to see a government with some teeth for once instead of bowing to the whims of every multibillion mega corporation or agitated billionaire.

I am glad to see Brazil is not afraid of these billionaires. If only the US could start enforcing laws the same, no matter what your worth or who you are.

I wonder if Brazil is finally going after corruption that I believe exists there.

>“implement technological barriers to prevent the use of the X app by users of the iOS and Android systems” and to block the use of VPN applications.

I wonder how they can selectivity enforce the VPN part of the ban ?

The ironic effect of this ludicrous behavior and judgement by this crazy Brazilian judge will be that more people will flock to X. This will be the Streisand effect on steroids.