opello 10 months ago

> Brazil's national telecommunication agency, Anatel, has been ordered by de Moraes to prevent access to the platform by blocking Cloudflare as well as Fastly and EdgeUno servers, and others that the court said had been "created to circumvent" a suspension of X in Brazil.

Blocking Cloudflare and Fastly seems like a reactionary measure that is not exactly well conceived.

  • dangrossman 10 months ago

    Cloudflare already isolated X on their network so that Brazil can block just X again.

    • opello 10 months ago

      It would be interesting to see how fast Brazilian network operators are changing things to implement the blocking and responding to things like that.

      • vitorgrs 10 months ago

        Most ISPs already blocked X again in this morning.

  • vitorgrs 10 months ago

    They are not blocking Cloudflare or Fastly.

    They are blocking X IPs being used on Cloudflare and Fastly.

    These CDNs agreed with Anatel, to reserve IPs exclusively to X, so IPs can block X without collateral damage, that's all.

    That said, Cloudflare is also blocking X. Cloudflare Warp doesn't open X.com anymore, neither iCloud Relay's (which seems to use Cloudflare).

    • opello 10 months ago

      > These CDNs agreed with Anatel, to reserve IPs exclusively to X, so IPs can block X without collateral damage, that's all.

      Thanks, the article didn't say anything like that. It, of course, makes sense to avoid the obvious collateral damage. It didn't seem like it started out that way based on this article though:

      > X recently moved to servers hosted by Cloudflare and appeared to be using dynamic internet protocol addresses that constantly change...

  • toomuchtodo 10 months ago

    Nation states will always win against a corporation. They are authorized to use force, both physical and economical. They also control access to their market.

    • opello 10 months ago

      I don't think it's always true. It seems like it would have to depend on how the nation state responds to its citizens when the nation state does things like break large portions of the web. And what actual economic leverage the state has (or could bring to bear) over the company.

      Losing the citizenry might be more politically damaging faster than economically damaging to X/Starlink.

      • toomuchtodo 10 months ago

        > Losing the citizenry might be more politically damaging faster than economically damaging to X/Starlink.

        Provide evidence Brazil will lose the citizenry over this. It appears that Brazil has been surgical in directing access restrictions to X; millions of X social followers have moved to Bluesky [1], and while Starlink customers might be impacted (~250k terminals) who cannot access X, they are not a majority in any sense (based on ground station count; 250k vs a Brazil population of 215.3 million people).

        Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It's also easy to get caught in the trap to believe that other people think how one's own self thinks [2].

        [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41550053

        [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect

  • ein0p 10 months ago

    None of this is “well conceived”. De Moraes is way too high on his own supply.

    • IntelMiner 10 months ago

      [flagged]

      • jdminhbg 10 months ago

        > He's just enforcing the law in Brazil

        It's really instructive to see how quickly people will abandon any pretense of liberal society when they have a personal animus against the ox currently being gored.

      • ivewonyoung 10 months ago

        Here's a good explanation of how the Brazilian Supreme Court did a creative and novel interpretation of the law to give itself powers to investigate and regulate the internet without law enforcement or legislative/executive involvent.

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

        That's not enforcing the law.

        As documented by the New York Times, the first thing the judge did after getting powers to censor was to call a Brazilian magazine article about the person that gave him those powers 'fake news' and got it removed. It later turned out that article was true so he had egg on his face and had to retract his censorship order.

        > To run the investigation, Mr. Toffoli tapped Mr. Moraes, 53, an intense former federal justice minister and constitutional law professor who had joined the court in 2017.

        > In his first action, Mr. Moraes ordered a Brazilian magazine, Crusoé, to remove an online article that showed links between Mr. Toffoli and a corruption investigation. Mr. Moraes called it “fake news.”

        > Mr. Moraes later lifted the order after legal documents proved the article was accurate.

        https://archive.is/plQFT

      • johndevor 10 months ago

        A fascist who is incredibly productive in the free market. That's a first!

      • matheusmoreira 10 months ago

        Political censorship is unconstitutional in Brazil. These judges are after Bolsonaro and his supporters for the political speech they engaged in. Blatant political censorship.

        The constitution literally contains the words:

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

        It's really not that hard to understand. Any citizen can understand this. It's just that it doesn't matter what the law says. Because there's no court above them, the law becomes whatever they say it is.

      • ein0p 10 months ago

        You’re misunderstanding who’s the “fascist” here. It’s not Musk. We get it, you don’t like his tweets or success, but he’s right in this case.

      • rvz 10 months ago

        > "How? He's just enforcing the law in Brazil"

        > "Elon is the one who cut off Twitter's 5th biggest market because misinformation is the opium of fascist-wannabees like him"

        You don't seem to be sure on what is going on or even know what 'fascist' means.

        Anything can be declared as "misinformation" these days which is the what many governments commonly use to enforce censorship and for its citizens to continue to believe one narrative for governments to then continue to lie to its citizens.

        Why do you want this?

jsight 10 months ago

This seems like a worthwhile fight. I'm surprised to see someone taking it up, though, most of the time company's just seem to comply with government mandated censorship.

  • o11c 10 months ago

    You do realize that the "censorship" being mentioned is of literal terrorists?

    Terrorism: the use of violence to achieve political aims (if you are not yourself a recognized nation).

    This is exactly what these people did in their coup attempt. I for one would rather not have another coup organized on Twitter, thank you very much.

    (and before anyone brings it up - even if someone works for the PR or leadership arms of a terrorist organization, rather than actually performing the violence personally, that does not mean they stop being a terrorist)

    • matheusmoreira 10 months ago

      There was no "coup attempt". There was a protest. Like many before it. Brazilians occupying Brasília buildings is essentially the standard brazilian protest. There's just no way you can convincingly claim that a thousand people armed with flags and bibles amounts to a coup or even an attempt at one. The only thing they did which you might object to was beg the military to launch an intervention.

      The legal basis for that is a bit of brazilian law that dates back to our independence. It says the military is the so called "4th power", the "moderator power" which is supposed to intervene if the balance between the other three democratic powers gets too screwed up. That's exactly the situation we find ourselves in: unelected judge-kings that legislate and run the country. These protesters tried to invoke that bit of law by asking the brazilian military to intervene and put an end to it. They did not try to seize power for themselves, they asked the military to do it. The military refused to do it. Then they were arrested. Then the judges put them in a gulag.

      Your comments have helped me in the past. Sad to see that you believe in this narrative.

      • o11c 10 months ago

        If it looks like a coup and quacks like a coup, don't tell me it's actually a sedan.

        • matheusmoreira 10 months ago

          Can we not use duck typing logic to interpret the politics of a nation?

          They called the impeachment of one of our former presidents in 2016 a coup too. In fact, they still call it that to this day. It led to one of the Brasília protests to which I alluded in my reply. Amusingly, even back then there were calls for mililitary intervention. Those were never a big deal.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_protests_in_Brazil

          What these judges did certainly looks like a coup to me. As far as I'm concerned, they gave themselves limitless powers and installed a dictatorship of the judiciary in this country. There's no point in electing representatives when these unelected judge-kings "creatively interpret" the laws they create however they want. What you're calling a coup, I see as a desperate failed attempt to restore order to this place.

          See how fruitless it is? Everything looks like a coup to somebody.

    • andsoitis 10 months ago

      > you do realize that the "censorship" being mentioned is of literal terrorists?

      I don't follow this very closely, but I wonder: if the Brazilian state or justice system consider them terrorists, what is getting in the way of bringing them to justice?

      • o11c 10 months ago

        Their version of January 6 took place after ours, so they're still going through early stages of the process. At least 86 have been convicted and sent to prison so far, likely low-level stooges since the higher-ups take longer.

    • infotainment 10 months ago

      Remember kids, free speech means that everyone is contractually obligated to algorithmically broadcast everything you say, even if it is literal terrorism, to as many people as possible. Failure to do this is literally 1984.

      (/s)

      • holmesworcester 10 months ago

        So you think only government censorship is a speech violation?

        Well cool! You'll happen to be on the right side in this case, because in this case the censor is a government.

        • infotainment 10 months ago

          Well, perhaps I layered in too much sarcasm, but the idea is that it's not a free speech violation for the government to say someone can't post on social media. That person is still free to say it, just not to have it broadcast to everyone.

  • IntelMiner 10 months ago

    "Censoring" literal misinformation is a bad thing now?

    • ImJamal 10 months ago

      It is. What you think is truth today can easily be considered misinformation tomorrow.

      • 1270018080 10 months ago

        I know in the post-truth era everyone can pretend their bubble is fact, but come on. Some things actually are misinformation.

    • HideousKojima 10 months ago

      Yes, because who gets to decide what is or is not misinformation?

      • nathanaldensr 10 months ago

        Essentially, the larger the scope/influence is of the body of people deciding what speech to censor, the more dangerous it is to give them that power. This is irrespective of the actual information being censored.

      • Emiledel 10 months ago

        I feel for your pain, and I'm interested in paths that overcome the collapse of trust we're going through. I think your question matters a lot, to reach solutions all of us need (and not quit until we find a positive one)

    • matheusmoreira 10 months ago

      Misinformation... According to whom?

      You?

      These partisan judge-kings?

      Politicians who lie pathologically?

      So who gets the honor of being the ministry of truth?

dhosek 10 months ago

The tone of the responses from X have changed a great deal since the whole thing began. There’s much less of a confrontational approach, presumably because given the declines in revenues, they’re realizing they can’t afford more of it.

  • mmooss 10 months ago

    What should be shocking business is right in front of our noses: Other reports say investors in Musk's aquisition of Twitter are on the hook for billions of dollars.

    How do they (and other investors in X) stand by while Musk sacrifices large markets for personal political battles? It's not just Brazil - look at how he gives up advertising revenue in order to promote far-right hate speech on X.

    More broadly, if a corporation invests in DEI or ESG, which are relatively cheap, there's an uproar that it's not appropriate for businesses. If Musk (or others) lose large amounts for partisan political battles, it's accepted. In part I'm just saying the obvious: the uproars about DEI and ESG is has nothing to do with business or profits, and is really about reactionary politics. On the other hand, it's still shocking that investors give sacrifice this much money for Musk's and other people's partisan 'cause'.

    Perhaps they feel they have much wealth to gain from the 'cause', which arguably is about big business and wealth seizing political power (see the Lewis Powell memo and, for example: https://the.levernews.com/master-plan/ ).

vesrah 10 months ago

How do they plan on collecting on that if the money is moved out of Brazilian accounts?

  • davidsojevic 10 months ago

    According to the article, they've previously collected by just withdrawing money directly from X's and/or Starlink's local accounts:

    > Brazil previously withdrew money for fines it levied against X from the accounts of X and Starlink at financial institutions in the country.

    • vesrah 10 months ago

      I saw that, but I was curious once X decides to pull the money from the accounts (assuming they can, which I guess is a big assumption at this point).

      • adrr 10 months ago

        Starlink is still active in Brazil.

      • mgiampapa 10 months ago

        If the fines don't get paid those Space X ground stations can possibly go away too.

  • asadotzler 10 months ago

    SpaceX has physical infrastructure in Brazil worth millions. They can start there, just confiscate the Starlink ground stations.

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