Comment by Bostonian | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bostonian | Hacker News Reader

Musk's "sin" is not silencing people a judge wants silenced.

https://archive.is/gsvVZ Brazil Judge Wrangling With Elon Musk Has Long Battled Social Media. Alexandre de Moraes is also at the heart of case against former leader Jair Bolsonaro By Samantha Pearson WSJ April 10, 2024 9:00 am ET

`SÃO PAULO—Before his weekend showdown with tech billionaire Elon Musk, Brazil’s Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes had already earned a reputation as a lightning rod in Brazil’s battles over free speech.

In recent years, de Moraes has slapped fines and bans on social-media companies and ordered police to investigate—and even arrest—some of the country’s most powerful conservative bloggers, businessmen and politicians over what he deemed offensive online posts.

Now the court’s order to block a swath of X accounts has sparked fresh debate, with critics on the right, including many legal experts, saying de Moraes has gone too far. They argue his crusade to clean up the internet in the name of safeguarding democracy is arbitrary and repressive, and that the biggest risk to democracy in Brazil could be the Supreme Court.`

"Silencing" in this case means following the law. Brazilian law allows content to be removed from Internet in case of crimes, hate speech, unbased defamation and for benefit of ongoing criminal investigation.

Given that recently Bolsonaro supporters tried a failed coup and that the former president actively was trying to keep himself in power with fraud, but this failed, it is very strange saying that "biggest risk to democracy in Brazil is the supreme court". Here in Brazil these arguments come from the far right Bolsonaro supporters, that indeed are making a lot of noise, but they are the same ones that supported the coup attempt and supported the past military dictatorship in the country. Their objective with this discourse is showing political strength to avoid criminal investigation and condemnation for Bolsonaro coup attempt.

Musk has repeatedly claimed he allows what the law allows. Well, court orders are legally binding which is why people can be found in contempt of court and jailed for violating them. That's the case in the US and I assume in Brasil as well otherwise orders would be meaningless. People like Musk believe they can pick and choose what laws and rules apply to them.

Brazilian law does not allow what this judge is doing. Censorship is unconstitutional, especially that of a political nature. Yet he's essentially given himself unlimited powers to unilaterally censor anyone he wants and has been doing so completely unopposed for about half a decade now.

It started in 2019 when some magazine ran a damning article on one of these judges. The court reacted by declaring war on this so called "misinformation" and started giving itself more and more power until it assumed the role of investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. It's as ridiculous as it sounds. There's some legal basis for the supreme court doing that for crimes which happened inside the physical supreme court itself but they stretched that to cover all of Brazil since the "attacks" came from the internet.

That's how the so called "fake news" inquisition started and it continues to this day, and it's under the umbrella of that inquisition that he's demanding that Twitter censor others.

During the 2022 elections the supreme court' engaged in political censorship which violates the brazilian constitution. Everything that was embarrassing for Lula somehow became "fake news". I saw them censor a documentary before it was even published, without having even watched it. Such aggressive before-the-fact censorship has not been seen in these lands since the military dictatorship of the last century.

Nobody is being "censored". But brazilian law allows the removal of content in several circumstances. You just ignore the context that there was a network of coordinated accounts trying to disrespect electoral rules haring disinformation about elections and also threatening authorities while a possible coup was being architected. In the past people were also criminally charged, and also had content removed for threatening Bolsonaro. But for far right extremists, it is "dictatorship" and illegal when they discover that the same laws applies for them too.

No, it's pretty clear cut. They censored. Let's consider the simplest possible example of a censored political statement: "Lula is a socialist". It's not a crime, it's not defamation, it's not hate speech, it's not even an insult since he's openly proud of being a comminist. Yet it was censored. I saw it happen in real time. The justification was "fake news". You yourself come in these threads about Brazil to talk about "misleading falsehoods" and how the court is justified in censoring them.

So we have to resolve once and for all whether that statement is true or false. We cannot break from this loop until we determine whether he's a socialist or not. Once we have determined that, we can determine whether the court had "justification" for censoring the accusation.

So tell me. Do you dispute the fact he's a communist? Do you have any doubt at all? Be honest.

You keep ignoring that simple question. Discussion of this matter with you simpply cannot continue until you answer it.

When you finally do, it's going to go in one of two directions. Either you admit that he is in fact a communist, in which case the supreme court judges censored the truth for political gain which violates the constitution. Or you keep insisting that he isn't a communist, I present proof that he is a communist, and then conclude that the supreme court judges censored the truth for political gain which violates the constitution.

If you say that Lula is communist, you do not know what is communism. All your replies goes in this direction. I doubt a lot that someone was banned because just posted "he is socialist" (even if in fact he is more an adept of the more general labor movement, but could be considered a weak form of socialism). People probably is banned for spreading distorted information or for disrespecting electoral laws. If you say that someone was banned JUST because said that he is socialist, and the person have no relationship with the organized spread of disinformation during elections, nor commited any other infraction, then you indeed would have a point. But I doubt. I could post "Lula is socialist" in Twitter and I doubt that this would annoy someone, this is not even an offensive thing. Moreover, it is not Lula but the justice court that ordered the removal. Most of the court is composed by the same judges that ordered Lula to be imprisoned and denied several of his appeals to be freed in the recent past. And the electoral justice is the same that already forbade Lula's party of using materials that remembered that Bolsonaro supported the military dictatorship saying that the material that despicted simulated torture was too graphical to be used in electoral propaganda.

> Moreover, it is not Lula but the justice court that ordered the removal. Most of the court is composed by the same judges that ordered Lula to be imprisoned and denied several of his appeals to be freed in the recent past.

Should your comment be banned for spreading distorted information? Sergio Moro, a first instance judge, sentenced Lula for 9 years in 2018. A second instance judge reviewed the case and increased the sentence to 12 years. In 2019 the supreme court changed the understanding that allowed people sentenced in second instance to be imprisoned releasing him and dozens of organized crime bosses from jail. In 2021 the supreme court nullified his sentence arguing that it lacked jurisdiction so he was completely free and just in time to dispute the elections. No judge that sentenced Lula is a member of the supreme court. Actually one of the first things he did was appoint his lawyer to the supreme court.

"A prisão de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ocorreu no dia 7 de abril de 2018, após o ex-presidente se entregar à Polícia Federal (PF) no Sindicato dos Metalúrgicos do ABC em São Bernardo do Campo, na Grande São Paulo, e durou até o dia 8 de novembro de 2019, após o Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) ter derrubado a prisão de condenados após a segunda instância. Lula ficou preso por 1 ano, 7 meses e 1 dia (580 dias)."

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pris%C3%A3o_de_Luiz_In%C3%A1ci...

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