• Brazilian here. This a controversial topic, so take what I say as an opinion.

    Although Musk is a man child and a scumbag, he is right on this. He is not refusing to comply with local laws, he is refusing to comply with illegal, monocratic decisions from the supreme court.

    It is not news that the supreme court had given themselves dictator-like powers. In this case, there is no law that mandates that a social network has to have legal representatives in the country, and there is no law that a social network has to censor specific person, unless they are commiting a crime, which of course require a investigation and the due legal process, all steps that the supreme court had ignored. Moreover, the supreme court is not persecution, so they can’t just make this decision without being summoned.

    They’ve been doing that for a while now, in the name of fighting “anti-democratic acts”, which is just a faceless ghost. This is, again, based on no law whatsoever, so the supreme court had taken for themselves persecution and legislative powers, gravely hurting the separation of powers.

    Disclaimer: I’m not right leaning, but I’m as libertarian as one can be

      • Libertarian is not right-wing (at least as what right-wing and libertarian means here, maybe it is not the same in the US?)

        The right is conservative. It is religion based, against the liberation of drugs, usually not concerned with LGBT or women rights. Libertarianism is none of this, since it most concerned with individual freedom

        • Libertarianism is a right-wing ideology though, it’s pro corporate deregulation and lasseiz-faire capitalism. If you’re pro individual freedom, but opposed to right-wing ideas then the closest thing you can be is an Anarchist.

          • but almost no two libertarians will agree about those things. if you think there is only one “blessed” or accepted viewpoint on those topics, you’ve been duped.

            for example on the rights of kids. there will be somebody who will argue they fully own themselves and parents are never allowed to hit children or otherwise harm them. then there will be some idiot who argues that because babies are helpless and the parents made it, that the parents “own” the child until some point and can do what they want with it. other libertarians will have even more differing viewpoints.

        •  LukeZaz   ( @LukeZaz@beehaw.org ) 
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          1814 days ago

          I don’t know if libertarianism courts a different audience in Brazil, but in the U.S. it has a very rabidly right-wing audience who effectively want to tear down as much government as possible, and who view “your freedom ends at my face” as an insult. It’s the ideology of an extraordinarily unregulated market – a true “free market” – which is a monopolistic and wildly unethical disaster waiting to happen.

          Anarcho-capitalism, which your username references, is all of that, only more. So you might understand why effectively everyone here is going to treat that with extreme suspicion.

          • who effectively want to tear down as much government as possible, […]. It’s the ideology of an extraordinarily unregulated market – a true “free market”

            I agree with that.

            which is a monopolistic and wildly unethical disaster waiting to happen.

            I obviously don’t agree with that. Monopolies depend on the government to exist. I will not elaborate further because I’m not feeling like arguing with strangers on the internet today

            who view “your freedom ends at my face” as an insult

            I really don’t know what that means

            • Monopolies depend on the government to exist.

              I won’t bother with the rest, but this is flat-out false. Unregulated capitalism is responsible for unethical practices such as buying out your competitors, price-fixing, waiting-out your competitors (because they can’t match your unrealistically low price), insider-trading, exploiting a captive audience, and only competing in “territories” (you know, like drug dealers).

              I can’t speak globally, but all the worst monopolies engaged in at least one of these. The US is far from perfect, but they squashed several giant monopolies because of practices like this. Corporations without guardrails are unrestrained greed.

              •  jdeath   ( @jdeath@lemm.ee ) 
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                13 days ago

                a monopoly patent was literally a government invention. an actual monopoly does require the government. what you are talking about is called a “natural monopoly” in the literature. that would be a situation where there’s only one seller for something like say water in a desert town. in that case you can have price gouging and such.

                now, the important bit is the LEGAL ability to prevent competition. if there is a natural monopoly on water, and the seller decided to start charging obscene amounts for water, those extreme profits would normally induce other sellers to enter the market. except when they are legally prohibited, we can expect that a natural monopoly will not last if what we call “monopoly rents” are extracted.

                so you see, a true monopoly requires legal force, eg the state.

                • They’re not talking about natural monopolies. A natural monopoly is when there’s some barrier to entry that prevents competitors from entering the market, like a need for prohibitively expensive infrastructure.

                  What OP is talking about are situations like Walmart opening a store in a new location, operating it at or near a loss to drive the local competition out of business, and then jacking up prices once no competitors remain. The government isn’t forcing them to do that.

            •  LukeZaz   ( @LukeZaz@beehaw.org ) 
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              14 days ago

              Monopolies depend on the government to exist.

              I very much disagree but respect a desire to not get into a debate, so I’ll leave it there.

              I really don’t know what that means

              “Your freedom ends at my face” is a saying used often here to contend with right-wing group’s insistence on “freedom,” often the kind that involves harming others; e.g. free speech absolutism and the “freedom” to spout neo-Nazi rhetoric that advocates for the murder of minorities, or the “freedom” to not get vaccinated and thus worsen a pandemic. A more full version might be “Your freedom to throw a punch ends where my face begins.” The idea is that it is fair to restrict a freedom if it supports the freedom of others — you might not trust governments to determine where those lines lie, and that’s fair, but that’s a separate issue.

        •  arthur   ( @arthur@lemmy.zip ) 
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          1214 days ago

          Yeah, that can be different in other places. From a brazilian perspective, there is no “left” on US mainstream politics. There is only fascist-right, conservative right and center-right.

    •  TWeaK   ( @TWeaK@lemm.ee ) 
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      1914 days ago

      Law isn’t defined just by legislation, it is also defined by case law. A judge’s ruling on a previous case makes that ruling law.

      Now, I’m not saying this ruling is appropriate - I simply don’t know enough about how it came to be. But if Brazil made laws about social media companies and then a judge made a ruling based on that law requiring social media companies have a representative, then that absolutely is valid law.

      To draw an example, the EU never made a law about cookie splash screens. The EU made GDPR law (well, strictly speaking they made a directive, then member states make laws that must meet or exceed that directive), and then a judge interpreted that law and made it a requirement to have cookie splash screens. I would personally argue that the judge was trying to shove a square peg through a round hole there, when really he should have identified that data collection is in fact a secondary transaction hidden in the fine print (rather than an exchange of data for access to the service, this isn’t how the deal is presented to the user; the service is offered free of charge but the fine print says your data is surrendered free of charge), and he should have made it such that users get paid for the data that’s being collected. However, the judge’s ruling stands as law now.

      • A judge’s ruling on a previous case makes that ruling law.

        Not everywhere.

        Previous rulings are a precedent in Common Law systems like the US, UK, Canada, or Australia.

        Only Supreme Court rulings become a precedent in Civil Law systems like the EU, Russia,most of the rest of America.

        To draw an example, the EU never made a law about cookie splash screens.

        A very poor example; Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002/58/EC.

        The EU at its top level creates “Directives”, which member states then are bound to transpose into their national Civil Law systems. Judges can interprete that law in different ways, none of which creates a precedent. Only a country’s Supreme Court decision creates a precedent for that country, but even then it can be recurred up to the EU Tribunal, which has the last saying.

        •  TWeaK   ( @TWeaK@lemm.ee ) 
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          414 days ago

          It looks like you haven’t really digested anything of the conversation here before you came in to reply with corrections.

          Not everywhere.

          Previous rulings are a precedent in Common Law systems like the US, UK, Canada, or Australia.

          Only Supreme Court rulings become a precedent in Civil Law systems like the EU, Russia,most of the rest of America.

          Sure, but we’re talking about Brazil. You haven’t established whether Brazil is common or civil law. Also, we’re talking about a Supreme Court ruling.

          Not all of the EU is civil law. Ireland and Cyprus both use common law systems.

          While common law countries often have roots connected with the UK and are very similar, civil law countries are far more varied. Many civil law countries are distinctly different and arguably should be a separate class of legal structure - even ones with French roots (perhaps the most prominent civil law country).

          Ultimately, though, the differences between civil and common law structures are almost entirely technical in nature. The end result is largely the same - in a common law country, case law can continue to be challenged until a Supreme Court ruling, and as such it isn’t really proper case law until such a ruling, just like in civil law countries.

          https://guides.library.harvard.edu/law/brazil

          Brazil is, in fact, a civil law country. However, they do follow case law from Supreme Court, which would make this ruling about requiring a representative valid case law. Which is what I said to OP.

          The EU at its top level creates “Directives”

          This is exactly what I said.

          The EU made GDPR law (well, strictly speaking they made a directive, then member states make laws that must meet or exceed that directive)

          The EU made a directive, this directive led to GDPR laws made by member states. However I was apparently mistaken, it wasn’t an EU Tribunal court case that led to cookie splash screens through case law, it was Recital 66 (lol Order 66), essentially a 2009 modification to the 2002 ePrivacy Directive, followed by roundtable discussions that heavily favoured the advertising industry over civil interest groups leading to its formal implementation into the directive in 2012.

          https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/truth-behind-cookie-banners-alexander-hanff-cipp-e-cipt-fip-

          To summarise:

          • What I said at the start was right - Brazil’s Supreme Court ruling requiring social media companies to have representatives is valid case law.
          • My example of cookie splash screens wasn’t ideal, but you did not give the right reasoning, or any reasoning - it was a poor analogy because it wasn’t a judge’s rulinig that modified the law but legal discussions that were prompted by public interest groups.

          Like I say, it really feels like you didn’t read very far before you made your reply. Your comment reads more as a statement of tangentially related things you know with a thin veil disguising it as a correction. If you’d just made those statements without the veil, or if you’d followed through with the corrections and actually explained what was wrong, I don’t think I would have found your reply so objectionable (although I may also have woken up on the wrong side of the bed to your comment, sorry about that).

          But then, I also wouldn’t have looked into the specifics of Brazilian law or the full origins of cookie splash screens, so thanks for the motivation lol.

      •  tromars   ( @tromars@feddit.org ) 
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        213 days ago

        The GDPR is a regulation (that’s what the R stands for), not a directive. Directives must be transposed into national law by the member states, while regulations apply directly

      • I would not put it like that, I’m not that arrogant. Lemmy is, in its majority, left leaning, so of course people will disagree with me, but that’s not to say “reality doesn’t matter”.

        I’m really surprised that my post was not down voted to nothingness

  • Honestly, I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, that’s the government reaching waaaay beyond what it should without any real laws to back it up, on the other hand, fuck Musk and if this is what it takes to keep gullible people off nazifascist misinformation and propaganda then 🤷‍♂️.

      • Ok, but there isn’t anything in the Brazilian body of law that says social media needs to have legal representation in the country to be functional, otherwise TikTok, Reddit and even Lemmy would’ve been blocked long ago, that’s the argument being made. That said, nothing like this has ever happened before, so maybe this could serve as a precedent for a new series of legislations.

        •  arthur   ( @arthur@lemmy.zip ) 
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          2514 days ago

          There is, the “Marco Civil da Internet” states that a business that works in Brazil needs to respect Brazil’s law, and non compliance may trigger block in it’s service by ruling. The representation don’t need to be on the country, the problem with Twitter is that they closed its offices here trying to avoid compliance in the first place. Elon is trying to enforce his views over Brazil’s law. To force a crisis IMHO.

          • Oh yeah, not the person you replied to directly, but it’s insanely obvious to me that this is YET ANOTHER PR stunt to make Elon look like he’s being targeted. ANY other international social media would have tried to resolve this quietly, the public probably wouldn’t even know.

          •  arthur   ( @arthur@lemmy.zip ) 
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            211 days ago

            Based on some opinion articles, there’s something to add: Xitter is bleeding money, fast. Closing Brazil’s office may be just a business move to limit costs. Doing it this way may be a strategy to limit the damage of admitting that the business health is in bad shape. With the added benefits of attack Brazil’s institutions and causing chaos that could benefit the far-right here.

          • Elon is trying to enforce his views over Brazil’s law. To force a crisis IMHO.

            He’s trying to see how far he can push his bullshit.

            There is, the “Marco Civil da Internet” states that a business that works in Brazil needs to respect Brazil’s law, and non compliance may trigger block in it’s service by ruling.

            That’s the thing though, to my knowledge Twitter didn’t break any laws, they ignored an order to take down accounts from their website. You could make the argument that in ignoring that order they were going against the law, but that’s about it. And honestly, that’s not the first time that has happened, this time they just decided to block Twitter because Musk was being a little shit about it, again maybe this will serve as a precedent in the future.