Brazil's X ban is coming to an end

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/30/24232573/brazil-x-twitter-ban-elon-musk

by arromatic • 2 years ago

9 5 2 years ago

So when X was banned for political reasons people cheered. But when Discord is banned for political reasons people freak out?

consumer4512• 2 years ago

How is it exactly that Discord was banned for political reasons?

blackeyeblitzar• 2 years ago

For reference, here is an article on the Turkey ban: https://www.reuters.com/technology/turkey-blocks-instant-mes...

The block comes after public outrage in Turkey caused by the murder of two women by a 19-year-old man in Istanbul this month. Content on social media showed Discord users subsequently praising the killing. Transport and infrastructure minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said the nature of the Discord platform made it difficult for authorities to monitor and intervene when illegal or criminal content is shared. "Security personnel cannot go through the content. We can only intervene when users complain to us about content shared there," he told reporters in parliament. "Since Discord refuses to share its own information, including IP addresses and content, with our security units, we were forced to block access."

To me, this reads less like a justifiable reason to ban Discord, and more like exploitation of some vague situations to justify a broad ban. But the real reason is in the last two sentences. The issue is that the state cannot monitor and control content, which is a power they use to suppress political opposition. It’s not surprising for Turkey to do this though - they do have legalized censorship.

As for Twitter/X: they comply with local laws wherever they operate, and have stated this publicly. So in Turkey, where censorship is legal, they’ve abided by the law. In Brazil, where it’s illegal and unconstitutional under article 5 part 10, Twitter/X has fought back against censorship. In Brazil’s case, there’s a judge issuing secret bans that keep political opposition from accessing social media, in relation to a past criminal incident, but instead of issuing charges relating to the incident this judge has taken it much further to blanket censorship of people. The comment you’re replying to is referring to the hypocrisy of people in social media (on Hacker News, Reddit, etc) cheering on Brazil’s new censorship regime, while attacking Turkey’s. But that might be happening because a lot of the same people dislike Musk more than they like free speech.

Brazil's X ban is coming to an end

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