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Starlink is refusing to comply with Brazil's X ban (Update: Starlink will comply)
(www.engadget.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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Do people here not generally dislike government censorship? The root of this seems to be x refusing the country's government's demands to ban certain people
Try typing the word "cisgender" into Twitter.
Don't have or plan to get twitter, care to enlighten me?
https://www.advocate.com/news/cisgender-restriction-x-twitter
That's pretty disgusting
Well, they called it a slur. That's good enough a reason.
That's why I don't like the idea of censoring slurs. Anything can be one.
If some chap at X, determining which word is considered a slur, says, "I watched a YouTube video with telling someone else not to call them 'cisgender'.", that's probably good enough to add it to the list, while most of them not actually matching the dictionary definition for "slur".
The point comes as to where to draw the line and the company gets to choose.
It's not a slur, is the thing. Not any more than "transgender" is and, in fact, less so.
They know this but they are pretending otherwise, as if Elongated Muskrat were a power mad 1990s forum moderator.
Welcome to modern society. Everybody loves to pretend.
The people pretending to be offended by some random mistaken word uttered by another.
Those pretending to care about something that they are using "politically correct" words for.
Microsoft pretending to care about OSS, in the hopes of getting some highly performant devs.
...
Yes, it's not a slur. But someone told another person to not call them a "cis woman" on camera and now it is whatever, you call it.
The thing is, I dislike censorship in general. Corporate or government. Yes it's the corp's prerogative, but we're allowed to criticize corporate censorship and hypocrisy regarding censorship.
I don't get why people defend censorship by powerful/monopolistic companies run by billionaires while criticizing censorship by the government. They're not that different.
My personal opinion is that for "edge cases" like cisgender, I should be the one who decides what "slurs" I see or don't see on the feed, rather than some shmuck twitter mod who watched a YouTube video or whatever.
Well, you have that choice on Lemmy. Even if a mod deletes a comment, you still get to see it in the Mod Log.
And this is how their^[implying X, Reddit etc.] empires fall.
I mean it's still not an edge case. It's just not.
Like, insert that "That's not how this works, that isn't how any of this works" meme here.
yes, that's why I put it in quotes. However given the diversity of culture and language there's still going to be slurs that the predominantly English speaking mods will not be aware of, so users should be able to set their own filters.
I won't get that either.
But unlike the Government, which is at least, supposed to care about us when making their policies,
the companies don't. Whatever gets them more money^[No idea about X though, it seems to love losing everything] is what wins.
Well, said companies will realise in time^[once the Federation evens (or at least smooths down a bit) the playing field] when it hurts them where they care about and will have to consider changing stances.
X doesn't seem to have any issue censoring accounts for Musk's autocratic buddies like Erdogan, so let's not try and pretend that he's above caving in to government censorship. He's just pissed off in this case that he's being asked to do it in a way that would hurt his friends in Brazil. The site has been called out over the last several years multiple times for refusing to take any steps to moderate misinformation spread by Bolsonaro and his political allies in attempts to undermine democracy and influence the results of the last election, like the endless claims of electronic voting being insecure in the lead up to the last elections, Bolsonaro's COVID denialism and many other examples.
Absolutely not trying to take the side of musk here, dude's a shitter. Fact of the matter remains the government in this case is using its power to remove people from the public eye, I would dislike that regardless of what platform or who was refusing to do it
These aren't people, they're accounts. And the accounts in question appear to have been coordinating the attack on the Brazilian congressional office in 2023. This is comparable to, say, the traffic on Parlor shortly before the J6 riot in the US.
Organized violence would not be tolerated as "free speech" in Brazil or the US. No government or civilian authority considers active insurrection a protected category of speech. These accounts were effectively coordinating a military coup. They weren't just trash talking the new President and his party.
Blocking traffic from an enemy military force is a military response to a rival military operation. And Musk's refusal to shut the accounts down amounts to taking a side in a military campaign.
Is it from a foreign country trying to take over? In which case that does change things, had assumed this was some kind of revolution from within the country
Is it though? Refusing to take a side isn't the same as taking a side. You should never be obligated to remove content the government doesn't like, you should merely be required to provide data about accounts to local authorities to assist in investigations. If someone is posting illegal content, they should be accountable to the law, but it should always be the host's discretion whether to remove that content.
He's been outspoken in his support for the Bolsonaro movement
And that's fine, and I certainly disagree with Musk on that. However, it's only an issue if the platform discriminates content due to that bias.
It is well established that the right to free speech is NOT unlimited, and the "fire in a crowded theater" people tend to be the loudest complainers. Brazil is a sovereign nation entitled to its own interpretation of how to handle free speech protections, and X has repeatedly made the claim they obey the laws of the countries in which it operates.
Also, it's disingenuous of anybody to take X's side on this over free speech when the past two years they have complied with basically every single request from every government for personal identifying information for any user. People are serving multi-decade prison sentences for their speech because X has refused to stand up to, for example, the government of Saudi Arabia when demanding the identities of state critics.
So it's okay to kowtow to governments when they want to violate the right to privacy, but not when they want to shut down speech which is outside a sovereign nation's definition of free speech? And let's be clear - we were talking about 7 users.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say it's reasonable for a company to violate ONE right for a government under absolutely unethical circumstances and not another under SLIGHTLY debatable circumstances and expect anybody to take your position seriously. X is not a freedom fighter, and it's not an actor for justice. It's a partisan cesspool run by a man who is stacking the deck for the side he wants when it serves his interests.
I'm by no means defending musk or X. I think they shouldn't have banned those users and also think they shouldn't have revealed info about users who are not actively threatening to hurt someone
My statement was that in general it concerns me that governments are able to silence anybody in this way, which is where federation comes in handy
You make it seem like this is an epidemic of silencing.
First of all, this was 7 users. Secondly, it was such a controversial request that it had to be escalated all the way to the country's Supreme Court. Thirdly, the request and its consequences were then reevaluated, and all 5 members of the Supreme Court review unanimously upheld the decision.
There's obviously no such thing as a perfect system, but that is about as close to a fair review process as one can get, and I would argue it's better than the alternatives of "the whims of the platform owner" or "completely unmoderated anarchy".
Furthermore, they're NOT silenced. This is deplatforming. Absolutely NOTHING is stopping these 7 people from setting up their own Mastodon instances and writing whatever they want. That's not an option for the jailed dissidents X turned over.
Lastly, Brazil is a sovereign democratic nation within its rights to enforce its laws as it sees fit within its borders, and if the people find it that egregious they can change their leaders. X is an unaccountable cudgel of a single man who is taking it upon himself to conduct his own judicial review of the laws of a sovereign nation and act with impunity. If he were a nation, this would be an act of war. The sheer gall of it is utterly appalling.
Is this another country using x to recruit people for their takeover or people from inside the country?
I'm going to assume it's from within otherwise it's a moot point and they should obviously be blocked
However I would argue that speaking out against the government is the most important thing to protect, that's kinda the whole point it exists
If they're threatening/planning violent crime out in the open they're pretty dumb and makes it easy for the country to arrest them for it once they have enough evidence they're actually planning to do it, banning them off social media is not the solution imo
Again, as I said I'm not in any way endorsing X or saying it's a freedom fighter, not saying they haven't done terrible anti freedom of speech things, just that this kind of behaviour from governments towards any social media platform would concern me
Well, you are forgetting another category, which is incitement to violence. That falls under the same blanket speech as the aforementioned "yelling fire in a crowded theater", and in 2024, the law is far, far behind the danger that this poses in most countries, limiting most governments in many cases to trying to stop each individual act inspired by the source rather than being able to go after the source directly. Someone does not have to directly commit violence to be responsible for it, and while I COMPLETELY agree with you that this IS a slippery slope that COULD be abused, in this case, the entire process is transparent and public with multiple exhausted avenues for appeal, and in the end, it doesn't even SILENCE the users in question OR request they change their speech or ideas, it simply denies them access to a particular platform. As to the banning of X, even if you disagree with the particular banning of these 7 accounts, the removal from the country isn't so much about free speech element as the idea that X has made it clear and public that they have no intention of obeying the law in Brazil, and it's unquestioned that there ARE times when it is absolutely clear that a government SHOULD have the right to shut down information. What if X had a post next week giving Lula's location, itinerary, security details, and clear lines of sight at a rally, and the government demanded legally that it be taken down? X has shown that if it disagrees with the legal judgement that this information should be taken down, they may refuse. It is totally reasonable for the Brazilian government NOT to accommodate the platform given its stance.
You know what you make a good point, I suppose if there's been appropriate chance for people to stop it from happening it's fair enough
We don't dislike government censorship of CSAM. it's all a spectrum based on the legitimacy of the government order and the legitimacy of the tech billionaire's refusal to abide.
Honestly, while I think CSAM is disgusting, I am kind of against government censorship of it. Some go so far as to ban anything resembling CSAM, including imagery that looks like it, but doesn't actually involve a real child. The problem is the abuse required to create it, but if that abuse didn't happen, there is no crime, and it should therefore be completely legal.
The same goes with free speech more broadly. The speech itself should never be illegal, but it should be usable as evidence of another crime. A threat of violence is the crime, and that should be prosecuted, but that shouldn't mean the government should force the host to censor the speech, that should be at the host's discretion. What the government can do is subpoena information relevant to the investigation, but IMO it shouldn't compel any entity to remove content.
That said, Brazilian law isn't the same as US law, and X and Space X should respect the laws of all of the countries in which they operate.
That's...actually a pretty reasonable take. Fuck Musk, but you've convinced me that government censorship is just a bad thing in general and that should apply to Musk as much as anyone else.
I do think there's a counter argument to be made that the resources involved in setting up fake accounts to spread bullshit are trivial compared to the resources required to track down and prosecute account owners for crimes, so in a practical sense banning accounts is possibly the only thing one can do (especially if the account owners are foreign). If you give lies the same freedom as truth, you tend to end up with 10 lies for every truth.
Op's take is not reasonable imo- if you think threats are harmful enough to prosecute they should also be harmful enough to censor.
Maybe a more soft form of censorship, such as hiding them behind a cw and a "user was vanned for this post" label rather than outright removal, but you can't just do nothing.
Prosecution implies a trial before punishment. Censorship is immediate punishment based solely on the judgment of the authorities. That's not a minor difference.
Exactly. If a judge states that an individual is no longer allowed on SM, then I absolutely understand banning the account and removing their posts. However, until justice has been served, it's 100% the platform's call, and I think platforms should err on the side of allowing speech.
I realize I'm jumping back and forth between sides here, but that's because it's a complex problem and I haven't made my mind up. But that said, to return to the previous point...if you need a court order to ban every spammer and troll, you'll drown in spam and propaganda. The legal system can't keep up.
I'm not saying companies should need a court order, only that they should only be obligated to remove content by a court order, and ideally they'd lean toward keeping content than removing it. I think it's generally better for platforms to enable users to hide content they don't want to see instead of outright removing it for everyone. One person's independent journalism is another person's propaganda, and I generally don't trust big tech companies with agendas to decide between the two.
I'm willing to bet the people that government wanted were not infact posting CSAM, I'm pretty sure even x would ban them of its own volition pretty quickly if they were doing that
They weren't, it was just the example at the furthest end of the spectrum. But your framing of "if it was REALLY bad, Twitter would ban it" can not be the solution. We have legitimate governments tasked with governing based on the will of the people, it's not better to just let Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg decide the law.
They would ban it if was really bad because it's illegal for that stuff to exist and they will face much more serious issues as a company if they don't remove it, they're not doing it out of the goodness of they're hearts
Also not a good look for a company to be hosting that stuff in general for their PR, which is determined entirely by the general population's reaction to their actions and not a small group of individuals in powerful positions