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X working again in Brazil as Elon Musk finds way around ban (using Cloudflare) (bbc.co.uk)
15 points by trollied 54 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 28 comments



Why didn't Musk attempt the same when India and Turkey did their version of it? Is Brazil worse than them?

>In India, which is immersed in an autocratic drift that for months has been choking the media, journalists and critical voices, Twitter has also seconded government bans. To justify the consent, Musk said: “The rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict, and we can’t go beyond the laws of a country,” and in doing so put his staff at risk, he added. “If we have a choice of either our people going to prison or us complying with the laws, we will comply with the laws.” This justification came after Twitter removed content related to a BBC documentary that was highly critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which was blocked in January by the Indian government.

https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el...


Because those countries have laws that back their decisions. We don't. We are a democracy, we have laws - and there are no laws that allows the decisions this judge is taking.

Elon is not questioning our laws, or India or Turkey. He is questioning that the judge is not following our laws and he's right.


Brazilian Marco Civil da Internet[1], the local Internet law, stipulates providers must provide records if presented a court order (Art. 10, § 1º). It also says (Art. 12) failure to comply may lead to the following sanctions, in that order: I - formal warning, II - fines up to controlling group 10% total revenue, III - temporary suspension and IV - activity shutdown at last. So in fact there is proper legal coverage.

[1]. https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2011-2014/2014/lei...


This part of the Marco Civil talks about logs, and that's not what the judge is requesting. The judge is requesting that social network profiles to be taken down, without telling the person that got the profile taken down the reason - which removes their ability to defend theirselves in the court.


IIRC the reasons are detailed in a document[1] that was already shared here before. TL;DR - It appears after the January 8 coup d'état attempt in Brazil, it was opened an investigation to identify who coordinated and who participated in the coup. Then some xitter profiles started a coordinated threat and doxxing campaign against police investigators who took this case. So the brazilian supreme court ordered xitter to provide information and block seven profiles involved in this doxxing campaign, what it refused to do.

[1]. https://static.poder360.com.br/2024/09/decisao-stf-x.pdf (Portuguese)


> It appears after the January 8 coup d'état attempt in Brazil

There was no attempt of coup d'état in Brazil, just a bunch of stupid people protesting and breaking public buldings, just like several other groups, for different reasons did the same in the past.

> it was opened an investigation

The investigation itself is illegal, because it's investigating people that should not be investigated by that branch of justice. Our supreme court only judges constitutional matters and politicians on the federal level, not regular citizens.

> Then some xitter profiles started a coordinated threat and doxxing campaign against police investigators who took this case.

That's also false, nobody ever attacked the police.

> So the brazilian supreme court ordered xitter to provide information and block seven profiles involved in this doxxing campaign, what it refused to do.

Which there are no base in the law, which it's the problem being pointed here.

Unlike "Common Law" countries, in Brazil judges can only do what the law says they can do. There's absolutely NOWHERE in our law, that says if someone commits something, their social network profile will be blocked.


Can't wait to see the blast radius if the judge decides to block CloudFlare


My understanding is that Brazil's government uses CloudFlare because its sites kept falling to DDOS attacks it couldn't block. If that's accurate, blocking CloudFlare would open the government to DDOS attacks again.


Like I said, I can't wait to see the blast radius.


They have other options in practice. If they have the means to block Cloudflare, they also have the means to prevent Twitter domains from resolving. (DoH can be blocked too without a big outage)


They don't need any of that..

They just need to send a court order to Cloudflare to have then block Twitter..

That is pretty much what already happened and Cloudflare already replied informing they will isolate Twitter IP range from the rest of the customers..

By this time tomorrow it will be blocked again..


Cloudflare is notorious for protecting criminals using their service. We'll see what happens in practice, but if they simply comply without any resistance, I'd be surprised.


not only they did not offered any resistance.. but they were the ones that reached out and offered to comply without even requiring a specific court order..

when i posted they had already announced they would comply to the block, i wa referring to that..

that they isolated twitter traffic to 2 specific ip address that can easily be blocked.. the block is already in place for the big ISPs and the rest should have it blocked by the end of day..


Probably easier to impound some CloudFlare assets, if any available. But any blocking would follow an escalation process. X itself was only blocked as an remedy of last resort, after months refusing to abide by court decision, refusing to pay fines and firing all employees and self-nuking its own local presence to avoid compliance at all costs. It was even reported[1] X refused to honor severance pay to the employees fired.

[1] https://www.correiobraziliense.com.br/economia/2024/09/69349... (Portuguese)


Wasn't the court threatening to start penalizing the local X ee's as the only local target they had for enforcement actions?

"The social media giant published pictures of a document allegedly signed by Moraes which says a daily fine of 20,000 reais ($3,653) and an arrest decree would be imposed against X representative Rachel Nova Conceicao if the platform did not fully comply to Moraes' orders. 'To protect the safety of our staff, we have made the decision to close our operation in Brazil, effective immediately,' X said."

https://www.reuters.com/technology/x-close-operations-brazil...


Being an alien he could be extradited if the judge deems so


I believe Musk is a naturalized citizen of the U.S. The legal status of alien refers to one who has not gone through the naturalization process, IIRC.

I'm sure Brazil could attempt to have anyone extradited, regardless of citizenship status.

Whether the US would honor that request or be in any way obligated to is beyond my understanding of the law.


[flagged]


> I know people are cheering Musk's breaking the law. They'll continue cheering until he's breaking their laws.

The billions of people living under authoritarian regimes will be cheering doubly hard at that point.

I don't know enough about the Brazil situation to know who's in the right on that one (other than that I assume that Twitter is in continuing compliance with US law?), but it's a virtual certainty that Twitter is not complying with - say - Iranian law, and that's a huge win for the people of Iran.

This stuff is more nuanced than "I think that Musk is [good / bad], therefore I [support / oppose] everything he touches". I'm no fan of Musk, but I won't suddenly turn on basic democratic values and norms because I feel compelled to signal that I think the Twitter man is icky.


> The billions of people living under authoritarian regimes will be cheering doubly hard at that point

Musk picks and chooses which regimes he supports.


> I know people are cheering Musk's breaking the law

He's not breaking the law, the judge is. There are no laws in Brazil that back his decisions.


The case went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court backed the judge's decision. Also, Brazil's Congress can remove the judge from the bench, and they have not.

Given that state of affairs, how do you claim the judge is breaking the law?


The judge itself is a supreme court justice. Yes, the Brazilian senate can remove the judge, but the current government backs the judge and give money to congress members to use in their constituency, in returns to get their vote on issues, and that includes to prevent the impeachment of the judge.

So yes, the judge is breaking the law, simply because there's nothing in the law that says, for example, that the punishment for something, is the suspension of their social network profile.

That would be analog for cutting the vocal cords of a person that commits an opinion crime. It would be wrong IF we have that in our laws, but we don't.

If someone commit a crime, you punish for the crime. If they commit again, you increase the punishment and so on. There's nothing that can be done to prevent someone on commiting an opinion crime.


> but the current government backs the judge and give money to congress members to use in their constituency, in returns to get their vote on issues, and that includes to prevent the impeachment of the judge

In other words, the judge is not breaking the law.

What I think I'm hearing you say is you disagree with your checks-and-balances government's application of law, local attempts to change that law has failed for reasons, so now you support vigilantism in order to get around the law you believe was misapplied. And you support a foreign entity to enact that vigilantism on the populace's behalf?

Be careful. Brazil isn't recognized as being an authoritarian regime. You may support Musk is breaking this law, but you may not be very happy with what law(s) he decides to break next.


> In other words, the judge is not breaking the law.

This doesn't even make sense, the fact congress doesn't do it's job does not mean the judge is not breaking the law.

> What I think I'm hearing you say is you disagree with your checks-and-balances government's application of law, local attempts to change that law has failed for reasons, so now you support vigilantism in order to get around the law you believe was misapplied.

There are no applications of the law, they are just not doing their job period. And "vigilantism" is exactly what the judge is doing.

> Be careful. Brazil isn't recognized as being an authoritarian regime.

It just takes one 10 minutes to learn that Brazilian has an authoritarian justice system.


What a strange thing to say.


It literally makes zero sense.


If the Supreme Court says the decision is in accordance with law - and they're the ones with the legal authority to make that assessment, and the Congress has done nothing to reprimand the Supreme Court and overrule their assessment, then the judge's decision, by definition, is in accordance with law.

The problem as I see it is you disagree with that assessment.

People disagree in democracies, it's a defining feature. There are good reasons to disagree with the judge's decision and its legality. That doesn't change the fact that the people having the power vested in them by the state think otherwise and are supporting the decision.

Appealing to a vigilante like Musk to settle your internal disagreements is not a wise move, my friend.

Seek another path.


> If the Supreme Court says the decision is in accordance with law - and they're the ones with the legal authority to make that assessment, and the Congress has done nothing to reprimand the Supreme Court and overrule their assessment, then the judge's decision, by definition, is in accordance with law.

That's completely false and not how the law works in Brazil.

> The problem as I see it is you disagree with that assessment.

Because it's just plain false.

> Appealing to a vigilante like Musk to settle your internal disagreements is not a wise move, my friend.

Nobody is appealing for Musk, he's just one, of several people affected by that and reacting.




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