The craziest thing is it's working. I live in Brazil (unfortunately, I guess) and yet the only place I even see discussion about this is on Hacker News of all places. The Telegram block is pretty good tech-wise, it's not just DNS-level like some other countries do, to circumvent it you _have_ to use a proxy.
It's also crazy this is happening almost at the same time the US has the EARN IT act back. The west has some serious threats to digital freedom right now, and the solution (for now) is not more technology, it's protest and democracy (if that's even a thing nowadays).
Anyway, it's a good time to teach friends and family how to use tor, VPNs, Fediverse, maybe even crypto (if your currency completely collapsing is possible).
We, as an industry, should have from the start built the internet to be decentralized, secure, private, by default. It's too late for that now, the boat has sailed, but there's still time to prevent it from getting even worse.
Oh yeah, and if you're reading this from anywhere in the world where this kind of thing is not a worry right now, please consider:
> the only place I even see discussion about this is on Hacker News of all places
This is all over the news and social media but it's impossible to discuss anything in those spaces. Even here on HN people created sockpuppet accounts to call me out. Not even kidding.
> Even here on HN people created sockpuppet accounts to call me out.
Lots of political and financial interests behind it. For them it's existential as they can't survive in a free and decentralized space even with paid content and bots.
The interesting tidbit here is that congresspeople, both leaders and small fry types, were parroting a line that went "if we don't pass this censorship law, the Supreme Court is going ahead and dropping an even bigger hammer".
The Supreme Court kneecapped Lula in the late 00s and early 10s, arrested his lead cadres and led to his party's decay -- until Lula himself was arrested. They did this by importing theories by German theorists that were never part of our law intellectual traditions, let alone our laws. Then in the late 10s they started arresting bloggers for insulting the Court -- directly, taking on police powers. Now they're with Lula, and further expanding their sweeping powers. I'm scared to even post this. I mean, much of Congress is scared -- they've got people there by the balls.
They're judge kings and they're running the country. Whatever whims they write on documents is law because police obeys. I'm very scared too. My own family has told me to my face to stop posting online because they fear I could get arrested. I still can't get over how fucked up that is.
Telegram itself sent a message to all its brazilian users speaking out against the censorship law they're trying to pass. Government and supreme court ordered Telegram to delete it and to retract their words or face a 72 hour nation wide block and $100k per hour fines. They also ordered Telegram representatives to testify before federal police.
They were forced to send a new message to users saying "the previous message was flagrant and illicit disinformation against national congress, the judiciary, the state and brazilian democracy" because it "fraudulently distorted the discussion and debate" in an attempt to "induce users to coerce their representatives".
The "talk to your representatives" calls to action I usually see here on HN in discussions of US political matters? That's coercion now. They're making users coerce their representatives, apparently.
This seems like democracy is dead in Brazil. If the brazilian court has such perfect monopoly on truth and can decide that much, why bother holding elections at that point. Since in any election most parties are saying different things, the court can just ban all the others for misinformation and give power to the party they agree with. Better yet, they can rename themselves "King's Council" and take one of theirs as King, since truth is already known and rest is "illicit disinformation"
In political science Liberal/Illiberal doesn't mean socially Progressive/Conservative, it means Open/Restricted from a civil liberties standpoint.
This is why you can have right leaning Illiberal Democracies like Turkïye, Serbia, and Hungary as well as left leaning Illiberal Democracies like Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico, and also why you can have conservative leaning liberal democracies like South Korea, Denmark, or Japan and progressive leaning liberal democracies like Canada, Norway, or New Zealand.
I never heard about Illiberal Democracy. Wikipedia definition differs from yours and even Wikipedia is not sure about what it is[0]
>There is a lack of consensus among experts about the exact definition of illiberal democracy or whether it even exists
I would stop using left/right as a description in politics. For example ruling party in Hungary is socialist, which means it cannot be right wing party no matter what they claim.
I think it's pretty clear what the term means. It means that nominally the institutions that are meant to protect civil liberties exist, but some person or group has managed to put their hands on enough levers that they can dictate the workings of those institutions.
Like Russia, for example. They have elections for government, and they have institutions that are meant to ensure that the government doesn't have a monopoly on power. In practice however one person has an absolute hold on power, to the point that people who criticize him tend to fall out of windows a lot. That doesn't happen in the US for example. You can trash Biden all you want, no one's gonna show up at your house to murder you.
1. The primary definition that is used in PoliSci is the one Fareed Zakaria coined in his paper in Foreign Affairs in 1997 [0].
2. "Socialism" is an economic not a social philosophy. Note how I said "Socially Progressive/Conservative" not economically.
Outside the US+Canada and increasingly the UK, there is a consensus among both Cultural Progressive and Cultural Conservatives that welfare programs can and should be expanded. It is a major pillar of both Christian and Islamic religious political thought (traditionally, capitalism was viewed as negatively due to ursury being a sin - this was the position of the Catholic Church until the 60s).
This is why the German Welfare state (Staatssozialismus) was started by Otto con Bismarck [1] with support from the Prussian nobility as a way to undercut the labor movement in late 19th century Germany. This same doctrinal evolution is used to this day by Socially Conservative parties like the CDU, Likud, BJP, AKP, Fidesz, and the PiS, as well as by Socially Right leaning autocratic leaders like Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin.
3. The line you cite from the Wikipedia article is incorrect. Even the citation used by that line conflicts with what was written. On a separate note, this wiki page should be restricted editing wise - it looks like it is being given bad faith edits on both sides of the aisle (sadly unsurprising as most people only first heard of the term "Illiberal Democracy" in the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential Election, so it's now a victim of culture wars as well).
For what is worth, Benito Mussolini was a key figure of the Italian socialist party before founding the fascist party, which is the quintessential example of right wing party.
More than one totalitarian government has been democratically elected. Putin was. So was Chavez. When you vote for someone strong to run your country, you may get more of what you voted for than you like.
This is not about liberty. If you cannot advocate against government policies/laws, what is the point of elections. How can you have elections if the great court solely decides what is truth. It can just punish others for "illicit disinformation". How is this different from a monarchy?
I agree completely and I've said that here on HN many times even despite downvotes. The censorship here began with last year's elections and has only been ramping up since then. The government wants what it wants and it will corrupt, destroy or silence anyone who opposes them. We're living under some sort of quasi-communist judiciary dictatorship. It sickens me to my soul to hear the word "democracy" come out of these people's mouths. Even North Korea calls itself a democracy...
> the court can just ban all the others for misinformation and give power to the party they agree with
That's exactly what they're doing. They've removed from office and made ineligible politicians over "disinformation". They accuse their opponents of the crime of "fake news" and then deplatform them. These all powerful judges who never received a single vote and are aligned with the ruling party.
I wonder if one of these days dang's gonna get a message from these fucking people because of my posts.
Sadly people everywhere seem to support erosion of freedoms if their opponents get oppressed. All kinds of freedoms can be eroded as long as you can sell them as being used to hurt the "bad guys", whatever the bad guys means in any country.
That's just human nature, tribalism justifies everything. It's why echo chambers are so appealing to so many people, and why they devolve into meme-slinging and a lack of critical thought.
> It's why echo chambers are so appealing to so many people
When I realized just how much of an echo chamber I built myself a few years ago, I essentially forced myself to develop a habit of seeking out "the other sides" opinions. One of the better decisions in my life.
Echo chambers and political tribalism are one thing. Government and courts using police forces to coerce your speech is quite another. Uncritical discourse is sad but it does not excuse this blatant censorship.
Yeah courts unilaterally deciding what political advocacy is disinformation or not is just a monarchy in disguise. It is just like the King deciding what is good for the Kingdom .By the way your comments on the current situation in Brazil have been so eye opening to me as an outsider. I did my own research and the more I read, the more shocked I become.
If Telegram was a social media company with algorithmic content recommendation systems, you could argue it was penalizing one side in favor of the other one. If that was the case I'd agree with you but it's not the case. Telegram is a messaging app, like signal and whatsapp. Its users are the ones doing the influencing, not the company itself.
The election is already over anyway. This episode is just Lula and his people making good on his campaign promise to "regulate" the internet by censoring it.
I don't think they did anything of the sort during the elections. Only now that the brazilian government is trying to pass laws that could very well drive them out of the country did they make their own position clear.
This has also happened to WhatsApp by the way. Judges blocked WhatsApp nation wide for days because it failed to provide plain text user messages in a criminal investigation. Zuckerberg posted his opinion about it on Facebook.
> Its users are the ones doing the influencing, not the company itself.
That is absolutely not true. Telegram the company itself (not a user or users) mass-sent the propaganda message to all users of the platform in the country. That is a chilling overstep by a company that is supposed to be a neutral carrier.
Pffft, what? No it isn’t. What a ludicrous thing to say.
Telegram may not be some shining paragon of freedom, but it seems pretty obvious that Brazil (like many other nations) is shifting towards naked despotism.
It’s a bad response to a real and bad problem that I’m afraid there’s no good ( practical ) solution.
The misinformation and populist propaganda is those platforms, it’s so spread out that has real world consequences. That’s why the current powers have to acknowledge the problem.
The world views and “post-democracy” stuff spread by ( mostly) Russian and Chinese operations are wild!! And they are sophisticated enough to craft their message to different parts of the world. ( in Europe and the Us, is posts fomenting racial divisions) the other parts of the world as far as I can tell it’s how the West it’s bad, controls everything and turns your son gay.
Another related interesting news: A Whatsapp board member has joined the current government in Brazil
https://www1-folha-uol-com-br.translate.goog/mercado/2023/05....
At least for me, this raises serious questions about Whatsapp integrity - why would it have such a close relationship white a government that is walking towards a totalitarian path and censoring competitors left and right? My guess is that it is much more prone to comply with government requests than the others
this law has less teeth than the digital millennium act, which the US had for decades.
it's only for group chats. and only for things that are already illegal (racism, etc) and fake news such as defined (openly and publicly) by the courts, on a case by case.
goal is to prevent another January 8th (Brazil's January 6th).
...and what is this newspaper about?!?
their front page reads "Opinion: Tucker Carlson is about to revolutionize world journalism By Daniel Lopez (Opinion)".... weird content for "rio".
> and fake news such as defined (openly and publicly) by the courts, on a case by case
And you see no problem with that? You see no problem at all with these judges essentially declaring anything they don't believe in to be a crime?
Besides, this law is mostly irrelevant. It's serving only to make it painfully obvious to all brazilians and the whole world how far gone this country is. This law is merely an attempt to legitimize what the judge-kings are already doing ever since last year's elections. Censorship is already unconstitutional and they don't give a shit. What's a little law to people who get away with unconstitutional acts? It's nothing... If this bill doesn't pass, they can just enforce it as if it had passed. They're the supreme court. No one's above them. The law is whatever they write in a document because police does what the document says.
> goal is to prevent another January 8th (Brazil's January 6th).
Protests shouldn't be "prevented". People have occupied Brasília before and no one spoke of "preventing" anything back then. Even Brazil's communist parties spoke out against the government's framing of the protesters as terrorists because it will obviously come back to bite them in the future. It's likely that the acts of vandalism were a false flag operation anyway since there's leaked security camera footage showing Lula's people assisting the vandals.
> and what is this newspaper about?
I apologize for that. I wanted to post a better one but this was the only english language source I found covering this bit of news at this point in time.
You see no problem in companies letting people use their platform indiscriminately to coordinate school shootings, riots and extremist groups?
> Protests shouldn't be "prevented".
Are nazi rallies or KKK gatherings categorized as "protests"? The people you mention, a minority, spent 3 months rallied across the country asking for military intervention, the opposition to be arrested or killed with nothing more than hopes and dreams because their candidate lost.
> camera footage showing Lula's people assisting the vandals
> You see no problem in companies letting people use their platform indiscriminately to coordinate school shootings, riots and extremist groups?
I have no problem with unrestricted and fully encrypted anonymous communications at all. Every human being should be free to exchange ideas, no matter what they are. I'm not about to turn nazism into thought crime because that requires accepting the idea of thought crime in the first place.
The limit of tolerance is exceeded only when things escalate to violence. Everything you cited? The solution is heavy policing and weapons for the population so it can defend itself. Amazingly enough, there's talk of arming school personnel... It's gonna be ironic if the same people who said violence is solved by giving books to criminals end up gaining the right to bear arms for their own self-defense.
> Are nazi rallies or KKK gatherings categorized as "protests"?
Depends.
> The people you mention, a minority, spent 3 months rallied across the country asking for military intervention
So what? They can ask for whatever they want. They should not be censored just because you find it outrageous. As long as they're being pacific they should be able to continue.
They don't believe the election's results. As far as they're concerned, TSE staged its own intervention when it started almost unilaterally censoring Bolsonaro's supporters. Political censorship which is unconstitutional by the way. Who else do you turn to when the goddamn supreme court judges start shitting all over the constitution? By now it's become clear these judge-kings are running the country. That ship has sailed.
Also I don't think voting machine fraud is some impossible conspiracy theory either. It's hard to discuss this matter with laymen who don't even know what source code is but I convinced at least one person here on HN that there's a potential supply chain vulnerability in the voting machines. It's not "unquestionable and perfect" as the judge claims.
> Where is the source?
Videos were leaked to the CNN. It was around the time Lula went to China and publicly blamed Ukraine for the invasion. Shows Lula's people interacting with and assisting the vandals and just basically doing a whole lot of nothing about them. I have no doubt it was a false flag operation to justify the criminalization of the opposition.
This whole ordeal with Telegram started precisely because of this. Free speech shouldn't be a cover to hate speech and criminal conduct, take it from Germany, who is dealing with it still to this day and will for the foreseeable future [1], what you mention is a clear example of Paradox of tolerance[2].
> They can ask for whatever they want. They should not be censored just because you find it outrageous.
People are entitled to their own thoughts, but they weren't asking for every family to be fed properly or for everyone to get puppies, their actions ended up with riot, damage to public property, people injured and road blocks that prevented people to get medical attention in life threatening conditions.
> Shows Lula's people interacting with and assisting the vandals and just basically doing a whole lot of nothing about them.
You mean the staff with heavily ties with the previous government, and that was suggested by them? Were the people that invaded and vandalized the congress and the supreme court Lula supporters too?
I don't consider "hate speech" to be a legitimate concept either. Hate is a perfectly normal human emotion. Government has absolutely no right to regulate how people feel about anything. People should be able to express their feelings, whatever they may be. Offensive speech impacts reputation and free association, it should not lead to literal prison.
> take it from Germany
No. In this context, Germany is not an example to be followed. I don't want to live in a country that feels the need to "sanitize" everything to the point of censoring swastikas from media.
If you're gonna delete harmful ideas from existence, I demand that you start with communism which has led to misery and tyranny in every country it was ever tried. Communists are in power screwing up my country this very moment. Until they're no longer allowed to walk our soil with complete impunity, I won't accept the banishment of any other idea.
> their actions ended up with riot, damage to public property, people injured and road blocks that prevented people to get medical attention in life threatening conditions
And that's the point where intervention is warranted. Doesn't justify censoring them either, just restoring order. Even Bolsonaro called for that.
> Paradox of tolerance
This "paradox" is actually a different formulation of my original argument.
> I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies
> as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
> But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force
> for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument
> they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols
In other words, suppression by force is only ever warranted once the situation has escalated to actual violence. Exactly what I said in my post above.
> You mean the staff with heavily ties with the previous government, and that was suggested by them?
No.
> Were the people that invaded and vandalized the congress and the supreme court Lula supporters too?
The law is irrelevant compared to the bigger picture. If courts can force people/organizations to not advocate against laws, what is the point of elections and democracy. Why not just have a King? If everything is known to the great Court, why put up with the charade of democracy, since the new President might be full of "disinformation".
The great court isn't even made up of actual judges, by the way.
In Brazil, actual judges are selected by rigorous testing of law knowledge in a process known as concurso which roughly means contest. It's extremely competitive, applicants tend to be disciplined people who study many hours every day. People generally don't make it to a judge position without knowing their shit.
Supreme court judges aren't like that. They're just people appointed by politicians. The censorship-friendly judge who's ordering words into Telegram's mouth? He used to be the lawyer of one of Brazil's biggest drug trafficking gangs, PCC. Incidentally, that criminal organization supported the current president in last year's elections and was involved in a plot to torture and assassinate the judge who imprisoned him for corruption earlier this year. Supreme court ordered most of them released while many Brasília protesters are locked up to this day. It's surreal.
I suppose this is sarcasm, but it was talked about. Not in detailed depth, but the picture I got, many times over, was a far-right fascist wannabe that badly mismanaged the country, stole a lot, was disastrous for the environment, actually killed a lot of people through negligence, glorified military dictatorships, etc. was facing against a left-wing person that was literally in prison for corruption, and whose party has had a few other corruption scandals since that time.
Nobody was saying Lula is the good guy - he was the drastically less bad option than Bolsonaro.
Many journalists writing english language articles about Brazil are themselves brazilians. It's highly likely they're leftists too, so it's not surprising they presented that picture to you. I remember one instance of an american journalist reporting on brazilian affairs on live television: when Biden's CIA officials told our president not to question the voting machines. He was surprised that CIA people think they can openly tell the president of a sovereign country not to question his own elections. To me this was reason to suspect the CIA had compromised our voting machines.
I'd like to offer my own point of view as a counterpoint to the image painted by those journalists.
Bolsonaro is a loudmouth who needlessly offended a huge number of people by making light of COVID-19 deaths. He could have just shut up and allowed other people handle the matter but he just had to put his foot in his mouth. He's got this "myth" thing going on where he says needlessly outrageous things in public and everyone is awed by the sheer balls it takes to say such things in today's politically correct world. When he mocked COVID victims though it caused massive damage to his reputation. It was extremely disrespectful and accomplished nothing. In terms of actual death toll I don't think Brazil is any worse off than other countries but people still say he "genocided" the brazilian population. For that "crime" they wanted to try him like a nazi in Nuremberg. It's ridiculous.
I don't think he mismanaged the country. Considering the world wide economic meltdown caused by the war and the pandemic, he did alright. By the end of his mandate I had high hopes for the future. Now the current government is essentially undoing everything good he did out of spite and increasing taxes for good measure. I criticized his government and his ignorant handling of the pandemic but those problems seem so small now that we have literal communists in power.
By disastrous for the environment you must mean the amazon. It's not something I personally care about. I'd burn that entire jungle down if it brought us prosperity and development. Still I'd like to note the amazon was in much better shape under him than it is right now. Deforestation is a lot higher now, dunno why. Maybe Lula doesn't actually care either. His "solution" apparently consists of begging the king of england for money during his coronation while spending ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money on luxuries.
I apologize for that news source. I used it because it was the only website covering this bit of news at the time of submission. Perhaps there are better sources now.
It is so sad to see many people defending laws against fake speech. Do you all really want a "Ministry of Truth". Do you want the Government to decide what is true unilaterally, and block everything else as "illicit misinformation". How is this different from the USSR? By this logic the Stasi was just punishing people who spread "disinformation".
How do you contest an election in such an environment, if criticising government policy means "spreading disinformation". Telegram opposed a bill and they were forced to share the below message to their users:
"By determination of the STF, the company Telegram communicates: The previous message from Telegram characterized FLAGRANT and ILLEGAL DISINFORMATION offensive to the National Congress, the Judiciary, the Rule of Law and the Brazilian Democracy, because it fraudulently distorted the discussion and debates on the regulation of social network providers and private messaging services (Bill 2630), in an attempt to induce and instigate users to coerce parliamentarians"
Most communication is seen as dangerous by someone, and thus all communication done on centralized platforms that can be censored or monitored eventually will be.
Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp, and all the other centralized "secure chat" communications services are fundamentally the same when you zoom out a bit.
Free uncensored communication is more important than caving to friends demands. Use and promote decentralized communication solutions if you believe in democracy and free speech.
Technological solutions depend on the government having some kind of limit to their tyranny. Brazil at least has proved to have exactly zero limits. Same judge involved in this Telegram case recently ordered a politician to reveal the password to his phone -- ordered him to literally provide evidence against himself -- and came just short of holding him in contempt of court when the password failed to decrypt the phone. I assume the cryptanalysis by intimidation worked.
You all bite smth too fast. I live in Brazil, am a lawyer, work with technology and could not be happier the country is working towards a legislation that fights fake news spread and hate groups.
Who decides what is "fake news" or "hate speech"? In Canada there is a very real scandal involving our Prime Minister accepting money under the table from China, as well as him knowing about foreign interference in our elections and doing nothing.
According to him it's all anti-Chinese racism and hate speech.
Yes, everyone needs a "Ministry of Truth". Finally the great works of political scientist George Orwell are being appreciated and adopted by governments.
Once your perfect world comes, hour old account, we won't have to read beyond the headlines, will we? The government will decide what is true or not & will keep us safe from any potentially fake news.
The same gagging is happening to all the internet media companies in Brazil including Google and Meta, but we are not hearing about it because we are not allowed to hear about it except through side channels like this. Glen covered it in the later part of this episode.https://rumble.com/v2looka-system-update-79.html
New Law Sought by Brazil's Lula to Ban and Punish ‘Fake News’ And ‘Disinformation’ Threatens The Free Internet Everywhere. Many Nations seem poised to abandon the core lesson of the Enlightenment: no human institution can or should be trusted to decree Absolute Truth and punish dissent from it. (G. Greenwald. Feb. 25, 2023)
A lot of opportunists in Brazil want the Internet to be a place for against-the-law speechs. It is not censorship if a court rules a social media company to delete pages/messages/whatever that violates any law.
Telegram and Google, as companies, published misinformation. They did not publish their opinions or provide alternatives. They misrepresented the current law project.
You are free to publish your opinion on a movie, your code, your own selfie. You are not free to publish bullying content, fake content, or anything that harms others.
You make the wrong assumption that the truth on every issue is widely known and universally accepted.
> They misrepresented the current law project.
If criticising an ongoing bill is not allowed, how is it different from the USSR? If everyone has to agree to the government policy without exception, why do you need elections for? You can just let the Politburo (I mean the Great Supreme Court of Brazil) decide everything.
There is a good partial solution in the ordinary law: it is enough to strengthen the codes of ethics while regulating the presence and expression in the networks of politicians with a mandate.
Freedom of expression does not necessarily include the right to have your opinion amplified by powerful artificial means. Just as your right of self-defense does not include the use of nuclear weapons.
The principle of freedom of expression is about the right to say what you want at the top of your lungs. Radical political leaders with an open channel to their followers are the problem. With audacity and political will it is possible to tame them.
> Telegram and Google, as companies, published misinformation.
They didn't.
> You are free to publish your opinion on a movie, your code, your own selfie. You are not free to publish bullying content, fake content, or anything that harms others.
You're misrepresenting the current law project. Have you read it least? The 1st big problem is who will have the say in what is/isn't fake? The people backing this bill often spread lies and have zero commitment to truth and honesty. Fake news is everything that is inconvenient. Clearly, they have no issues with fake news when it supports them.
There is no place for a ministry of truth in a democratic system. I don't want my country to follow the Chinese example.
> It is not censorship if a court rules a social media company to delete pages/messages/whatever that violates any law.
What is being removed didn't violate any laws. Opinion and free speech is a constitutional and international right. The court orders were nonsensical and legal only because they came from the supreme court which is above everyone else so they can interpret things as they wish.
It's insane to have a supreme court overruling the legislative and the executive branches in a weekly basis. The supreme court actions are undemocratic and create dangerous precedents. It's slowly becoming a judicial dictatorship. Even elected representatives are afraid of them.
It's also crazy this is happening almost at the same time the US has the EARN IT act back. The west has some serious threats to digital freedom right now, and the solution (for now) is not more technology, it's protest and democracy (if that's even a thing nowadays).
Anyway, it's a good time to teach friends and family how to use tor, VPNs, Fediverse, maybe even crypto (if your currency completely collapsing is possible).
We, as an industry, should have from the start built the internet to be decentralized, secure, private, by default. It's too late for that now, the boat has sailed, but there's still time to prevent it from getting even worse.
Oh yeah, and if you're reading this from anywhere in the world where this kind of thing is not a worry right now, please consider:
https://snowflake.torproject.org/
https://support.torproject.org/