Paying the fine and providing the user data basically renders the whole service pointless, right? It is better to be blocked in Brazil than to be useless everywhere I guess.

VK was stolen from him and given to people who were friends with the regime.

So yes, VK is heavily monitored and controlled by Russian authorities and it seems a good deal of effort went into preventing that from happening again.

I think you're mistaken, unless there was an incredibly rapid sequence of events in this case.

https://static.poder360.com.br/2023/04/decisao-telegram-grup...

Seção Judiciária do Espírito Santo 1ª Vara Federal de Linhares [...] assinado por WELLINGTON LOPES DA SILVA

That would be a first instance (trial) court, not any kind of appellate court. (Though in the Federal judiciary rather than the state judiciary.)

What do you mean? Didn't they have an election that the incumbent lost (for very good reasons I might add, anyone who bungles the Covid response that bad doesn't deserve to remain in power regardless of anything else (and there was a lot of "else")) recently, implying democracy and all that?

Note: The original first amendment was: "WE DECLARE, That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that all power is inherent in the PEOPLE; and that all free governments are, and of right ought to be, founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and well being. For the advancement of these ends, the PEOPLE have, at all times, an indefeasible right to alter and reform their government."

That one was never ratified.

It was something to behold. Took a lot of guts to take the entire cabinet of ministers to task for failing to protect brazilians against errant bureaucracy. Too bad the video seems to not be in youtube anymore

Keep the far-right conspiracy theories in the sewer where they belong.

That's assuming the judge actually followed the law and the constitution, which isn't obvious at all in this case.

Do they have mandates for life?

They are not. Censorship is unconstitutional in Brazil, especially that of a political nature. Yet I don't think it's been a month since I last saw news of some politician being banned from holding office because they posted "fake news" online or something.

Basically the strategy now is to criminalize "fake news", accuse your opponents of spreading it and deplatform them because criminals can't hold political office. Show me the man, I'll show you the crime.

Of course it does, you can quantify the degree to which a country is authoritarian even if it has nominally democratic institutions like North Korea or Iraq under the Ba'ath party. To be sure, the word is bandied about a lot in political discourse as in the comment you replied to, but it is well-defined.

> a few days later the Supreme Court ordered the takedown of said article

What scandal are you referring to? I'd like to read about it. Let's make some Streisand magic happen!

Who draws the line? First Nazi propaganda spreaders, then gay rights activists?

Sounds extremely dangerous to have this kind of centralized control.

There are legitimate reasons to doubt Telegram like the lack of default end-to-end encryption but the Russian thing as a criticism of the app itself is overblown.

Yes, and they all agree it's crap. Just look at this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6915741 (Feel free to ignore Moxie, but listen to tptacek). In addition, it doesn't even matter since (a) it's not turned on by default and (b) it can't be turned on for group chats.

That said, I agree that Durov probably is not closely collaborating with the Russian state.

Chances are ALWAYS against regular people.

While in the same reality aggressively fight TOR, block VPNs, enforce passport registration, etc. etc. There's even a man jailed for running a tor node!

Their algorithm itself is proven and published, has been audited multiple times already.

It is not as good Double Ratchet in terms of features but security wise, it's solid.

Brazilian government is already speaking of giving judges and politicians total power to censor things on the internet. They're speaking of "autonomous internet supervision entities". Yeah.

The problem is, short of banning encryption altogether, you cannot prevent people from communicating in near perfect secrecy. If a criminal (or neo-Nazi, or homophobic, or whatever scapegoat you want to use) organization wants to communicate secretly, they will have means of doing so. All it takes is single programmer to write the custom application, and a single AWS instance to relay the data.

By banning Telegram or enforcing government rules, you're only taking away privacy from ordinary folks, while doing effectively nothing to those who you're claiming to fight against.

...and no, this is not an argument for banning encryption. I hope that part is obvious.

That's essentially contempt of court here in Brazil. They've blocked WhatsApp nationwide here before multiple times for that. WhatsApp, a messaging service pretty much every person here depends on.

Judges are basically gods here by the way. It's a common saying. "Doctors think they're gods, judges know it". Lawyers tell me that there's no need to comply with court orders when it is literally impossible to comply. The judges order your imprisonment anyway.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/05/03/whatsapp-...

I remember watching this shit in the news. They interviewed a judge, she was basically foaming at the mouth with rage. "Who do they think they are? Refusing to give us the data? Answering to us in english?" I loved it, I thought things were on the right track. I was wrong.

So, I wouldn't take anything they say at face value. It's not only about giving out the information they have on these individuals, it's also about shutting down other similar groups according to the court order. I'm not a free speech absolutist, I think that no platform should harbor Nazism and death threats, particularly after they have already resulted in murder. If they fundamentally cannot comply with this, then they should be banned indeed.

I'm glad I got to experience the true internet. It was great while it lasted. Truly a wonder of humanity.

My honest response to this would be: “yes, if they want to do business in said country”. Otherwise we end up where we’ve been, with Facebook being the sole way to access internet in some places. Why should an organization seeking to make a profit hold more sway than the institutions that allow such a profit to be made in the first place (not to mention the protection of their citizens).

To be clear, I realize that in practice, many governments don’t operate in as much good faith as I’d like. But I’d also argue that’s largely due to business holding outsized sway across the globe.

> There's far more provinces with some lawmaking capability. How logistically do we even begin to figure out how to obey each & every single local rule?

There is no inherent right to do business internationally. Requiring that companies adhere to the laws wherever they choose to operate is hardly unreasonable. If they cannot comply — if the logistics are too expensive — then obviously they’re not successful enough to expand into these new countries.

But the idea that companies — where the ultimate goal is profit — should outrank governments — where the ultimate goal is a functioning society — seems ludicrous when stated plainly. The fact that our current society is largely modeled by outsized corporate influence is proof of that.

One can argue that not all governments, or even most, seek a functioning society in the way I’ve described. But even then, one must realize that the governments in question are beholden to corporate interests.

All the way back to the East India Company and beyond, one can demonstrate that globalized corporate influence harms society. So these are hardly ridiculous questions to ask.

If your area has stupid beef, it's on you to handle your shit & make it so

Yeah yeah, nothing is ever our problem, it's always someone else's problem and other people's problems are stupid. Do you not realize how head-up-the-ass that sounds? A lot of regular people hate techies because they celebrate disruption and software 'eating the world' (including many people's livelihood and communities) while shrugging off any kind of collective responsibility.

What about when some group of people have legitimate beef?

Fortunately, nobody is forcing them to do business in Russia. But doing so entails acceptance of whatever local rules there are, including rules the vast majority of people might consider wrong.

I can promise you that Facebook & Co happily hand information on any individual to US law enforcement as long as there is a court order. They don't look at the person in question and then decide based on their own sense of morality whether they "should" supply that information. They simply do it.

These simple declarations of what people feel is true and right are ... I dunno, is the right expression "charmingly naive"?

Because this was literally a nazi group called ""卐 Frente Anti-Semita 卐""

The current government isn't like the last one, that actually used the intelligence machine to attack opposition voices.

Law kind of exists.