Comment by chbint
1 year ago
What we're facing here is a distinction between US and BR law (actually, US is the exception world wide, for Brazil law is closer to what you would find in Europe on this matter).
In Brazil, it's not a crime to say what you think. But it is a crime to falsely claim that someone has committed a crime. This is especially serious if you are influential on social media and your statement, even if false, is likely to generate dangerous reactions from your followers.
Im not speaking to the legality, but the morality of censorship. The times believes censorship is wrong, so they titled an article about censorship in a way that calls out the censors.
Most Brazilians agree that censorship is wrong. The problem is that "censorship" is a vague word.
We lived in an actual military dictatorship until 1985. A dictatorship that engaged in real hard prior-censorship. Music, news, and pieces of art were all subject to a military collegiate body that would decide what could and could not be published.
What's going on now is very, very different. Brazil, like most European countries, thinks that if you commit a crime through what you say, you can and must be held accountable. No one is being prevented from expressing their opinion.
> We lived in an actual military dictatorship until 1985. A dictatorship that engaged in real hard prior-censorship.
> What's going on now is very, very different.
In the months leading up to the elections, the judges censored a documentary about Bolsonaro before it was published. A priori censorship.
We are living in the exact same kind of authoritharian regime our parents lived through. The difference is our parents knew they were being oppressed.
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> (If) you commit a crime through what you say, you can and must be held accountable. No one is being prevented from expressing their opinion.
Freedom from speech isn’t the “right” of the people to express opinions. Freedom of Speech is a an explicit restriction on what the government is allowed to do after you speak, and more precisely, in response to unpopular speech.
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I believe censorship in general to be wrong, but I feel the same way about lying and fraud. It's inarguable that some people lie for personal or political gain and then hide behind high-minded rhetoric about free speech. Hypocrisy is a real and often profitable phenomenon.
https://isps.yale.edu/research/publications/isps24-07
A better solution would to demand Tiktok to be sold to a local company. I mean, twitter.
I too think there should be no recourse for libel or copyright infringement, since censorship of those acts is immoral