#I'm just there for the local activists

[ihateyoutumbrmobfuyourself]

women's people's march really is a joke now. I saw a tweet that was literally something like:

"trans people are included

trans people are included

trans people are included

trans people are included

trans people are included

trans people are included"

You sound insane. Just like tras. Next they'll be posting "Xir's included. Xir's included. Xir's included" SMDH

[nugatorysheep]

To all the spam bots sending garbage about Gaza or Palestine to my inbox you will get nothing and I have all those tags blocked. Go pester someone else for money, maybe you'll find some keyboard warrior stupid enough to fall for your scam

[mxrbutch]

can't tell you how frustrating it is to see Greta thunberg marching in my city with the mutual aid org that fully exhausted me and is just overall not v good. I'm happy she was at a protest in milan ofc and I'm glad if that helped bring more people there than expected, and I'm sure people gave good speeches and all but it's just. I wish she wasn't on the insta stories of an org that treated me worse than a greedy boss

[djuvlipen]

If you say, "being Romani is about adhering to Romanipen" you are just saying that the only way for a Romani woman to be Romani is for her to be subservient, straight, modest, putting her husband, her family and her children before herself, her career and her education. I'm so tired of antiracism being used to propel sexism. Stop defining women using male-defined criteria

[r0bita]

I feel like Twitter is the worst place to share anything. Nobody, not even your friends, will interact with your posts unless you go out of your way to DM them directly or just sending the links to whomever.

And a lot of people find that very desperate, and sometimes rude, and therefore refuse to do it even though that's probably the only way you're going to get some following for whatever you put online.

The tag system and the search engine is bad, so even people who might have some general interest into you may post might not have the opportunity to see it. Your best chances of getting any content shown is to do what you mom's do when they wanna share instagram and tiktok videos of unfunny memes that you probably don't wanna see.

Shamelessly and directly share everything.

I hate it... but this does work.

[yoursonlucifer]

inside of me, there are three wolves: one is dnd actualplay media, another is steven universe, and the other is gender/queer/feminist theory

[thateclecticbitch]

If everyone's tweeting and everyone is marching and everyone is is an activist and everyone is fighting in the revolution... then who's doing the dishes?

posting this over here too!

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

what’s the story about the generative power model and water consumption? /gen

There's this myth going around about generative AI consuming truly ridiculous amount of power and water. You'll see people say shit like "generating one image is like just pouring a whole cup of water out into the Sahara!" and bullshit like that, and it's just... not true. The actual truth is that supercomputers, which do a lot of stuff, use a lot of power, and at one point someone released an estimate of how much power some supercomputers were using and people went "oh, that supercomputer must only do AI! All generative AI uses this much power!" and then just... made shit up re: how making an image sucks up a huge chunk of the power grid or something. Which makes no sense because I'm given to understand that many of these models can run on your home computer. (I don't use them so I don't know the details, but I'm told by users that you can download them and generate images locally.) Using these models uses far less power than, say, online gaming. Or using Tumblr. But nobody ever talks about how evil those things are because of their power generation. I wonder why.

To be clear, I don't like generative AI. I'm sure it's got uses in research and stuff but on the consumer side, every effect I've seen of it is bad. Its implementation in products that I use has always made those products worse. The books it writes and flood the market with are incoherent nonsense at best and dangerous at worst (let's not forget that mushroom foraging guide). It's turned the usability of search engines from "rapidly declining, but still usable if you can get past the ads" into "almost one hundred per cent useless now, actually not worth the effort to de-bullshittify your search results", especially if you're looking for images. It's a tool for doing bullshit that people were already doing much easier and faster, thus massively increasing the amount of bullshit. The only consumer-useful uses I've seen of it as a consumer are niche art projects, usually projects that explore the limits of the tool itself like that one poetry book or the Infinite Art Machine; overall I'd say its impact at the Casual Random Person (me) level has been overwhelmingly negative. Also, the fact that so much AI turns out to be underpaid people in a warehouse in some country with no minimum wage and terrible labour protections is... not great. And the fact that it's often used as an excuse to try to find ways to underpay professionals ("you don't have to write it, just clean up what the AI came up with!") is also not great.

But there are real labour and product quality concerns with generative AI, and there's hysterical bullshit. And the whole "AI is magically destroying the planet via climate change but my four hour twitch streaming sesh isn't" thing is hysterical bullshit. The instant I see somebody make this stupid claim I put them in the same mental bucket as somebody complaining about AI not being "real art" -- a hatemobber hopping on the hype train of a new thing to hate and feel like an enlightened activist about when they haven't bothered to learn a fucking thing about the issue. And I just count my blessings that they fell in with this group instead of becoming a flat earther or something.

[carriesthewind]

Happy Long Weekend: This is Your Reminder to Review Your Sample Ballot In Advance of the Election

Hello fellow USAians!

It is October 13! The election is just over three weeks away!

I'm assuming you know who you are voting for in the presidential race.

But do you know who you are voting for on the downticket races? Is there a senate race? Who has your vote for congressional representative?

Are there judges, on your ballot? State representatives? Is there a governor's race? Other statewide office? What about local elected officials - what about the school board?

Do you know who the candidates are? Do you know what their qualifications and policy positions are, or, if that information isn't available, can you find information from which you can make reasonable inferences? (But seriously a 10-minute internet search can provide invaluable information.)

If there is an office where multiple seats are open (usually portrayed on the ballot as "vote for up to X"), is there a strategy to try to keep someone particularly bad out, or get someone particularly good in? (Whether that's a your own thoughtful voting choice (god), you + your friends/acquaintances/book club (better), or an organized local strategy (best)).

Are there ballot measures/state constitutional amendments/etc on your ballot? Do you know what they are? Have you read them? Have you taken a glance to see what subject matter experts/stakeholders/advocates/activists/etc think on the subject?

Please take the time to review your sample ballot before it's time to vote, so you can make informed choices in your downballot votes - where very low number of votes can often make a real difference.

[octuscle]

Halloween Party - Warrior through cultural appropriation

Shit, Jeff thought, Halloween used to be just fun. Now it was first of all a huge effort to find the perfect costume, to shape your body to match the costume. And then you look so good that you would like to fuck yourself, then there are a couple of killjoys outside on the street in front of the Frat House, berating you because your costume is a cultural appropriation and a sign of digital imperialism. Shit, who even comes up with such bullshit terms? Today was about getting drunk, having fun. And at the end of the evening, to end up in bed with a hot guy. Halloween was not a lecture in sociology or ethnology or whatever the shit was called.

After he had removed the traces of the eggs that had been thrown at him, Jeff was ready for his appearance. He knew he was damn hot. He had an awesome body. His tattoos looked almost real. And in his shorts with the Hawaiian pattern, his cock was in joyful anticipation of the highlight of the party. Only in his head did he feel somehow… cloudy… One of the activists in front of the Frat House had sprayed a gas in his face. Jeff had thought it was pepper spray. But it was something completely different. It made him feel good. Like he had smoked pot. It was weird. But it was Halloween. No showing weakness now! He practically had a duty to party tonight. A guy asked him if he wanted a drink. Did Jeff know the guy… Seemed somehow familiar. But the guy was obviously a local. He replied that he didn't have a coconut milk. The guy laughed out loud and punched Heff in his impressive pecs. “Hey, costume of the day definitely goes to this guy. Coconut milk! I'm cracking up! And the guy even has the accent down pat.” At least that was what Jeff understood. English was not his mother tongue. Was it not? Or was it? Shit! And what was so funny about coconut milk? He loved coconut milk. Here everyone drank beer or some kind of mixed drinks. The stuff came from the white devils and was pure poison! Hoff collected a few glasses and took them to the kitchen.

“Ia ora na! What would you like to drink?” Honf didn't feel like partying anymore. Somehow he felt more comfortable at the bar. And here it was also easier for him to flirt with the hot guys from the fraternity. True, the guys asked him what he meant every other sentence. But that might not have been because of his French Polynesian accent. The guys were just drunk. And the music was loud. But the work was fun. And more than one guy had made it quite clear to him that they could meet later somewhere in a sheltered place. Poor white devils, he thought to himself. If only they had a rough idea of what kind of beast was hiding in his pants. They would probably have to throw up when they sucked on it. His cock twitched and became semi-erect in his pants.

His name is “Hone.” “Hone” means “warrior.” It's a good name. A buddy of his, whom he had met during his semester abroad at UCSB, was called “Jeff.” He had googled that. “Jeff” meant “God's peace.” A name for weaklings. Hone was no weakling. In Santa Barbara it was the middle of the night, here on Bora Bora the sun had not even set. The white devils were already drinking alcohol. Another sign of weakness. Hone made great cocktails. But he never drank anything himself except protein shakes and coconut milk. Not even on Halloween.

[batboyblog]

Thanks so much for deciding to continue your "Democratic accomplishments of the week" posts -- they have been super educational and have often inspired me to go out and do things when I've felt down or defeatist.

you're welcome and I'm glad they help.

I hope one of the things it has inspired you (not just you this for everyone reading this, hello, hi) to do is sign up to Volunteer, in the first day of her campaign Kamala Harris netted a very impressive $81 million from 880,000 grassroots Americans many giving for the first time, but to me WAY more important is the campaign has seen a surge in people signing up to volunteer in the swing states, so I hope everyone takes time today to make a plan to volunteer in some way before November.

The Harris Campaign

Look for Events and volunteer near you

Find a local Young Progressive running for office near you

if you don't live in a swing state there are lots of options to call or write postcards/letters to people who live in key battle grounds, if you live near a swing state there are always groups organizing to go volunteer in the nearest swing state, and where ever you live there are always important key races, be it for the US Senate (Montana, Ohio, Maryland) for the US House (New York) or state or even local level elections, all across the country radical anti-LGBT anti-black activists have run for school boards trying to push Queer people and diversity out of schools, in your community there could be someone running to stop that and your hard work could make all the difference

No Matter any one's age or location we all have the ability to make a big big difference this year, and I say this ALL the time, nothing help the stress and anxiety of current events more than going out and doing something, so often the world and its events are so upsetting because it feels so out of your control, when you go out and knock doors, make calls, whatever, you feel like you're making a difference and it helps so so much.

[renthony]

Yes, go vote, but please don't do that thing that happened in 2020 where a bunch of people got very excited to join local activist organizations only to abandon them less than six months after the election.

I know I've said this before, but I'm so tired of how many folks will get hyped up to vote and then do literally nothing else. I'm constantly trying to get new people interested in my union branch, and everyone's "too busy" for organizing, and it's infuriating.

You gotta do other shit besides just vote, and you gotta be willing to do it for longer than just a week.

I'm tired of getting screamed at every four years to go vote by people who won't even reach out to their local IWW branch or Food Not Bombs chapter.

[pingnova]

I met a quiet old man while browsing the plant books and accessories at the trading post this spring who asked what I was looking for. Most white people came to look at the jewelry and the expensive woolen blankets, so I guess it was a little unusual how closely I was examining all of the books on plants.

I held up a deck of native plant playing cards and said I was a forager, looking for more guides on local plants. He nodded thoughtfully and said there was a lot of medicine in wild plants. I smiled awkwardly, not sure why he was talking to me. But I reciprocated: "What are you looking for?"

He said he wasn't sure. He pointed to a few books on flowers, not necessarily edible vegetables. "They're beautiful," he said unsurely.

I nodded to encourage him. "Plants aren't just for eating, they're for appreciating too. We need beauty and nutrition."

Now he smiled, mostly hidden by his mustache, and told me he had a community garden plot he had tended for the past thirty years. Wow, what dedication.

Abruptly he says he has one year to live. He's at the trading post to find parting gifts for his son and grandchildren. He says this all very calmly, he's clearly been preparing for some time. And I stare at him because he seems so well and I've just met him. The idea of him dead is disturbing and shameful.

"Oh," is all I can say.

"I think this year I'll fill it with flowers."

He says it so warmly. I remember he was talking about his beloved community garden patch. I'm filled with heaviness and disbelief that he is soon dying and here wasting time talking to some random about growing flowers. But I manage to stammer something.

"It can't all be vegetables. Soft and beautiful things are important too. Especially in hard times."

Now he fully turns to smile at me. Again in my shock I think he's too content. Shouldn't he be raging? Crying, screaming, anything? But his mustache is white, he mentioned an adult son and grandkids, he seems well enough now and reasonably confident in his plan for a full season of flower gardening. Rapid-fire I conclude he's already done all of this and doesn't need it from me. Right now he's just discussing how important and sacred plants are with a likeminded young stranger.

He finally says, "Flowers are a soft landing after a long battle."

I choke out some kind of agreement so I don't accidentally cry. I wish him some kind of luck and awkwardly crabwalk away. I'm not really the king of social interaction even when its not emotionally loaded.

I bought my cards and books on vegetables and looked at the lone few on flowers he had been perusing. I'm in my twenties and don't plan on dying anytime soon, but how much time do I spend being as fast, efficient, and artless as possible in order to "survive" when that survival is never even in question. I have anxiety, I have ptsd, I'm an activist. All necessary and inescapable works of life. But this man had a season to live, death certain, and wanted to spend it growing flowers.

I went back to the register with a small book on flowers. When I'm hunting a forest to learn the native vegetables, I no longer ignore the blooms. If the battle is long, I want to grow flowers too.

[drdemonprince]

Hey Devon. This is related to community-building ask, as I feel it kinda hit something in me, and that is my frustration with my local queer "main community", who is mostly made up of people who can work/hang together (people in visual and performative arts, LGBT NGOs, event organisers and so on). It's so closed off and so circlejerk-y that it's demoralising. I've been trying to fit in ever since I started being an adult, almost ten years ago, but I have never made any progress on getting to any of its members. I have made queer friends who are wonderful people, and as you said in the previous ask, that is enough and makes a community of our own already. Nevertheless, it is frustrating for all of us to go to a queer space/show/event just to see that the crowd there is made up of people who know each other and talk to each other and make big groups, while we're just sitting there. It brings us down to know that for queer political events like protests (which are ofc organised by them), we have no one left to fall back on except us. It makes it weird when only one of us is able to go protest, they'd rather not go because it feels so lonely to be sitting around all those people who just know each other, who have been passing by us for so many times over the years, and yet never take interest in even saying "hi" or whatever. It makes us think that they're fucking disingenuous and their "community building" is a load of crap. And I don't really want to feel like that about my people, but look at me, after almost ten years in my city, I fucking do.

Hi there, thanks for your message.

Let me just say that while I understand where the perception comes from, the queer people who put on shows, run nonprofits, and go out clubbing are not "The main lgbtq community" in your city. They're just a bunch of cliquish, careerist, young, privileged people who market themselves as such because they've been convinced that's what the "queer community" is and because doing so helps them get butts in seats at events.

I've seen theater kids, drag performers, DJs, comedians, party promoters, and other various people of the attention-seeking arts (said neutrally) do this all my fucking life. They stake a claim on building "feminist spaces" and "anti-racist" spaces, too, among other things, and use those higher values to sell tickets to their shit too. It's a way to make every tragedy that strikes oppressed people into an advertisement for their burlesques and shit. Don't let the self-important myopia get to you.

The real queer community? In any given city? Well, it's not any one thing. There is no singular "queer community". What people often refer to as the LGBTQ community or the queer community is a demographic, not an actual community. That demographic is marketed to, including by fellow queer people, but that does not a community make.

A community consists of people who know one another, and have enduring bonds, and who have shown up for one another mutually in multiple ways. A lot of these hot cool stylish young queer people are actually merely colleagues of one another. When there's a conflict, or a cancellation, or a venue that closes, they will be tossed to the wind like so many dandelion seeds. Compare that to you and your friends, who can and do remain in contact as the seasons of life change.

It is demoralizing to see so many people who talk a big game about community fail to show up to do activist work that is meaningful to you. I can't deny feeling the same way. For many years, I dated an actor who was very plugged into the local scene, and while his theater company had a reputation for being progressive, trans inclusive, even left-leaning, almost nobody in that collective did anything for the broader 'community' at all. They were all too busy being overworked five nights a week for like a $200 per week stipend, writing plays in which they repeated leftist platitudes but did relatively little.

I'm being a big overly cynical here -- the theater did just put on a big pro Palestinian fundraiser -- but the fact is that running a club, a theater, a local education org, or a regular drag show is a business, and in the end the business always comes first. Even when the members of that business might not want it to. They're often extremely exploited and underpaid, which is part of what makes them so hungry to market themselves and maintain their careers. I have sympathy for it. But meaningful social connections and local impact it does not make.

All of which is to say: please try to remember that these people presenting themselves as the symbols of the local "community" are just a bunch of artistic kids who are trying to make a living doing what they love. They're naive, exploited, a little self-absorbed yes, but they're ultimately not that important. they just deal in a very self-important line of work.

There are SO many queer people all around you who never go to those fucking clubs and shows and aren't even on instagram. The "main" queer community, demographically, is more like the nerdy 40 year old gay couple that lives down the street from you who goes out to the movies once or twice a month and holds board game nights with their friends. The "main" queer community is volunteering at the zoo, going camping with their fraternity brothers that they met 20 years ago, working at the car dealership, planting tomatoes at the local community garden, taking care of elders with dementia, organizing weekly running groups.

You can find people like this -- total normies -- who will care about causes greater than themselves and want to contribute to community building efforts. Many of those people are already doing a ton to make community. It's just less sexy and less self-consciously queer than like, the dance parties. It's also more diverse, accessible, and capable of meeting people where they are at.

It does sound like you would like to meet more activist friends / politically engaged friends, and for that I'd say try looking at pro-Palestinian (for example) events and spaces and seeing who turns up there, checking out a local food not bombs chapter, looking up local mutual aid groups or buy nothing groups, getting involved in hyper-local initiatives, and putting what feelers you can on local forums and personals boards (like Lex, local Facebook groups, local Meetup groups, etc). You probably wont find a perfect space, but you will find worthwhile people scattered everywhere you look!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Every internet fight is a speech fight

THIS WEEKEND (November 8-10), I'll be in TUCSON, AZ: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

My latest Locus Magazine column is "Hard (Sovereignty) Cases Make Bad (Internet) Law," an attempt to cut through the knots we tie ourselves in when speech and national sovereignty collide online:

https://locusmag.com/2024/11/cory-doctorow-hard-sovereignty-cases-make-bad-internet-law/

This happens all the time. Indeed, the precipitating incident for my writing this column was someone commenting on the short-lived Brazilian court order blocking Twitter, opining that this was purely a matter of national sovereignty, with no speech dimension.

This is just profoundly wrong. Of course any rules about blocking a communications medium will have a free-speech dimension – how could it not? And of course any dispute relating to globe-spanning medium will have a national sovereignty dimension.

How could it not?

So if every internet fight is a speech fight and a sovereignty fight, which side should we root for? Here's my proposal: we should root for human rights.

In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the US government was illegally wiretapping the whole world. They were able to do this because the world is dominated by US-based tech giants and they shipped all their data stateside for processing. These tech giants secretly colluded with the NSA to help them effect this illegal surveillance (the "Prism" program) – and then the NSA stabbed them in the back by running another program ("Upstream") where they spied on the tech giants without their knowledge.

After the Snowden revelations, countries around the world enacted "data localization" rules that required any company doing business within their borders to keep their residents' data on domestic servers. Obviously, this has a human rights dimension: keeping your people's data out of the hands of US spy agencies is an important way to defend their privacy rights. which are crucial to their speech rights (you can't speak freely if you're being spied on).

So when the EU, a largely democratic bloc, enacted data localization rules, they were harnessing national soveriegnty in service to human rights.

But the EU isn't the only place that enacted data-localization rules. Russia did the same thing. Once again, there's a strong national sovereignty case for doing this. Even in the 2010s, the US and Russia were hostile toward one another, and that hostility has only ramped up since. Russia didn't want its data stored on NSA-accessible servers for the same reason the USA wouldn't want all its' people's data stored in GRU-accessible servers.

But Russia has a significantly poorer human rights record than either the EU or the USA (note that none of these are paragons of respect for human rights). Russia's data-localization policy was motivated by a combination of legitimate national sovereignty concerns and the illegitimate desire to conduct domestic surveillance in order to identify and harass, jail, torture and murder dissidents.

When you put it this way, it's obvious that national sovereignty is important, but not as important as human rights, and when they come into conflict, we should side with human rights over sovereignty.

Some more examples: Thailand's lesse majeste rules prohibit criticism of their corrupt monarchy. Foreigners who help Thai people circumvent blocks on reportage of royal corruption are violating Thailand's national sovereignty, but they're upholding human rights:

https://www.vox.com/2020/1/24/21075149/king-thailand-maha-vajiralongkorn-facebook-video-tattoos

Saudi law prohibits criticism of the royal family; when foreigners help Saudi women's rights activists evade these prohibitions, we violate Saudi sovereignty, but uphold human rights:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55467414

In other words, "sovereignty, yes; but human rights even moreso."

Which brings me back to the precipitating incidents for the Locus column: the arrest of billionaire Telegram owner Pavel Durov in France, and the blocking of billionaire Elon Musk's Twitter in Brazil.

How do we make sense of these? Let's start with Durov. We still don't know exactly why the French government arrested him (legal systems descended from the Napoleonic Code are weird). But the arrest was at least partially motivated by a demand that Telegram conform with a French law requiring businesses to have a domestic agent to receive and act on takedown demands.

Not every takedown demand is good. When a lawyer for the Sackler family demanded that I take down criticism of his mass-murdering clients, that was illegitimate. But there is such a thing as a legitimate takedown: leaked financial information, child sex abuse material, nonconsensual pornography, true threats, etc, are all legitimate targets for takedown orders. Of course, it's not that simple. Even if we broadly agree that this stuff shouldn't be online, we don't necessarily agree whether something fits into one of these categories.

This is true even in categories with the brightest lines, like child sex abuse material:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/09/facebook-reinstates-napalm-girl-photo

And the other categories are far blurrier, like doxing:

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trump-camp-worked-with-musks-x-to

But just because not every takedown is a just one, it doesn't follow that every takedown is unjust. The idea that companies should have domestic agents in the countries where they operate isn't necessarily oppressive. If people who sell hamburgers from a street-corner have to register a designated contact with a regulator, why not someone who operates a telecoms network with 900m global users?

Of course, requirements to have a domestic contact can also be used as a prelude to human rights abuses. Countries that insist on a domestic rep are also implicitly demanding that the company place one of its employees or agents within reach of its police-force.

Just as data localization can be a way to improve human rights (by keeping data out of the hands of another country's lawless spy agencies) or to erode them (by keeping data within reach of your own country's lawless spy agencies), so can a requirement for a local agent be a way to preserve the rule of law (by establishing a conduit for legitimate takedowns) or a way to subvert it (by giving the government hostages they can use as leverage against companies who stick up for their users' rights).

In the case of Durov and Telegram, these issues are especially muddy. Telegram bills itself as an encrypted messaging app, but that's only sort of true. Telegram does not encrypt its group-chats, and even the encryption in its person-to-person messaging facility is hard to use and of dubious quality.

This is relevant because France – among many other governments – has waged a decades-long war against encrypted messaging, which is a wholly illegitimate goal. There is no way to make an encrypted messaging tool that works against bad guys (identity thieves, stalkers, corporate and foreign spies) but not against good guys (cops with legitimate warrants). Any effort to weaken end-to-end encrypted messaging creates broad, significant danger for every user of the affected service, all over the world. What's more, bans on end-to-end encrypted messaging tools can't stand on their own – they also have to include blocks of much of the useful internet, mandatory spyware on computers and mobile devices, and even more app-store-like control over which software you can install:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/05/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography/

So when the French state seizes Durov's person and demands that he establish the (pretty reasonable) minimum national presence needed to coordinate takedown requests, it can seem like this is a case where national sovereignty and human rights are broadly in accord.

But when you consider that Durov operates a (nominally) encrypted messaging tool that bears some resemblance to the kinds of messaging tools the French state has been trying to sabotage for decades, and continues to rail against, the human rights picture gets rather dim.

That is only slightly mitigated by the fact that Telegram's encryption is suspect, difficult to use, and not applied to the vast majority of the communications it serves. So where do we net out on this? In the Locus column, I sum things up this way:

Telegram should have a mechanism to comply with lawful takedown orders; and

those orders should respect human rights and the rule of law; and

Telegram should not backdoor its encryption, even if

the sovereign French state orders it to do so.

Sovereignty, sure, but human rights even moreso.

What about Musk? As with Durov in France, the Brazilian government demanded that Musk appoint a Brazilian representative to handle official takedown requests. Despite a recent bout of democratic backsliding under the previous regime, Brazil's current government is broadly favorable to human rights. There's no indication that Brazil would use an in-country representative as a hostage, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with requiring foreign firms doing business in your country to have domestic representatives.

Musk's response was typical: a lawless, arrogant attack on the judge who issued the blocking order, including thinly veiled incitements to violence.

The Brazilian state's response was multi-pronged. There was a national blocking order, and a threat to penalize Brazilians who used VPNs to circumvent the block. Both measures have obvious human rights implications. For one thing, the vast majority of Brazilians who use Twitter are engaged in the legitimate exercise of speech, and they were collateral damage in the dispute between Musk and Brazil.

More serious is the prohibition on VPNs, which represents a broad attack on privacy-enhancing technology with implications far beyond the Twitter matter. Worse still, a VPN ban can only be enforced with extremely invasive network surveillance and blocking orders to app stores and ISPs to restrict access to VPN tools. This is wholly disproportionate and illegitimate.

But that wasn't the only tactic the Brazilian state used. Brazilian corporate law is markedly different from US law, with fewer protections for limited liability for business owners. The Brazilian state claimed the right to fine Musk's other companies for Twitter's failure to comply with orders to nominate a domestic representative. Faced with fines against Spacex and Tesla, Musk caved.

In other words, Brazil had a legitimate national sovereignty interest in ordering Twitter to nominate a domestic agent, and they used a mix of somewhat illegitimate tactics (blocking orders), extremely illegitimate tactics (threats against VPN users) and totally legitimate tactics (fining Musk's other companies) to achieve these goals.

As I put it in the column:

Twitter should have a mechanism to comply with lawful takedown orders; and

those orders should respect human rights and the rule of law; and

banning Twitter is bad for the free speech rights of Twitter users in Brazil; and

banning VPNs is bad for all Brazilian internet users; and

it’s hard to see how a Twitter ban will be effective without bans on VPNs.

There's no such thing as an internet policy fight that isn't about national sovereignty and speech, and when the two collide, we should side with human rights over sovereignty. Sovereignty isn't a good unto itself – it's only a good to the extent that is used to promote human rights.

In other words: "Sovereignty, sure, but human rights even moreso."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/06/brazilian-blowout/#sovereignty-sure-but-human-rights-even-moreso

Image: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Border_Wall_at_Tijuana_and_San_Diego_Border.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

[jewish-vents]

I'm barely even Jewish (have gone to temple maybe once or twice, read Torah lackadaisically at best, know like 10 words of Hebrew) and I still get targeted by antisemites, sorry, antizionists. I had someone at work tell me they didn't want a Jew to serve them when they saw my Magen David necklace slip out from under my shirt. I've had a group of Palestinian activists on a public street surround me and chant slogans while I tried to walk through them because I had a blue and white shirt plus my Magen David on. I didn't have an Israeli flag shirt or something, just a blue and white completely secular, non political shirt. A former coworker repeatedly asked where I thought I was from after learning I was Jewish, and an acquaintance non jokingly asked if Jews really had horns. There are pro Hamas slogans stenciled on random walls all over my town, the local Jewish community center has had two bomb threats, and a visiting rabbi got punched in the head on a local bus. I don't have much connection with the local Jewish community, and I'm starting to lose any connection I had with the local Gentile community - or at least the parts I interact with often. It's frustrating and frightening to be held accountable for everything that happens in Israel, and it feels unsafe to be open about my Jewishness because of people reacting the way they have. I don't want to paint an even bigger target on my back, but I wish I could form a real connection with the Jews in my area - out of loneliness and alienation if nothing else.

.