Brazil's supreme court rules that platforms like Facebook and X can be held liable for user posts, requiring them to remove content even without a court order

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• gaspar_petersen@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’m not sure this is a good thing. How will small Brazilian websites and forums be able to comply with these regulations? Sure, Meta and Google can afford to spend millions on content moderation. I don’t know if all sites can. I wonder how it will affect Brazilian lemmy instances, for example.

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  • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Exactly. Imagine if Lemmy instance owners became legally responsible for everything that was posted on their server! Especially with the way federation works - instance admins would be having to de-federate from every other instance on day 1, and would basically have to approve every single comment on every single post to ensure they didn’t get in trouble with the law.

    This is a terrible idea. It means a single bad actor could bring down a small social media site by themself really easily just by spamming illegal content and reporting it to the police themselves.

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    • Geodad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Or just ignore it and never go to Brazil. 🤷‍♂️

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• ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  On the one hand, I’m against censorship. But on the other, every bit of content on Facebook and X should be removed and all their hardware run through industrial shredders. It’s quite the conundrum.

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  • ViatorOmnium@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    The same way your right to wave your hands ends before they reach other people's faces, free speech can't include speech infringing on other people's dignity (in the legal/philosophical sense).

    Regulating speech within this frame is as bad as stopping a bar fight by dragging the participants away.

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  • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Censorship is bad, but Facebook and X’s entire business models revolve around spreading content that is at once false and inflammatory, either just to create engagement or for more malicious purposes, and they reach a huge portion of the population directly, including children, teenagers, the mentally ill and other vulnerable populations. This requires a new understanding of accountability for spreading information.

    I wouldn’t agree that it makes sense to hold a Mastodon instance responsible for what its users post, because they don’t have a financial incentive or the ability to promote misinformation at a massive scale. Twitter does. As Aristotle said, we must treat equals equally, and treat the unequal unequally according to the form and extent of their inequality.

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    • balder1991@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The algorithms optimized for engagement with no ethics was the point the world starts going downhill.

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  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It’s not censorship to hold people accountable for making editorial decisions on media platforms, and as long as FB, Twitter, and others are weighting different kinds of content in their algorithms (which they are), they should be held accountable financially and legally for the consequences.

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• ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The main problem is that the platforms have a money incentive to keep spam and scam posts online. They pay meta and TikTok for boosts, the scam gets boosted, all done.

  Frankly, it seems like the problem could be solved by forcing the platforms to get a Know Your Customer level of information and putting that info on every boosted post, so people know who’s paying for that.

  Buuuut, it’s Brazil. Justice and fairness only ever happen as side effects from judges’ decisions

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• FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Guess the people of Brazil will be losing access to social media platforms soon.

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  • meyotch@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Lucky people. They will have a period of mourning and then enter a cultural renaissance.

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    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Nah, most likely the government that enacts these laws will be replaced soon enough by whoever promises to undo the laws.

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    • balder1991@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I wish. My mom is like a zombie on Facebook for maybe 4 years.

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