patrick.net

Hedge Fund Billionaire Bill Ackman Criticizes Brazil’s Blocking of X Platform, Says It Makes the Country ‘Uninvestable’

The blocking of social media platform X in Brazil has left 20 million users frustrated, and has also generated widespread condemnation from all sectors where free-speech is cherished.

Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman is one of the critics of the measure.

Ackman has become one the latest critics of a court order to suspend Elon Musk’s social-media platform in Brazil.

He argues in an online post that the tyrannical ruling will drive away investors and harm the country.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, on Friday, ordered internet service providers in Brazil to prevent people from gaining access to X.

The order was in response to X’s refusal to name a legal representative in the country since the Court was making illegal secret requests and threatening the representatives with prison.

Justice Moraes wanted the X platform to handle requests to remove accounts that allegedly spread political misinformation. ...

"#VaccineInjuries You Can't Silence the Awaken"
icrunchfakedata, posted May 30, 2022
https://rumble.com/v16p7eo-vaccineinjuries-you-cant-silence-the-awaken.html

SUSAN C: I'm still not well, I still feel depressed and sick, my hair is still out. And they closed the group down, I was in FaceBook. We had 10,000 people there, that we were sick, we were trying to get help, and they closed us down, they don't want anybody to know people are sick after the fu#king vaccine! OK? I didn't know I had Hashimoto's,[1] I had no idea! And the pain and suffering! They should let us talk so we can help each other. Don't they understand, that's wrong! Look at me! I was a beautiful person and I'm ugly and horrible and sick and nobody fu#king cares. And they want to silence us. We have a right to talk, OK? We have a right! I did this for the country, I did my best to try to help people, people dying of covid!

https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2024/09/17/hillary-clinton-calls-for-americans-be-criminally-charged-free-speech-that-sounds-like-russian-propaganda/

California’s New AI Law Proposals Could Impact Memes
Didi Rankovic

California’s state legislature has passed several bills related to “AI,” including a ban on deepfakes “around elections.”

The lawmakers squeezed these bills in during the last week of the current sessions of the state Senate and House, and it is now up to Governor Gavin Newsom (who has called for such laws) to sign or veto them by the end of this month.

One of the likely future laws is Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024, which aims to regulate how sites, apps, and social media (defined for the purposes of the legislation as large online platforms) should deal with content that the bill considers to be “materially deceptive related to elections in California.”

Namely, the bill wants such content blocked, specifying that this refers to “specified” periods – 120 days before and 60 days after an election. And campaigns will have to disclose if their ads contain AI-altered content.

Now comes the hard part – what qualifies for blocking as deceptive, in order to “defend democracy from deepfakes”? It’s a very broad “definition” that can be interpreted all the way to banning memes.

For example, who’s to say if – satirical – content that shows a candidate “saying something (they) did not do or say” can end up “reasonably likely” harming the reputation or prospects of a candidate? And who’s to judge what “reasonably likely” is? But the bill uses these terms, and there’s more.

Also outlawed would be content showing an election official “doing or saying something in connection with the performance of their elections-related duties that the elections official did not do or say and that is reasonably likely to falsely undermine confidence in the outcome of one or more election contests.”

If the bill gets signed into law on September 30, given the time-frame, it would comprehensively cover not only the current campaign, but the period after it.

And “translated” into plain language, the provisions are designed to “protect” candidates from AI-generated content in any scenario (when such measures are actually justified, or merely, for example, as part of the “war on memes”).

Another category to protect are election officials, that is, “election integrity” (one can make an educated guess, in case an election is contested – again, even if the content is protected lawful speech such as satire).

It’s the “reasonably likely” phrase that leaves space for such broad interpretation

as soon as you allow ANY speech whatsoever to be branded dangerous or harmful or anti-social and suppressed by force of the state, no speech is truly free. you no longer possess an inalienable right. you posses a privilege that can be alienated “if we have a good reason.” this is a massive shift in power that seems like a small thing when they do it. it’s an entirely new framing.

the question is no longer settled by “you are a human, you have an absolute right to free speech, therefore, speak.” any act of the state to bar or prevent such is unjust and illegal. the debate is “is this suppression?”

the question is now “you are speaking. does this speech pass some threshold beyond which the state should prevent it?” and that is a VERY different question. you have already accepted that speech can be illegal. you’ve let them substitute “do you support nazis?” for “do humans have an inalienable right to speech?” it is the shape of the question itself, not the answers to it, that then determines the outcomes.

once you frame the issue, the debate is already over.

this is why, upon hearing of any new such suppression, ESPECIALLY if it is the suppression of something you hate, you should pause and dig down to the true essence of what is happening. ...

they will pick the least sympathetic case to get the ball rolling.

after all, who’s going to stand up for some neo nazis?

well, you should, and here’s why: sure they may be odious and you may disagree violently with them, but an assault on their speech is an assault on everyone’s speech, yours included. ...

it’s a sneaky, effective trick. but it’s one they use over and over. because it works. well. but using it over and over comprises a weakness as well, because once aware, you can see the whole arc coming.

they give you something you actually want and an outcome you like. but this most trojan of horses is how you lose the whole city.

all you see is “bad people have to shut up now” and you miss the “i just accepted ends justify the means thinking and rendered my own rights entirely alienable at the discretion of the state.” ...

you must defend the speech of odious people then go back to ignoring what they say or to refuting it.

you must realize that surrendering all your privacy and liberty to (allegedly) catch terrorists means that the terrorists have not only already won, but that you have turned the role of the state into acting the terrorist themselves and refuse to submit to such predation, even and especially if they tell you “it’s temporary.”

you must immediately rail against and resist a state and a media claiming the right to lie to you and manipulate the facts because “we need to shape perception to get the outcomes we want.”

this becomes a reflex and we need this reflex to spread sufficiently to generate a firewall against being overrun. ...

if you would do one, simple, useful thing for your children: teach them this skill.