LatAm in Focus: What Brazil's Twitter Ban Tells Us about Internet Laws in Latin America
LatAm in Focus: What Brazil's Twitter Ban Tells Us about Internet Laws in Latin America
NetLab’s Marie Santini and University of Palermo’s Agustina Del Campo cover the X shutdown and the regional panorama of social media regulation.
Where did the Brazilians go?
That’s the question users of Twitter/X were left asking on August 31 after Federal Judge Alexandre de Moraes successfully shut the platform down for millions of Brazilians. It was the result of a protracted spat between the justice, who is leading a crusade against disinformation in the country, and Elon Musk, the outspoken billionaire who owns the platform, over moderation requests and the company’s compliance to legal requirements.
"The platforms should assume [there will be] moderation with transparency and accountability," said Marie Santini, founder of NetLab, a research center at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro dedicated to study of Internet and social media platforms in Brazil. In conversation with AS/COA’s Luisa Leme, Santini points out contradictions in Brazil’s legal codes when it comes to regulating Internet platforms and making criminal actions online accountable.
She explained that Brazil’s Supreme Court plans to review a specific article of the country’s Marco Civil da Internet, also known as the Brazilian Internet Bill of Rights, to decide if the clause protecting online platforms from responsibility over content posted agrees with the country’s constitution. At the same time, Santini points out technology companies have become more involved with discussions over new legislation and moderation requirements. "I think the most important is the impact of suspending a platform so important as Twitter and the discussion we need to have about the tension between on one hand the concept of freedom of expression and free circulation of ideas, and, on the other, the protection of individuals rights," she said.
This is a balance that countries across the region are trying to strike as they approach regulation. Prior to the pandemic, concerns for human rights drove the regulatory conversation.
"The link between freedom of expression and the regulation of social media and the Internet more broadly is a very profound link in Latin America, which is somewhat different than in other jurisdictions," explained Agustina Del Campo, director of the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression at the Universidad de Palermo in Buenos Aires.
But after the pandemic, she noted a change in the “conversation that turned more around trust and safety than freedom of expression.” In conversation with AS/COA’s Chase Harrison she covers this shift, the region’s judicial approach to questions of moderation, and the global context of regulation.
Will Brazil’s Twitter shutdown spread across the region? Del Campo noted that other leaders, like Nicólas Maduro in Venezuela and Gustavo Petro in Colombia, have adopted aggressive tones on Musk. "Whether that political conversation will turn into a regulatory conversation in the region, I think it's left to see," she said.
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