Brazil’s Supreme Court on Wednesday began examining four cases dealing with the question of how far social media should be regulated and what responsibilities platforms have in cracking down on illegal content.
The judicial review comes a month after the same court forced Elon Musk’s X Platform to obey rulings aimed at combating online disinformation.
The issue has come to attention in Brazil in recent days, with federal police accusing far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro and allied officials of using disinformation on social media as part of a 2022 ‘coup’ plot against Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, then the country’s president-elect.
The alleged plot involved using online messages to undermine public confidence in the electoral system to justify Bolsonaro holding on to the presidency after Lula defeated him in the election. Bolsonaro says he is innocent.
The Supreme Court’s deliberations in these cases are not expected to conclude until sometime next year.
A key issue we are looking at is whether social media platforms can be fined for illegal content posted by users.
Another question is whether the platforms themselves should be obliged to monitor and remove illegal content without a prior court order.
The court’s rulings will become precedents to be generally applied to all social media platforms operating in Brazil.
Brazil – of which a large part of the 216 million inhabitants are intensive users of WhatsApp and Facebook – has no legislation in this area.
However, global social media networks must already comply with laws in the EU against illegal online content, under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which could lead them in terms of Brazilian compliance.
One of the judges of Brazil’s Supreme Court, Alexandre de Moraes, ordered in August that Musk’s X be blocked nationwide for failing to comply with a series of court orders against online disinformation.
On October 9, the platform was allowed to resume operations after paying approximately $5 million in fines and deactivating the accounts of several Bolsonaro supporters accused of spreading disinformation and hate speech online.
The court’s president, Luis Roberto Barroso, told AFP that “digital platforms… open avenues to disinformation, hatred, deliberate lies and conspiracy theories.”
He added: “Around the democratic world there are debates about protecting freedom of expression without allowing everyone to fall into a pit of incivility.”
He pointed to the European Union’s DSA as a form of regulation “that aims for a point of ideal balance.”
In his opinion, Brazil should develop its own regulations “with a minimum of government intervention when it comes to freedom of thought, while at the same time preventing the increase in crime and incitement to violence.”
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