The Implications of Brazil’s X Ban on the Future of Social Media Legislation
On August 30th, 2024, social media platform X saw its number of total users drop by an estimated 20 million after the platform was completely banned in Brazil. The ban followed an inquiry opened by Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes into X’s refusal to block accounts in support of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Moraes claimed that these accounts were spreading fake news and hate speech that ultimately undermined Brazilian democracy, and demanded their removal. This catalyzed a months-long battle between Moraes and the owner of X, Elon Musk, during which Musk claimed that ‘free speech is the bedrock of democracy’ and Moraes was ‘destroying it for political purposes,’ due to the fact that the accounts for which Moraes demanded bans were those that shared support for the current President’s political rival.
Social media companies typically have legal representatives in various countries of operation to serve as points of contact between the company and regional legal system to ensure compliance with local laws. However, X’s Global Affairs account claimed that Moraes threatened X’s legal representative with arrest two weeks prior to the ban, causing X to shut down its Brazilian offices entirely and leading the company to experience further difficulties during its legal battle.
In a statement, Moraes described Musk as having ‘demonstrated a total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty, while Musk referred to Moraes as ‘an evil dictator cosplaying as a judge.’
Brazil was able to ban X by invoking its authority to leverage national laws regarding misinformation against the platform. This move was particularly shocking because it marked one of the most severe actions taken by a government—particularly, a democratic one—against a major social media platform to date. It also established a precedent that places an increased responsibility on social media platforms to monitor their users’ behavior in alignment with national legal regulations. Ultimately, the move underscored tensions between tech companies and governments regarding regulation, sovereignty, and the balance between free speech and what governments deem to be public safety, inspiring speculation that other countries might take similar steps.
Over the past few years, there has been a global push to curb the power of social media companies and their powerful owners. In 2024 alone, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was charged with complicity in various crimes occurring on his platform, such as the distribution of child abuse material and drug trafficking, following his arrest on August 24th, 2024. California’s Social Media Transparency Law, put into effect on January 1st, 2024, requires social media platforms operating in California to submit detailed transparency reports regarding moderation practices against hate speech, foreign interference, and disinformation. Furthermore, 2024 has been dubbed ‘The Ultimate Election Year’ by TIME magazine, due to the fact that 56 countries undergoing major elections–the highest number in recent record. Thus, platforms are experiencing increased pressure to enhance protections against political misinformation and a stricter enforcement of policies that prevent the delegitimization of election outcomes.
Ultimately, social media is a vital actor in shaping the exchange and perception of political discourse. As such, it has become a crucial battleground in which political actors wage war for the hearts and minds of the public. Proponents of these tightened restrictions often cite the necessity of protecting democracy, transparency and public safety in a world where social media is rapidly growing in user base and relevance. The central issue in this regard is that social media consists of a string of private companies that operate in the ‘attention economy’—a term coined by psychologist Herbert A. Simon, who observed a link between the growing accessibility of information in the digital age and a new type of economic exchange. ‘A wealth of information,’ he explains, creates ‘a need to allocate that attention among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.’ To social media companies like X, the time one spends scrolling through, liking, and interacting with content is wealth. Attention is capital. Thus, social media companies construct their business models around attracting and maintaining this attention, using strategies described by Oliver Burkman as ‘the attention economy on hyperdrive.’
These algorithmic frameworks prioritize entertainment and engagement over providing accurate or reliable information to viewers. In fact, several studies have noted that algorithms tend to steer social media users toward increasingly extreme content in an effort to keep their attention engaged, leading them down ‘rabbit holes’ of extremism. On a large scale, this model fuels political divide and the dissemination of misinformation, which poses a grave threat to social cohesion and, ultimately, to democratic institutions. However, advocates for tighter restrictions surrounding false content on social media are unable to provide explanations as to how content should be empirically classified as ‘true’ or ‘false,’ or who will be entrusted with this task. Unfortunately, the danger of bias and corruption infiltrating this process is unavoidable and could lead to the complete dismantling of free speech opportunities for private citizens online, as occurred in Brazil.
Access to such a wealth of information and opinion inevitably changes the ways in which people interact with political content. Now, the onus is on individuals to utilize critical thinking and media literacy skills to evaluate the never-ending stream of information at their fingertips.
Ultimately, over the past few decades, social media has reshaped political structures on regional and global levels, due to the ease and accessibility of information that it provides. Just a few decades ago, news was disseminated to the public through mainstream media companies via newspapers or cable TV broadcasts. Mainstream media thus had a monopoly over political information, which was easily colored by government restrictions and outside influence. Social media has democratized information to such an extent that independent content creators, such as political streamers, YouTubers and podcasters, have become key sources of news for those under 35 in the UK, sometimes replacing traditional media entirely. This has broadened the political landscape to the point where, more than ever, the voice of any individual has the potential to be elevated to the level of a major political actor s, ultimately empowering diversity of opinion, experience and ideology.
However, this is only the case if social media companies value their responsibility to protect their users’ freedom of speech, while also prioritizing their safety by filtering out genuinely harmful content. All the while, they must remain unbiased and free from political or corporate influence.
Brazil lifted X’s suspension on October 8th, 2024, after X gave in to the court’s demands, agreeing to block flagged accounts, appoint a legal representative, and pay a $5 million (£3.8 million) fine. Musk, a self-described ‘free speech absolutist,’ has been criticized for compromising the values of his platform by bowing to unreasonable government demands instead of adhering to principles of free speech. Ultimately, the situation has set a worrying precedent for future relations between media companies and governments, especially those such as Brazil, which has a long history of corruption and undemocratic behavior. These are the countries whose people most require the free, undiluted political exchange that social media offers its users to combat tactics of suppression, regulation and manipulation that their governments may weaponize to maintain power.
With social media still being a relatively new venue of human interaction, principles regarding its regulation and usage have not yet been standardized and are, rather, crucial subjects of debate in shaping the future of digital exchange. As individual citizens navigating the digital landscape, it is essential for each of us to assess the content that we consume with an eternally critical eye. Ultimately, social media presents an ever-pressing question that must be contended with: who is the arbiter of truth?
Image courtesy of L.C. Nøttaasen via Flickr, ©2013. Some rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
