Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), stated this Wednesday (8) that social networks “will only continue to operate if they respect Brazilian legislation”. The statement was made during a conversation in memory of the anti-democratic attacks of January 8, 2023.
The statement was made one day after Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, The tool will be replaced by “community notes”, free to all users.
“This is a land that has law. Social networks are not a lawless land. In Brazil, they will only continue to operate if they respect Brazilian legislation, regardless of the bravado of big tech managers,” said Moraes.
The minister also criticized big tech managers, stating that “because they have money, they think they can rule the world”.
“For the rest of the world, we cannot speak, but, for Brazil, I am absolutely certain and convinced that the STF will not allow big techs, social networks, to continue to be instrumentalized, intentionally or negligently, or even just aiming to profit, to amplify hate speech, Nazism, fascism, misogyny, homophobia and anti-democratic speeches”, he stated.
January 8
In Moraes’ assessment, the attacks on the headquarters of the Three Powers in 2023, and other acts of a coup nature, were driven by the lack of regulation of social networks.
“All of this arose from the moment when, in the world, not only in Brazil, extremists, and mainly right-wing extremists, right-wing radicals, took over social networks to use them, or with them, to instrumentalize people in order to undermine democracy from within”, he said.
Minister Gilmar Mendes also defended the regulation of networks and stated that the creation of standards “cannot be confused with censorship”.
“This normative trajectory can never be confused with censorship. Quite the contrary: it represents not only a legal evolution, but constitutes the cornerstone on which a democratic and pluralistic digital sphere is built, capable of harmonizing freedom of expression with social responsibility in the virtual environment”, said the judge.
Zuckerberg announcement
In Tuesday’s announcement (7), Meta’s CEO also stated that Europe institutionalized censorship through new laws, that China banned Meta’s applications from operating in the country and made accusations against the Latin American judiciary.
“Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to take things down silently,” said the businessman.
The owner of Meta did not mention Brazil, but, even so, the government reacted. On social media, the Secretary of Digital Policies of the Presidency’s Social Communication Secretariat, João Brant, said that the announcement anticipates an alliance between Meta and the government of Donald Trump, president-elect of the United States, against nations that seek to protect the importance of measures to control the online environment.
