In the following months, about 150,000 accounts in the US were blocked in, today X. Protests because of the suspension of accounts at the time were not as shrill as criticism of net profile blocks in Brazil after the 2022 Brazilian election and Brasilia attacks on January 8, 2023.
But platform actions in the US were the seed of the global right movement in defense of “freedom of expression.” This movement gained strength in Brazil after the Federal Supreme Court () and the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) banish hundreds of accounts on social networks, accused of spreading electoral disinformation or inciting the coup d’état.
From YouTube, Instagram and X (then Twitter) a few days after their supporters invaded the Capitol to try to prevent the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. According to companies, he would have violated the rules of use with incitement to violence. In addition, Amazon (Web Services), Apple and expelled him from their platforms the Parler, a pro-rump social network that spread false information about election fraud.
Trump protested in a White House statement, saying that Twitter “was going further and further in his efforts to ban freedom of expression” and that it was an attempt to silence it.
Jason Miller, one of Trump’s leading aide at the time, said the suspension was “revolting” and that the Big Techs wanted to “cancel” the 75 million voters who had voted for Trump.
The purges of accounts continued. In March 2021, according to CBS News, Twitter reported that it had suspended 150,000 profiles that would be spreading false information about election fraud. Two allies of Trump, former national security advisor Michael Flynn and lawyer Sidney Powell were among the banished.
In the ten days following the republican’s suspension in the networks in 2021, false accusations and mentions to electoral fraud on various social networks fell 73%, according to a survey by Zignal Labs at the time.
Trump’s digital degradation became a flag for conservatives who accused a coordinated movement between the big techs and progressive governments to allegedly silence right voices.
The first response came in the form of legislation in states governed by Republicans.
In May 2021, Florida’s republican governor Ron Desantis sanctioned a law that prohibited networks from banishing candidates for public office and “hiding” their publications. “Many in our state have suffered from censorship and other tyrannies in and in. If Big Techs censors apply their rules in an inconsistent way, to discriminate in favor of the dominant ideology of the Silicon Valley, they will now be responsible,” said Denantis at the time.
The law ended up overturned by the court and reached the Supreme Court, which last year referred the action back for analysis in the lower instances.
In September 2021, the then president followed in the footsteps of the American conservatives. The government has dropped a provisional measure that prevented from removing content or accounts that would violate the rules of use of the platforms. Congress returned the MP to the government.
Trump sued Facebook, Twitter, and Google in July 2021 for his ban, stating that he was a victim of censorship and that companies had violated their freedom of expression guaranteed by the first amendment of the American Constitution.
The text, which prohibits government censorship against citizens and companies, does not apply to business decisions. The initiative to suspend the accounts of Trump and others came from the platforms themselves, after pressure from civil society and Biden’s allies, not justice, as in the Brazilian case.
A few days after Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, it was clear that the defense of freedom of expression would be central to the government propaganda. He republished a video in which Trump said, “We need to destroy the toxic censorship industry that emerged under the disguise of combating misinformation.”
Musk had already restored Trump’s account less than a month after taking control of Twitter (X) in November 2022. It had announced it in January 2023 the then former president’s readmission, and Youtube reactivated his channel in March of the same year.
After Trump was elected, the big techs went further. . The company also made an agreement with the president to end his lawsuit after being banned, paying $ 25 million ($ 150 million).
Already on the first day of his term, Trump lowered a decree banning government officials from involving themselves with initiatives that “restrict the freedom of expression of any American citizen.”
After intense lobby of Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro (PL-SP) with trumpland legislators, Republicans turned their attention to alleged violations of freedom of expression in Brazil.
During the 2022 election campaign and after the attacks in Brasilia in 2023, the STF and the TSE determined the blockade of numerous accounts and removal of posts. The tensions were stretched after the minister determined in August 2024 the Block of X in Brazil for the refusal of the company to comply with court orders (including blocking of accounts).
OX in the country last year, which were applied, complying with Moraes’s decisions and appointing a legal representative in Brazil.
Republican deputies reintroduced a bill, nicknamed “without censors in our territory”, which prohibits the entry of a foreign agent who violates the right of freedom of expression of US citizens. The project was approved last month, the Judicial Committee of the Chamber of.
In a letter calling the big techs talking in Congress, the deputies made clear their goal. “American companies are sounding the alarm about how foreign censorship harms US civil freedoms. Ox has resisted arbitrary court orders in Brazil and Australia that require global content removal,” said the document sent to companies, as shown, as shown Sheet.
The State Department also commented. The Office of the Department’s Western Hemisphere, in an X -publication, said that “blocking access to information and imposing fines on US -based companies for refusing to censor people living in the United States is incompatible with democratic values, including freedom of expression.” The department referred after the platform refuses to block blogger Allan dos Santos.
US warnings regarding alleged censorship are not restricted to Brazil. Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said the European Digital Services Law, which requires actions regarding certain online content, “is incompatible with the tradition of freedom of expression in America.”
American Vice President Jd Vance had already shocked Europeans with his speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, in which he spent a decomposition in the European Union for allegedly censoring conservative content and politicians.
But while the US elect freedom of expression as a motto in the world, at home the Trump government has been imposing press restrictions and critical voices. Limitations to Associated Press (AP) access to the White House, use of government agencies to press critical vehicles and the removal of vetoed content from government sites point to a selective use of the defense of freedom of expression.
