Since billionaire Elon Musk endorsed Republican candidate Donald Trump within the US presidential race in July, X, the social media platform Musk owns, has come underneath much more scrutiny. Many critics have accused him of weaponising the platform for his political objectives and utilizing it to advertise right-wing politicians he favours.
Amid this scrutiny, Musk’s conflict with the Brazilian authorities has come to the fore. In August, a Brazilian courtroom suspended X after its refusal to take away content material and accounts that have been deemed to unfold “disinformation”, incitement to prison actions and perceived threats to democracy.
Dealing with a nationwide ban in certainly one of its largest markets and mounting fines, Musk finally threw within the towel and acceded to the courtroom’s calls for.
Many on the left in Brazil, the US and elsewhere celebrated the triumph of the Brazilian state, backing its actions within the identify of “digital sovereignty” and “independence”. Whereas I agree that oversized affect in political affairs of social media giants must be countered, the method of the Brazilian authorities shouldn’t be the way in which to do it. If something, such courtroom orders pave the way in which for indiscriminate state censorship of social media platforms that may do extra hurt than good to freedom of expression and democracy honest politics.
State censorship
To be clear, X has carried out censorship in different international locations earlier than this newest controversy in Brazil, focusing on people, political teams and actions. It’s uncertain that Musk’s defiance of the Brazilian courtroom’s order got here out of concern for the wellbeing of Brazilians and their proper to free speech.
But the censorship requests made by Brazil’s Supreme Court docket have additionally been troublesome. In April, it requested the suspension of accounts belonging to supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as a part of an investigation into “digital militias” that supported tried coup actions in January 2023. The main points of this investigation haven’t been absolutely revealed.
The courtroom has additionally made different requests earlier than that don’t stand as much as scrutiny. Paperwork obtained by the Brazilian press reveal that in 2022, Supreme Justice Alexandre de Moraes had sought to dam the X account of fashionable gospel singer Davi Sacer – a Bolsonaro supporter – for retweeting posts encouraging protests in opposition to Brazilian ministers attending a convention in New York. The identical decide ordered the ban on the X accounts of the left-wing Staff’ Trigger Social gathering for criticising the Supreme Court docket.
Over the previous few years, Moraes, a conservative who beforehand administered police repression in Sao Paulo, has consolidated the ability to ban disfavoured speech throughout the Brazilian web, because the arbiter and enforcer of which content material must be eliminated as “disinformation”. If his marketing campaign in opposition to free speech on social media shouldn’t be reined in, there may be little that may stop him and the judiciary from increasing their censorship powers.
They might be primarily focusing on the far proper in Brazil proper now, however this may simply change. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who backed Moraes’s actions in opposition to X, is at the moment dealing with criticism from environmental defenders and political forces to the left of him. In the event that they organise forceful opposition to his pro-capitalist agenda, army police initiatives, and environmentally damaging insurance policies, then we will count on they, too, will probably be topic to social media censorship.
Free speech is important for democracy
As American scholar Noam Chomsky and others have documented, a capitalist media system concentrates media possession to fabricate consent. But even when the company media suppresses necessary information and views, if the federal government helps free speech, the general public nonetheless has the chance to show falsehoods and specific different opinions. On this case, dissent is marginalised, moderately than banned altogether.
Nevertheless, when the state will get concerned, we will simply find yourself with full censorship of dissent. If a authorities assumes the function of a single arbiter and authority on “reality”, then it may use this energy to silence anybody who challenges it. On this means, all media – whether or not conventional or social – is vulnerable to successfully turning into state media.
It’s true that Huge Social Media has an excessive amount of energy to form the circulate of data. But, upholding “digital sovereignty” and defying digital colonialism can’t imply imposing the desire of the federal government to suppress political opposition, even whether it is on the far proper.
If there may be certainly unlawful speech on a social media platform, then it must be prosecuted in a courtroom, the place defendants obtain a good trial. “Pretend information” is an actual downside, but when the speech shouldn’t be unlawful, it’s not the enterprise of the federal government to clean it from the web. There are different mechanisms to fight this subject.
These of us on the left could deem Musk and the far-right politicians he backs like Bolsonaro and Trump as a menace to society and the planet, however normalising state censorship of politically disfavoured speech within the identify of “digital sovereignty” units a harmful precedent. It creates area for this idea to be exploited to “defend society” in opposition to unpopular or controversial views.
Allow us to do not forget that we stay in a world the place 67 international locations have anti-LGBTQ legal guidelines criminalising same-sex relations between consenting adults, whereas many Western “democracies” weaponise accusations of anti-Semitism to suppress the Palestinian solidarity motion. In Israel, almost 60 p.c of the inhabitants favours censoring social media posts sympathetic to the Palestinians in Gaza. Ought to governments have the proper to censor posts about LGBTQ rights or the genocide in opposition to the Palestinian individuals, within the identify of defending “nationwide safety” and “democracy”?
One individual’s “faux information” may be one other’s “reality”, which is why states should not be given the authority to censor social media.
Digital sovereignty from under
To oppose authorities overreach is to not recommend that Musk and X didn’t additionally defy the Brazilian state in methods which might be extremely questionable. The complete story is complicated and far of the element is sealed away from the general public view.
That mentioned, there are methods to push for real digital sovereignty and oppose the overwhelming energy wielded by Huge Social Media firms that don’t contain state-driven sponsorship.
Grassroots activists ought to press for social media decentralisation legal guidelines that mandate interoperability between and inside social media networks. This might imply that any consumer of any social media community would be capable to see and work together with the customers and content material printed by every other community. In consequence, firms like X and Meta will not have a monopoly on social media publishing.
Interoperability coupled with public subsidies and bans on platform-based promoting may also decommodify the social media panorama, lowering the immense income Huge Social Media is making.
A wide range of impartial fact-checking organisations and instruments could possibly be supported and chosen by social media platforms or their members to comprise the unfold of propaganda and disinformation.
Alongside these modifications, the left wants a stronger imaginative and prescient and technique to decolonise the worldwide digital economic system. I’ve instructed a Digital Tech Deal as a blueprint that might section out the non-public possession of the technique of computation and data as a part of a sustainable digital degrowth agenda.
Very like the environmental disaster, the web is basically borderless, and digital sovereignty can’t be achieved inside one nation. The pressing want for drastic change to the digital ecosystem requires internationalist grassroots activism that targets the American tech empire on the core, in addition to the system of digital capitalism and colonialism working in every nation.
Authoritarian censorship masked as “digital sovereignty” shouldn’t be the way in which to go.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
