The democracies turning against online speech

New laws in Europe and Brazil threaten to knock social platforms offline

Jul 26, 2023

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - JUNE 15: European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton is talking to media in the Berlaymont, the EU Commission headquarter on June 15, 2023 in Brussels, Belgium. Today, EU Member States, with the support of the European Commission and ENISA, the EU Agency for Cybersecurity, published a second progress report on the implementation of the EU Toolbox on 5G cybersecurity. The report also addresses some of the recommendations of the European Court of Auditors' Special Report of January 2022. (Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images) — European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton addresses the media in Brussels in June. (Thierry Monasse / Getty Images)

A nice thing Twitter used to do for users, on occasion, was to fight for their speech rights. Last year in India, for example, when the Modi government began ordering the platform to remove a large number of posts and accounts that had been critical of the prime minister, Twitter sued in an effort to restore them.

Under Elon Musk, though, the company now called X has acceded to more and more of the Modi government’s demands. And one of the original promises of social media — that it could help citizens of repressive countries make an end run around speech restrictions — is now a little more broken.

As worrisome as Twitter’s abandonment of its Indian users has been, another set of developments this summer threaten to expand issues like these around the globe. Fueled by distrust in (and disdain for) social networks generally, more countries are exploring laws that would make it illegal or even impossible to post all sorts of speech online. And while Modi’s challenge to platforms came from the right, more recently the pressure is coming from the left.

The first story unfolds in France, where in June police killed a 17-year-old French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan descent named Nahel Merzouk. The killing was met with outrage in France, where — as in the United States — there is a long and terrible history of racist violence against minorities. Violent riots followed this month, leading to hundreds of injuries and thousands of arrests.

That led to a controversial speech from French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this month in which he told a group of 250 mayors that the country could attempt to quell riots by shutting down Snapchat, TikTok, and other platforms popular with young people participating in the protests.

“We need to think about the use of these networks by the youth ... and about the bans that need to be put in place. And I say this very clearly, because they change the way young people relate to reality," Macron said, according to Politico.

The European Union’s Digital Services Act, which takes effect next month, requires 19 companies designated as very large online platforms to take additional steps to restrict the spread of harmful content on their networks. Among its provisions is that the European Commission can declare a crisis situation and require platforms to take action to minimize their contribution to it.

Exactly what actions might be required aren’t spelled out in the law. That’s one reason civil society groups have criticized this aspect of the DSA, as this detailed blog post lays out.

Nonetheless, Macron’s suggestion that the country would unilaterally ban tech platforms drew swift criticism from his allies and foes alike. His government quickly walked back the statement he made in his speech, saying Macron only meant to say bans were technically possible.

Politico noted that the idea of broad platform restrictions was hypocritical given France’s own recent advocacy: “France has endorsed several U.N. resolutions condemning internet cuts by governments,” wrote Laura Kayali and Elisa Bartholomey, “including one in 2021 against ‘using internet shutdowns to intentionally and arbitrarily prevent or disrupt access to or dissemination of information online.’"

In any case, just as the controversy appeared to fade, another French politician intervened. Thierry Breton, the top regulator for online platforms in the EU, seemed to relish the prospect of bans in an interview he gave this month.

Here are Clothilde Goujard and Nicholas Camut at Politico. Count the number of times Breton says “immediately”:

"When there is hateful content, content that calls – for example – for revolt, that also calls for killing and burning of cars, they will be required to delete [the content] immediately," Breton said in the interview on France Info, citing the Digital Services Act which will impose new requirements on large platforms from August 25.
"If they fail to do so, they will be immediately sanctioned. We have teams who can intervene immediately," he said. "If they don't act immediately, then yes, at that point we'll be able not only to impose a fine but also to ban the operation [of the platforms] on our territory."

Breton’s statements alarmed human rights activists and advocates for an open internet, who worry that when the DSA take effect regulators like Breton will use it as a pretext to declare “crises” and crack down on speech rights.

“The statements from Thierry Breton of the European Commission about shutting down social media during riots are shocking,” wrote Daphne Keller, director of the program on platform regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center. “They vindicate every warning about the DSA that experts from the majority world (aka global south) have been shouting throughout this process.”

Crucially, Keller said, Breton’s statements could offer dictators around the world an excuse to enact similar bans.

“Authoritarians around the world will hear Breton’s message loud and clear,” she wrote. “(1) internet shutdowns are a permissible tool, and (2) the DSA (and local copies) legitimates their use and rapid deployment in situations like the one in France.”

One country that has clearly gotten the message: the similarly left-leaning government of Brazil. The crisis in that country relates to persistent election denialism related to the loss of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva last year.

As in the United States after the January 6 attacks, misinformation about Brazil’s presidential election continues to spread on social networks. In response, lawmakers proposed Bill 2630, also known as the Fake News Law. (See this detailed analysis of the bill from Joan Barata of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center.) Among other provisions, the bill would criminalize the spread of “untrue facts,” which would empower the state to persecute political speech. And as with the DSA, it would let the state declare a “crisis” and force platforms to moderate content according to the state’s orders.

When platforms have spoken out against the proposal, Brazilian politicians have exploded in outrage. In May, Google put a link on its Brazilian homepage advocating against 2630. The country’s justice minister threatened to fine the company almost $200,000 an hour if kept the message up — I guess political advocacy of this sort is somehow illegal in Brazil? — and Google pulled it down two hours later.

All of this is unfortunate for Google. But it’s likely to be worse for the citizens of Brazil, who could someday find themselves facing criminal charges if the state decides that something they texted a WhatsApp group is false.

The rise of social networks around the world has been accompanied by a crackdown on speech in countries already prone to repression, from Russia to Turkey and beyond. But now some of the world’s biggest democracies have begun to consider laws that threaten to be nearly as repressive.

The Twitter of old likely would not have been able to reverse that trend single-handedly. But with more politicians looking to crack down on dissent, advocates for speech could use all the allies they can find.

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