As the world’s democracies weigh how to regulate the digital masters of the universe, democracies should the Indian strategy which has successfully managed to leash X and other big American social media companies through an array of densely technical rules, judgments and law enforcement actions.
Author
Sreeram Chaulia, Professor and Dean, Jindal School of International Affairs (JSIA), O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana.
Summary
The decision of Brazil’s Supreme Court to ban the popular social media platform X (formerly Twitter) is a milestone in the saga of worldwide attempts to rein in the so-called digital town square that is shaping contemporary public life and civic discourse. That X has been blocked entirely in the world’s fourth-largest democracy, where it had 22 million daily active users, is a sign that free societies are increasingly being forced to grapple with a dilemma hitherto believed to be confined to dictatorships — how much freedom of expression should be allowed before it upends public interest and order?
Predictably, X has been proscribed in China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, which rank among the lowest in the world in civil and political liberties. But when democratic Brazil resorts to a shutdown on grounds that X is not removing accounts that spread hatred, conspiracy theories and misinformation, it calls for a deeper introspection as to whether transnational social media giants have overstepped limits.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who issued the ruling to ban X in Brazil, has targeted its billionaire owner Elon Musk for confusing “freedom of expression with freedom of aggression.” Brazilian president Lula da Silva’s taunt that the world is not obliged to put up with Musk’s far-Right ideology just because he is rich reflects the socialist Brazilian government’s view that unfettered digital freedom is being misappropriated by extreme Right wing elements such as the mobs that attacked the country’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential palace in 2023 to trigger a regime overthrow and reinstate former president Jair Bolsonaro.
Published in: Hindustan Times
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