For context, it's useful to remind that after the last presidential election, Brazil withstood a coup attempt similar to USA's January 6th. Since then, the courts have taken a tougher stance against social media, including a country-wide blockage of X/Twitter last year.

We can expect that social media companies will lobby against this. In Brazil they find allies in the far-right which are also interested in moderation-free social media. For instance, two weeks ago Meta and Google sponsored an event from Bolsonaro's PL party about social media and AI, including lectures to train party members into how to effectively employ social media and AI tools. https://oglobo.globo.com/politica/noticia/2025/05/21/pl-anun...

I always like going to the source for things like that. As the article mentioned, the voting hasn't concluded yet. This article has a link to the seven votes so far, with the full explanation for each one: https://noticias.stf.jus.br/postsnoticias/stf-avanca-em-anal...

It will be really interesting to watch how this unfolds. My hypothesis: Meta, X et al. will threaten to just wholesale IP-block the country (not worth the risk), and it will become a game of Chicken.

Side note: The density of ads on that page is almost impressive.

Censorship is no longer the tool of choice of wannabe dictators. Instead, the focus is now on editorializing of communication channels. Open up the front page of X in a private tab, and see how everything is far right propaganda. Who needs to censor anything anymore? Simply downrank whatever displeases you into oblivion.

Good for Brazil, maybe they can slow down the fascist disease that rots our democracies from the inside.

If they manipulate the feed (add, hide, reorder) then they should be held liable for user content.

There's probably a lot of politics behind this judgement that shaped it. But to a certain degree it's fair. Why would social media companies only make money from what users do on their platform but be spared any accountability?

Everything a user does on a social media platform is visible to the company and is monetized. Is any other sector spared any accountability when they know the customer is breaking the law?

This will be expensive for the company because they have to not just moderate, but do it under a patchwork of different countries' laws. But they were more than happy to make bank for years from this, put all that money to good use. It will also create some opportunity for abuse but then again so is allowing anything and everything on the platform.

Heh, good. "Social media" has always been worse than just running a personal website. Especially now that most social media platforms are walling themselves off from the rest of the web.

Who decides what you are allowed to say or see?

Well, if social media can profit from user content it should be liable too right?

Thanks god.

Finally! I've been yelling at the clouds for years now how it made zero sense to apply “hosting services” rules for social media when they haven't been doing mere content hosting for years: with their algorithmic feeds curating what everyone is viewing they are literally acting as content editors, and as such it made no sense to me that they didn't have the same obligations as any other other editors out there.

In fact, because of them the regulation on mere hosting services have increased sharply for no reasons, just because the regulators wanted to have more control on social medias.

Good! We need to go further in this direction.

If magazines, newspapers, movies and TV stations are liable for what they publish why shouldn't social media also be?

The "but it is only transportation of information, like telephones" argument is just ridiculous. It is valid for email at best, it is not valid for social media. They already routinely practice filtering of what is posted.

We shouldn't expect the U.S. to advance this cause. Their congress is too deep in the pockets of lobbyists to be accountable to public interest. It has to come from the E.U. and responsible governments.

Edit: this is a repetition of history. There are a lot of tragic examples of tragedies sparked by publications meant to extract profits from people's paranoia and fear. The most famous one is the witch hunt started by the book Malleus Maleficarum[1] that caused more than 30 000 deaths. We created means to contain these abuses in new media too. The genocide of Rohingya people could have been avoided if Facebook were liable for it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum

Personally I think that social media companies should be at least in part liable for content posted by their users. There is a tendency to treat social media as a mere conduit, like the post office, that should not be responsible for content but the post office doesn't decide who sees what or profits from advertising inserted into mail.

I thought about this a few months ago and came up with this <strike>rant</strike>completely reasonable proposal[0] that tries to balance internet freedom with assigning limited responsibility for user content published by web sites.

Summary: under some conditions based on the number of views, whether any money changed hands, and whether the post was widely shared or mostly private, a publisher should be liable for some of the damages caused by a post.

[0] https://sheep.horse/2025/3/section_230_and_internet_freedom%...

I suppose the primary issue is lack of moderation on these platforms. I always contend that, if you don’t say certain things to a person face to face, you should have the decorum and decency to not do that in digital space.

And to that extent, social media platforms need to step up maintaining civility within their community.

The primary issue mentioned in the article is illegal content. That certainly requires high level of moderation.

Brazilian courts have the intent correct to hold social media platforms responsible if they don’t moderate. However, who knows how the execution of this judgement will look like.