Between Ethical Pacts and Musk’s Meltdown:Mapping Latin America’s Struggle to Regulate Digital Campaigns
By Ronald Sáenz-Leandro, PhD Candidate, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Barcelona, Spain
25 September 2025
Digital technologies are now an integral part of Latin America’s political campaigns. While television and radio remain parties’ preferred communication channels, particularly in Mexico, platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, and X have rapidly become electoral battlegrounds of persuasion, mobilization, and, increasingly, disinformation. Yet unlike the European Union’s recent push for hard or soft digital regulatory measures, the Latin American regulatory response remain fragmented, oscillating between judicial activism, regulatory vacuum, and voluntary self-regulation.
This blog post explores three contrasting cases – Brazil, Mexico, and Uruguay – to illustrate each country’s distinct regulatory pathway. We then provide a comparative snapshot of the region, highlighting the challenges of digital campaign governance where democratic resilience coexists with fragility and, in some instances, authoritarian drift.
Brazil: Judicial Activism and Pending Legislation
In Brazil, disinformation became a central political issue during the 2018 elections, when coordinated campaigns on WhatsApp fueled polarization. Since then, the judiciary has assumed an increasingly proactive role. Law 13.834/2019 criminalized false allegations against candidates, and the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) established permanent programs to combat electoral disinformation. These measures faced relatively little opposition at the time, as they were framed narrowly around protecting the integrity of the electoral process.
The proposed Lei Brasileira de Liberdade, Responsabilidade e Transparência na Internet (PL 2.630/2020), also known as the “fake news bill,” sought to regulate digital platforms more broadly by requiring user identification and content traceability. While approved in the Senate, the bill has faced resistance from civil society groups and remains pending in Congress. The “fake news bill” later became the focal point of controversy, drawing criticism from civil society and digital rights organizations concerned about its potential impact on freedom of expression and privacy. Critics argue that the provisions on traceability could compromise users’ privacy and facilitate surveillance, while the broad scope of the bill risks stifling legitimate speech by delegating excessive powers to state authorities and platforms.
Meanwhile, the TSE and the Supreme Federal Court have developed their own regulatory mechanisms to tackle instances of online disinformation. The creation of the Integrated Center for Confronting Disinformation and Defense of Democracy in 2024 formalized collaboration between public authorities, the judiciary, and platforms like Meta, Google, and TikTok. Yet this activism has sparked concerns about judicial overreach. The confrontation between Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Elon Musk in 2024, when X was temporarily blocked in Brazil, illustrates the tension between safeguarding democratic integrity and preserving freedom of expression.
Brazil exemplifies a path of strong regulatory intervention, but one heavily reliant on courts rather than parliamentary debate. This duality highlights both the country’s capacity for rapid institutional response to digital threats and the ongoing controversy over whether judicial activism is an adequate substitute for broader, democratic deliberation on regulation.
Mexico: Legal Vacuum and De Facto Self-Regulation
In stark contrast, Mexico has pursued an approach leaving digital campaigning largely unregulated. The Mexican Constitution protects freedom of expression and prohibits prior censorship, meaning that authorities cannot block or restrict content before it is published, even in the context of electoral campaigns, and electoral law continues to emphasize the allocation of free broadcast time in television and radio as the central output of political communication.
Currently, only party actors are penalized if found to deliberately spread false information about the electoral process, which leaves misinformation circulating online broadly unchecked. In practice this means that citizens, media outlets, and other non-electoral actors are not subject to equivalent sanctions, creating a regulatory gap where disinformation can spread without legal consequences unless it originates directly from candidates or parties.
Attempts to legislate digital risks have been limited. In 2023, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), together with other institutions, presented the Carta de Derechos de la Persona en el Entorno Digital: a code of practice aimed at safeguarding fundamental rights online such as freedom of expression, privacy, security, and access to information. The document was not a formal bill introduced in Congress but rather a call for a regulatory framework that protects human rights in the digital sphere, similar to those already existing in the offline world. In parallel, UNAM’s Program on Democracy, Justice and Society advanced a Decálogo de Derechos Digitales en Redes Sociales, an initial legislative proposal seeking to protect social media users from platform abuses by enshrining rights such as freedom of expression, data privacy, the right to be forgotten, child protection, non-discrimination, and transparency.
According to the initiative’s official site , the Decálogo is still in the stage of collecting citizen signatures, and neither it nor the Carta has yet translated into formal legislation. While the Decálogo continues to seek public backing, the Carta has remained essentially a declaration of intent without following the same advocacy pathway.
As highlighted by scholars of Mexican political communication, this regulatory inertia has opened the door to growing technopolitics where parties, influencers, and even troll farms operate freely online. Faced with this, authorities and civil society often emphasize autorregulación: the voluntary adaptation of regulatory measures by parties, platforms, and citizens, rather than formal legal instruments.
While Mexico lacks a direct counterpart to the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, there are examples of soft regulatory tools and initiatives that perform similar functions in practice. For instance, ahead of the 2024 presidential election, INE partnered with media organizations and platforms via organizations such as Meedan to amplify reliable content. Meedan is a global non-profit that develops open-source tools and supports digital media literacy and fact-checking initiatives. In March 2025, legal reforms strengthened transparency and personal data protection laws that, while not electoral regulation per se, contribute to the broader online information ecosystem.
The debate resurfaced in April 2025 with the proposal of a new Telecommunications Law. The draft included a controversial article granting the Agency for Digital Transformation and Telecommunications the power to temporarily block digital platforms for non-compliance with regulatory obligations without clarifying the applicable cases. However, facing strong criticism from the opposition, major broadcasters such as Televisa and TV Azteca, and freedom of expression organizations, President Claudia Sheinbaum ordered legislators to halt its approval, and asked the Senate to open a broader discussion to amend or remove the article. Sheinbaum insisted that her administration did not intend to censor content and that the law must avoid any ambiguity suggesting otherwise, underscoring the tensions between state regulatory ambitions and the defense of a liberal model of political communication.
Mexico thus embodies a deliberate preference for legal silence, framed as a safeguard against potential censorship but criticized for its inability to confront the manipulation of online spaces. While autoregulation by parties, platforms, and civil society has filled part of this gap, such measures have proven insufficient, underscoring the need for more robust and comprehensive legislation to effectively address the risks of digital campaigning.
Uruguay: Ethical Pacts and Soft Co-Regulation
Uruguay represents a third pathway, grounded less in punitive legislation and more in political culture and voluntary agreements. The country has long protected freedom of expression, with its Press Law (1989) only penalizing false information that gravely disrupts public order or damages the state’s economic stability.
More relevant to digital campaigning are the Pactos Éticos contra la Desinformación signed by political parties in 2019 and renewed in 2024. These voluntary agreements committed parties to refrain from spreading fake news or disinformation during campaigns, emphasizing shared responsibility rather than legal compulsion. While not legally binding, the pacts have been praised as a democratic innovation that strengthens trust in electoral competition. This cooperative approach contrasts with the securitized responses of neighboring countries.
To date, there are no formal accountability mechanisms beyond public opinion and peer pressure when parties renege on the Pactos, but at present there have been no major instances of this occurring. All major political forces signed the pacts, which have thus far been largely respected, though their effectiveness ultimately depends on long-term voluntary compliance.
Beyond party self-regulation, hard regulatory tools exist in Uruguay but primarily address traditional media. The Press Law criminalizes knowingly disseminating false news via traditional media, and the Law of Audiovisual Content Diffusion (2024) updated regulation of audiovisual services. There is also legally mandated election advertising vedas for TV and radio which halts campaigning 48 hours before polling day. However, these laws often do not apply to digital platforms and other online services. Some proposed laws seek to penalize misleading or manipulated content during elections, but they frequently exclude platforms (leaving digital actors out). The Pactos remain important for parties but lack strong enforcement mechanisms.
By leveraging its strong institutional credibility and consensual political culture, Uruguay has managed to position ethical co-regulation as a viable tool for safeguarding electoral integrity in the digital age.
A Regional Panorama: Diverging Responses
Beyond these three cases, Latin America has exhibited a plethora of regulatory initiatives:
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Argentina: Numerous bills have been introduced since 2019, including a 2024 proposal for labeling user identities (human, bot, multi-account). None have been approved, reflecting both political deadlock and concerns about censorship.
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Chile: At least 12 bills sought to regulate online disinformation between 2018 and 2023, while the Ministry of Science convened a Commission on Disinformation in 2023. However, no binding regulation has emerged.
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Costa Rica: With no specific law against disinformation, the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) proposed reforms in 2023 to update the Electoral Code, addressing online propaganda.
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Peru and Dominican Republic: Electoral authorities have issued guidelines and fact-checking initiatives, but criminal law still focuses mainly on defamation.
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Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba: Among the earliest adopters of “anti-fake news” laws, but in highly restrictive ways, criminalizing dissent and consolidating censorship.
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Rest of Central America (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala): Recent cybercrime and anti-gang legislation has been repurposed to cover online communication, raising alarms about authoritarian misuse.
Taken together, the region demonstrates no unified approach. Instead, responses oscillate between securitization, judicial intervention, legal inertia, and voluntary agreements.
Final Remarks
Latin America’s struggle with digital campaign regulation reveals a spectrum of different governance strategies. While Brazil embraces judicial activism and expansive interventions, Mexico maintains a deliberate legal vacuum, privileging self-regulation, and Uruguay relies on voluntary ethical pacts; other countries add to this mix with aborted legislative attempts, temporary commissions, or restrictive authoritarian laws.
What is notably absent is a consistent regional framework comparable to the EU’s Digital Services Act or Code of Practice on Disinformation. Given the prominence of WhatsApp, Facebook, and TikTok as common channels of disinformation in the region, and the fragility of institutions in parts of the region, future solutions must strike a delicate balance: ensuring transparency in digital political advertising, promoting media literacy, and safeguarding freedom of expression.
As the 2026 electoral cycle looms in multiple Latin American countries, the lessons are clear. Neither unchecked legal silence nor authoritarian censorship provide sustainable solutions. A rights-based, participatory, and transparent model of regulation, anchored in democratic principles rather than expedient responses, remains the region’s unfinished task.