SEE HERE: Agenda DIGIEFFECT Workshop 31 March 2026

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SEE HERE: Agenda Conchester 

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by Bhaswati Sarkar & Ankita Dutta

Centre for European Studies School of International Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University, 19 October 2025

Source: https://corporate.cyrilamarchandblogs.com/2019/05/social-media-code-conduct-election-commission-india/

Rapid strides in information technology have opened up new opportunities to consume and share news, views and ideas. The implication of information technology on the democratic political systems does not need to be established. The use of digital spaces and platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, WhatsApp, have become a defining feature in the way elections are being conducted today. Political parties compete with each other to influence and dominate the online space both to create favourable narratives and discredit competitors. India is no exception. As the access to internet increases, the digital space has established itself as an arena of increased political communication and contest. This blog analyses the impact of digital media on Indian elections and looks at various regulations that New Delhi has adopted to manage the digital space.

India has emerged as thriving digital economy, and by almost every digital indicator – internet access, mobile access, data use and consumption, start-ups, unicorns, and trade-in services – India appears to be a digital power. The Indian government has been actively engaged in the country’s digitalisation. Its flagship programme, Digital India, which is structured around nine key pillars, is aimed at transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. It involves three main components: creating accessible digital infrastructures, providing services digitally, and promoting digital literacy among citizens. This initiative has been successful in expanding the internet access and improved public services through Digital Public Infrastructure (which is a combination of digital identity, digital payment infrastructure and data exchange solutions). Since the launch of the initiative, internet connections have increased from 251.5 million in March 2014 to 969.6 million in June 2024, registering a growth of 285.53%. Broadband connections rose from 61 million in March 2014 to 949.2 million in August, 2024 growing by 1452%. Moreover, India accounted for 49% of global real-time transaction in 2023, making it the leading country in digital payments.

During elections, the political outreach that the ‘digispace’ provides has been about narrative and image building of political leaders and their party. But this space is also open to misuse by misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. Therefore, effectively regulating this space is an imperative for meaningful conduct of politics in general and elections in particular.

India has strengthened its regulatory framework to manage online platforms overall. The rights and responsibilities of online platforms are regulated by Section 79 of the Information Technology Act of 2000, which places responsibility of due diligence on network service providers to remove or disable access to illegal or false information. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 have sought to further regulate social media platforms. Amendments introduced in April 2023 conferred new powers for the government to exercise censorship and calls on social and media platforms to remove posts deemed fake or false. This is to ensure data privacy, net neutrality, and most importantly, accountability of social media platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, and Meta. These frameworks along with the Indian Penal Code and framework of the twin acts, namely the Representation of People Act, 1950 and 1951 forms the core of legal instruments implemented by India in regulating its online space. While the amendments sought to regulate the online space, these provisions have been critcised for curtailing rights of the people, over-censorship, and concerns about creation of an appellate authority which might not be independent of the executive.

With respect to elections, the responsibility of ensuring free and fair polls. rests with the Election Commission of India (ECI). The ECI issues guidelines and advisories related to the use of social media by political parties and candidates. Since 2008, it has made attempts to regulate the digital space. In 2013, the ECI formulated guidelines for social media companies, candidates, political parties and third parties. For instance, disclosure of  social media accounts for candidates when filing their nominations was made mandatory. Political parties and candidates were also required to publish their expenditure incurred on social media. Further, at the state and district levels parties’ political advertisements shared across online platforms required prior certification by Media Certification and Monitoring Committees (MCMC).

The 2014 parliamentary elections that led BJP leader Modi to power marked a turning point in the use of digital space for party electioneering. PM Modi’s 2014 success has been attributed to his innovative social media outreach. The Financial Times went so far as to call him India’s “first social media prime minister”. A month within becoming the prime minister, PM Modi increased his online popularity on Facebook, becoming the world’s second most popular head of a state after US President Obama. In 2017 a report released by PR firm Burson-Marstellar showed Prime Minister Modi with 40 million Facebook followers on his personal page – the world’s most followed leader. In 2024, he became the most followed global leader on the social media platform X. With over 100 million followers, Prime Minister Modi outperforms Virat Kohli (64.1 million) and Taylor Swift (95.3 million).

While BJP retains its first mover advantage on social media presence, other parties have caught up. Consequently, the digital space needs to be better regulated due to platforms’ ability of polarisation by microtargeting and misinformation. In 2018, ECI set up the Sinha Committee to look into the feasibility of regulating social media advertising during election campaigns and ways to prevent its misuse (No. 491/RPA/2017/Communication). For the 2019 elections, a voluntary code of ethics  was signed by ECI and Internet and Mobile Association of India. The social media companies agreed to conduct education and awareness campaigns, and establish a fast-track grievance redress channel to take action on objectionable posts reported to the ECI. They also agreed to pre-certification requirements and to take action within three hours of reported violations of the mandatory 48-hour period of no-campaigning.

On the ground the “voluntary code of ethics” had at best limited impact. During the 2019 elections, millions of fake or misleading posts were uploaded particularly on Facebook, Twitter, Google and WhatsApp, only 909 posts were taken down by the social media platforms and of the 510 code violations just 75 were analysed by the ECI but no penalties were imposed. The 2014 Lok Sabha election was dubbed as “social media elections’” and 2019 was referred to as the “WhatsApp election”, the elections of 2024 can be referred to as dominated by the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The elections of 2024 were conducted in seven phases spread over two months involving over 960 million voters. The Model Code of Conduct kicked in from 16th March 2024. This election stands out for the use of generative A Political parties and candidates used AI extensively to enhance their messaging to a diverse, multilingual electorate. AI was also frequently used for spreading misleading information through use of fake audio, propaganda images, and parodies. While AI was used to scale the messaging, it was used mostly without repercussions and lack of transparency. Of particular concern were the “deep fakes”, which distorted content and spread fake information/misinformation/disinformation. For example, an AI-generated deepfake video surfaced featuring late Member of Parliament H. Vasanthakumar endorsing his son’s Congress candidacy; or AI-generated videos of Prime Minister Modi and other leaders like Mamta Banerjee were also circulated during the campaign cycle.

The ECI issued a circular for the “responsible and ethical use of social media platforms and strict avoidance of any wrongful use by political parties and their representatives.” In its Press Note published on 14 May 2024, the ECI noted that it had received 425 major complaints of which 400 had been addressed. However, the ECI was accused by the opposition parties and civil society groups for failing to act against violation of MCC, related to communal content posted online by political actors for voter appeasement. ECI was also accused of failing to take note of speeches being made on caste, community, or religious lines at the right time, meant that the intended damage was done.

In the coming years, the use of social media in Indian elections is only likely to grow. India requires robust enforcement and monitoring capacity to track political advertising, labeling, disclosure, and limit on microtargeting. As platforms play a critical role in information dissemination and may not fully comply with over-regulation, the government needs to work with these platforms for content-moderation, automation and ad-review to reduce disinformation. While strong regulatory framework with robust and impartial implementation is critical, civil society organisations play an important role both in protecting freedom of expression from government overreach and sensitising people about misinformation. Equally, if not more important, is the commitment of political players themselves to use digital platforms responsibly.

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Code	Title	Details
P004	Norm Contestation in Global Tech regulation	View Panel Details
P138	Digital Parties and Digital Citizens	View Panel Details
P139	Digital Political Communication and its Effects	View Panel Details
P140	Digital Technologies and Elections	View Panel Details
P245	Integrity and Accountability in Digital Participatory Processes	View Panel Details
P250	International AI Governance	View Panel Details
P349	Party Digital Democratic Innovations	View Panel Details
P457	Tech Governance and Digital Policy	View Panel Details

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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:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Peru and Dominican Republic: Electoral authorities have issued guidelines and fact-checking initiatives, but criminal law still focuses mainly on defamation.

• Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba: Among the earliest adopters of “anti-fake news” laws, but in highly restrictive ways, criminalizing dissent and consolidating censorship.

• 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.

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15^th of July 2025

Carla Watanabe, JD candidate, Brazilian Institute of Education, Development and Research

&

Marcio Cunha Filho, JD, University of Brasília, Professor at the Brazilian Institute of Education, Development and Research

In August 2024, Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court (STF) ordered the suspension of Twitter, now X, across the country. Immediately, far-right congressmen filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), claiming that the STF was imposing unnecessary censorship in Brazil. But was the suspension of Twitter in Brazil an authoritarian act of online censorship? We argue that the suspension was a drastic but necessary measure to safeguard citizens; the deputy’s allegations must be understood through the lens of Brazil’s recent socio-political context.

The election of President Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 was marked by the rampant spread of mis- and dis-information. In October 2018, the media exposed an orchestrated campaign by Bolsonaro supporters involving the mass dissemination of messages via WhatsApp, funded by illegal campaign donations. These messages spread falsehoods against opponents using illegally obtained segmented phone data and followed a strategy similar to the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the UK.

After the election, the malicious campaign strategy was not disbanded, instead shifting targets, for example targeting academics. Soon the Supreme Court itself became a major target of these attacks. Following rulings that displeased the new government, in January 2019, bots and superspreaders began coordinated attacks against the justices and families of the STF, as well as journalists. Media outlets aligned with President Bolsonaro amplified these baseless claims. During his inauguration, Bolsonaro directly fueled tensions with calls to “liberate the country” from “old institutions.” In March 2019, personal information of justices’ families was leaked, leading to calls for protests outside their homes and explicit threats to their lives, all framed in conspiratorial language.

In response, the STF’s Chief Justice launched Judicial Inquiry 4781, dubbed the “Fake News Inquiry”, and appointed Justice Alexandre de Moraes as rapporteur to lead the police investigation. Throughout 2019 the Federal Police identified patterns in these attacks, uncovering hierarchical structures distributing identical texts across countless profiles, with evidence of financial payments via PIX (Brazil’s instant payment system) to group administrators coordinating the attacks.

In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the STF ruled in favor of state and municipal autonomy to enact social distancing policies. This stance, contrary to the federal government’s downplaying of the pandemic’s severity, triggered a new wave of cyberattacks against the STF. Bolsonaro himself said that the Supreme Court sought to “break the country.” On 19 April 2020, with Bolsonaro present, a protest in Brasília featuring banners which demanded that the STF’s closure and the return of AI-5 – an act that curtailed freedoms during Brazil’s military dictatorship). Amid escalating threats to the rule of law, Inquiry 4828 (“Inquiry on Anti-Democratic Acts“) was launched shortly after the protest to investigate the origins and funders of these movements.

The inquiry revealed that the profiles spreading fake news during the election had also organized anti-democratic protests, and the businessmen funding fake news websites were also financing transport and infrastructure for demonstrations calling for the overthrow of Brazil’s democracy. In May 2020, the Federal Police executed warrants relating to both investigations. Seized phones exposed groups coordinating fake news dissemination and anti-democratic rallies using shared scripts, unified calendars and task divisions. Digital and physical actions were proven inseparable. Later in 2020, investigations found evidence linking the Presidential Office (“Gabinete do Ódio” or “Office of Hate”) to this organization, indicating coordination between the government and anti-democratic actors.

Thus, in April 2021, the STF extended the investigations of the “Digital Militias Inquiry“ to investigate the structure and financing of this organization. A professional hierarchy emerged: funders; ideologues; content managers; bot operators fueled by pseudo-journalistic content; and “influencers”. Between 2021-2022, further investigation revealed “digital militias” relied heavily on social media to spread false information, especially Twitter. In 2021, the STF ordered immediate suspension of fake news accounts and posts, but the platform often took several weeks to comply. New accounts subsequently emerged with identical content, migrating followers and monetization.

In 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now X). Musk declared “absolute free speech” on the platform and granted amnesty to banned accounts and gutting content moderation teams. Digital militias returned at full strength and attacked Brazil’s electoral system with calls for “armed oversight” of voting by the military.

Sowing distrust in the electoral system began after Bolsonaro’s 2018 election, claiming electoral fraud denied him a first-round victory. Attacks intensified during the pandemic, with coordinated digital assaults on the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) from 2020 onward. The following year, the former president held weekly livestreams alleging voting machines were insecure. On 29 July 2021, he presented a two-hour “proof” of systemic flaws, implicitly threatening to cancel the 2022 elections; senators classified this livestream as a threat to democracy.

The digital militia apparatus was then turned against the electoral system. Ongoing inquiries confirmed the same groups active since 2018 were behind these attacks. In 2022, their operations intensified: Bolsonaro summoned diplomats on 18 July to claim Brazil’s electoral system was untrustworthy, causing international embarrassment. On 7 September, he delivered explicit threats in a speech to supporters who chanted against STF justices. The STF ordered X to immediately block accounts coordinating these actions, but the platform delayed compliance and publicly questioned the order.

After President Lula won the October 2022 election, digital militias gathered thousands of Bolsonaro supporters in camps outside military barracks, contesting results and urging the military to prevent the new government’s inauguration. These efforts culminated first in the invasion of the Federal Police headquarters in mid-December, then an attempted terrorist attack at Brasília Airport by placing dynamite on a 60,000-liter kerosene truck.

The movement peaked on 8 January 2023, when thousands stormed and destroyed Brazil’s congressional, presidential, and judicial buildings, mirroring the U.S. January 6 Capitol riot. Federal Police investigations confirmed X was used as the primary platform to organize and mobilize these acts. Throughout 2023, the STF repeatedly ordered X to immediately block involved accounts, provide user data, and appoint a legal representative in Brazil. X ignored these orders, instead allowing anti-democratic content and monetization to persist.

From January-March 2024, facing non-compliance, the STF imposed daily fines of R$100,000 per profile, blocked advertising revenue, and threatened criminal liability for executives. Musk publicly attacked Justice Moraes, accusing Brazil of “judicial dictatorship” and defied all rulings.

By the first semester of 2024, the Digital Militias Inquiry found that X profited from this criminal organization via engagement, ad revenue, and X Premium monetization. Evidence further revealed ideological dis-alignment in Brazil: X complied with court orders from other countries while systematically challenging rules in Brazil. On 13 August, X closed its Brazil office and refused to appoint a legal representative. After ignoring subpoenas, Justice Moraes ordered X’s nationwide suspension on 30 August 2024, under Brazil’s Internet Civil Framework law. X resumed operations in October 2024 after appointing a legal representative physically located in Brazil, complying with the Supreme Court’s order.

Thus, X’s suspension in Brazil was not abrupt and did not come without warning.  The ban was a consequence of many years of investigations substantiating the platform’s central role in enabling attacks to Brazilian democracy: repeated defiance of court orders; refusal to appoint a legal representative; and deliberate protection of actors spreading fake news to overthrow institutions obstructing Bolsonaro supporters’ interests. This suspension was not censorship but a protective measure for Brazil’s rule of law.

The STF’s actions did however draw criticism from Bolsonaro supporters. The situation in Brazil even caused some international institutions to further investigate if freedom of expression was indeed being undermined in Brazil – for example, the special rapporteurs on Freedom of Expression of the OAE visited the country to investigate the situation. However, the court ultimately acted in line with opposing the rise of a “militant democracy” (a term conceptualized by Karl Loewenstein during Nazism’s rise), where democracy must resist authoritarian advances. Brazil’s democracy is young and fragile with a history of institutional ruptures. The 8 January 2023 insurrection—combined with a foiled plot to assassinate Justice Moraes, the elected president, and vice president conspiring to keep Bolsonaro in power—demonstrates the concrete danger posed by these actors. They exploited social media’s speed, rendering traditional legal tools ineffective against these crimes.

In July 2025, President Donald Trump released a letter announcing the imposition of 50% tariffs on all goods originating from Brazil, to begin on 1 August. In the letter, President Trump explicitly mentions that this taxation is being imposed not for economic reasons, but due to what he considers a “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro and his allies. It is important to recognize the connection between this event and the issues raised throughout this text. Despite all the uproar and fallacious arguments—such as the claim that the Brazilian Supreme Court is imposing censorship—it is crucial to expose the actions of Bolsonaro, Trump, and Musk and describe them for what their actions truly are: methods to attack and subvert Brazilian democracy, not legitimate forms of free speech. Brazilian institutions are holding strong, but no one knows if this scenario will persist.

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