Social media platforms have a tendency to not be that bothered by nationwide boundaries.
Take X, for instance. Customers of what was as soon as known as Twitter span the globe, with its 600 millions-plus lively accounts dotted throughout almost each nation. And every of these jurisdictions has its personal legal guidelines.
However the pursuits of nationwide regulatory efforts and that of predominantly U.S.-based expertise firms typically don’t align. Whereas many governments have sought to impose oversight mechanisms to handle issues resembling disinformation, on-line extremism and manipulation, these initiatives have been met with company resistance, political interference and authorized challenges invoking free speech as a defend in opposition to regulation.
What’s brewing is a worldwide wrestle over digital platform governance. And on this battle, U.S. platforms are more and more leaning on American legal guidelines to problem different nation’s laws. It’s, we consider as specialists on digital legislation – one an govt director of a discussion board monitoring how international locations implement democratic ideas – a type of digital imperialism.
A rumble within the tech jungle
The newest manifestation of this phenomenon occurred in February 2025, when new tensions emerged between Brazil’s judiciary and U.S.-based social media platforms.
Trump Media & Expertise Group and Rumble filed a lawsuit within the U.S. in opposition to Brazilian Supreme Courtroom Justice Alexandre de Moraes, difficult his orders to droop accounts on the 2 platforms linked to disinformation campaigns in Brazil.
The case follows earlier unsuccessful efforts by Elon Musk’s X to withstand related Brazilian rulings.
Collectively, the circumstances exemplify a rising development through which U.S. political and company actors try and undermine overseas regulatory authority by urgent the case that home U.S. legislation and company protections ought to take priority over sovereign insurance policies globally.
From company lobbying to lawfare
On the core of the dispute is Allan dos Santos, a right-wing Brazilian influencer and fugitive from justice who fled to the U.S. in 2021 after De Moraes ordered his preventive arrest for allegedly coordinating disinformation networks and inciting violence.
Dos Santos has continued his on-line actions overseas. Brazil’s extradition requests have gone unanswered as a result of claims by U.S. authorities that the case includes problems with free speech fairly than prison offenses.
Trump Media and Rumble’s lawsuit makes an attempt to do two issues. First, it seeks to border Brazil’s judicial actions as censorship fairly than oversight. And second, it seeks to painting the Brazilian court docket motion as territorial overreach.
Their place is that because the goal of the motion was within the U.S., they’re topic to U.S. free speech protections beneath the First Modification. The truth that the topic of the ban was Brazilian and is accused of spreading disinformation and hate in Brazil mustn’t, they argue, matter.
For now, U.S. courts agree. In late February, a Florida-based decide dominated that Rumble and Trump Media needn’t adjust to the Brazilian order.
Huge Tech pushback to regulation
The case indicators an necessary shift within the contest over platform accountability – a transfer from company lobbying and political strain to direct authorized intervention in overseas jurisdictions. U.S. courts are actually getting used to problem abroad choices concerning platform accountability.
The result and the broader authorized technique behind the lawsuit might have far-reaching implications not just for Brazil however for any nation or area – such because the European Union – making an attempt to manage on-line areas.
The resistance in opposition to digital regulation predates the Trump administration.
In Brazil, efforts to manage social media platforms have lengthy confronted substantial opposition. Huge Tech firms – together with Google, Meta and X – have used their financial and political affect to foyer in opposition to tighter regulation, typically framing such insurance policies as a menace to free expression.
Google and Meta launched high-profile campaigns to oppose the invoice, warning it will “threaten free speech” and “harm small businesses.” Google positioned banners on its Brazilian homepage urging customers to reject the laws, whereas Meta ran ads questioning its implications for the digital economic system.
These efforts, alongside lobbying and political resistance, have been profitable in serving to to delay and weaken the regulatory framework.
Mixing company and political energy
The distinction now’s that challenges are blurring the road between the company and the political.
Trump Media was 53% owned by the U.S. president earlier than he moved his stake right into a revocable belief in December 2024. Elon Musk, the free speech fundamentalist proprietor of X, is a de facto member of the Trump administration.
Their ascent to energy has coincided with the First Modification being wielded as a defend in opposition to overseas laws on digital platforms.
Free speech protections within the U.S. have been utilized unequally, permitting authorities to suppress dissent in some circumstances whereas shielding hateful speech in others.
This imbalance extends to company energy, with a long time of authorized precedent increasing protections for personal pursuits. The case legislation cemented company speech protections, a logic later prolonged to digital platforms.
U.S. free speech advocates in Huge Tech and the U.S. authorities are seemingly escalating this development to an much more excessive interpretation: that American free speech arguments might be deployed to withstand the regulation of different jurisdictions and problem overseas authorized frameworks.
As an illustration, in response to the European Union’s Digital Providers Act, U.S. Federal Communications Fee Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, expressed issues that the act might threaten American free speech ideas.
Brazilian Supreme Courtroom Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has fought disinformation on tech platforms, attends a session of the nation’s excessive court docket on Feb. 26.
Ton Molina/NurPhoto by way of Getty Photos
Such an argument could have been nice if the identical interpretation of free speech – and its acceptable protections – have been universally accepted. However they don’t seem to be.
The idea of free speech varies considerably throughout nations and areas.
International locations resembling Brazil, Germany, France and others undertake what authorized specialists discuss with as a proportionality-based strategy to free speech, balancing it in opposition to different elementary rights resembling human dignity, democratic integrity and public order.
Sovereign international locations utilizing this strategy acknowledge freedom of expression as a elementary and preferential proper. However in addition they acknowledge that sure restrictions are crucial to guard democratic establishments, marginalized communities, public well being and the informational ecosystem from harms.
Whereas the U.S. imposes some limits on speech – resembling defamation legal guidelines and safety in opposition to incitement to imminent lawless motion – the First Modification is mostly way more expansive than in different democracies.
The way forward for digital governance
The authorized battle over platform regulation isn’t confined to the present battle between U.S.-based platforms and Brazil. The EU’s Digital Providers Act and the On-line Security Act in the UK are different examples of governments making an attempt to say management over platforms working inside their borders.
As such, the lawsuit by Trump Media and Rumble in opposition to the Brazilian Supreme Courtroom indicators a crucial second in world geopolitics.
U.S. tech giants, resembling Meta, are bending to the free speech winds popping out of the Trump administration. Musk, the proprietor of X, has given help to far-right teams abroad.
And this overlap within the coverage priorities of social media platforms and the political pursuits of the U.S. administration opens a brand new period within the deregulation debate through which U.S. free speech absolutists are searching for to ascertain authorized precedents that may problem the way forward for different nations’ regulatory efforts.
As international locations proceed to develop regulatory frameworks for digital governance – as an example, AI regulation imposing stricter governance guidelines in Brazil and within the EU – the authorized, financial and political methods platforms make use of to problem oversight mechanisms will play an important position in figuring out the longer term steadiness between company affect and the rule of legislation.
