Brazil vs. free speech

When Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes shut down the social media network X, it was reminiscent of the dystopian actions of the government depicted by Ayn Rand in her novel Atlas Shrugged. As Justice Moraes employed his new authority by dictating the imposition of ruinous fines and imposing tighter restrictions, one could almost hear the frustrated demand of Rand’s villain, Wesley Mouch, for “wider powers.”

What Brazil does is important globally. The country has nearly two-thirds of the population of the United States and is a significant player in the world economy. A few years ago, shutting down a major social media network such as X would have appeared to be the kind of action undertaken by authoritarian nations such as Communist China. By moving to shut down X and its owner Elon Musk, Justice Moraes breaks with the way Western democracies understand themselves. The overwhelming cultural precedent has been that free speech is guaranteed and that the answer to bad or incorrect speech is higher quality speech. Such a view reflects confidence in a nation’s citizens and guards against the temptations of regimes to protect themselves from criticism by regulating likely sources of it.

John Stuart Mill made the case for free speech elegantly in his famed essay On Liberty. He argued that unless thoughts, ideas, and information can be exchanged freely, then it is possible we will not have access to knowledge that may prove to be most true or valuable due to suppression. In making his case for capitalism, the Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman defended its superiority in part by pointing out that while the American at a New York City newsstand could buy both The Wall Street Journal and The Daily Worker, a resident of Moscow would have only ideologically curated options approved by the Communist Party. It was a given that American readers (and others in the free world) would find Friedman’s argument compelling.

Increasingly, it appears that leading nations are losing faith in the idea of free speech and further, in the idea of citizens responsible enough to evaluate competing claims. Two things, in particular, have led to this new boldness in restricting speech. The first was the shocking victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election and then his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 vote. Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, led a kind of parallel existence to Trump, with even greater resistance to his election loss in 2022. After Trump lost, the social media networks shut off the president’s access to his accounts. They cited the dangers of incitement, which is the legal justification of censorship. The Brazilian government acted more aggressively to suppress Bolsonaro supporters and others by empowering Justice Moraes to exert near-dictatorial control over social media accounts and posts.

The second part of this movement toward restriction had to do with COVID-19. Americans have been through a slow-rolling process of revelation in which it has been discovered that the U.S. government extensively intervened in social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter to regulate the flow of information regarding the pandemic.

The decisions undertaken to restrict free speech proceed according to a certain logic. For example, it has been well-accepted that it is illegal to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater to prevent death and panic. Likewise, U.S. law does not protect incitement to violence of the type that led to the Rwandan genocide. The more recent restrictions rely upon the idea that certain kinds of political arguments and claims are similarly dangerous and therefore merit restriction. Certainly, the boldness of the U.S. government during COVID to actively interfere in social media networks depended upon a similar idea. If there is anything that can justify governments pushing the boundaries of their power, it is events of the scale of wars or pandemics.

However, COVID-era regulations have not worn well in hindsight. It now seems quite possible that a government trying to control the information environment during a pandemic could promote bad information and restrict potentially useful data. It also seems such a government could inhibit freedom without corresponding benefit to justify the level of control.

More broadly, Brazil’s move to shut down X and its similar efforts to restrict speech have the potential for substantial abuse. He who would regulate speech based on disinformation has to decide what counts as disinformation. That puts far too much power in the hands of a judge. It should be obvious that there will be a massive temptation to judge the information and arguments set forth by one’s political adversaries to be uninformed and untrue and therefore prohibited. Everyone—left, right, and center—who believes free speech is safer than a policy of censorship imposed by regimes upon their opponents should hope Brazil backs away from its aggressive attempt to regulate the exchange of ideas.