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 active accounts dotted throughout nearly every country. 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 corporations often don’t align. Whereas many governments have sought to impose oversight mechanisms to deal with issues corresponding to disinformation, on-line extremism and manipulation, these initiatives have been met with corporate resistance, political interference and legal challenges invoking free speech as a protect towards 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 imagine as consultants on digital law – one an govt director of a forum monitoring how countries implement democratic principles – 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 & Know-how Group and Rumble filed a lawsuit within the U.S. towards Brazilian Supreme Court docket 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 by which U.S. political and corporate actors try and undermine overseas regulatory authority by urgent the case that home U.S. regulation 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 due to claims by U.S. authorities that the case includes problems with free speech fairly than felony 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 courtroom 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 below the First Modification. The truth that the topic of the ban was Brazilian and is accused of spreading disinformation and hate in Brazil shouldn’t, they argue, matter.
For now, U.S. courts agree. In late February, a Florida-based decide dominated that Rumble and Trump Media need not comply with the Brazilian order.
Massive Tech pushback to regulation
The case alerts an vital shift within the contest over platform accountability – a transfer from company lobbying and political stress to direct authorized intervention in overseas jurisdictions. U.S. courts at the moment are getting used to problem abroad selections 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 – corresponding to the European Union – making an attempt to manage on-line areas.
The resistance towards digital regulation predates the Trump administration.
In Brazil, efforts to manage social media platforms have lengthy confronted substantial opposition. Massive Tech corporations – together with Google, Meta and X – have used their financial and political affect to lobby against tighter regulation, usually framing such insurance policies as a risk to free expression.
In 2020, the Brazilian “Faux Information Invoice,” which sought to carry platforms accountable for the unfold of disinformation, was met with strong opposition from these corporations.
Google and Meta launched high-profile campaigns to oppose the invoice, warning it could “threaten free speech” and “hurt small companies.” Google positioned banners on its Brazilian homepage urging customers to reject the laws, whereas Meta ran advertisements questioning its implications for the digital financial 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 could be 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 into a revocable trust 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 protect towards overseas laws on digital platforms.
Free speech protections within the U.S. have been utilized unequally, permitting authorities to suppress dissent in some cases 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 regulation cemented corporate speech protections, a logic later extended to digital platforms.
U.S. free speech advocates in Massive Tech and the U.S. authorities are seemingly escalating this development to an much more excessive interpretation: that American free speech arguments will 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 Services Act, U.S. Federal Communications Fee Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, expressed issues that the act could threaten American free speech principles.
Ton Molina/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Such an argument could have been positive 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 corresponding to Brazil, Germany, France and others undertake what authorized consultants confer with as a proportionality-based approach to free speech, balancing it towards different elementary rights corresponding to human dignity, democratic integrity and public order.
Sovereign nations utilizing this strategy acknowledge freedom of expression as a elementary and preferential proper. However additionally they acknowledge that sure restrictions are vital to guard democratic establishments, marginalized communities, public well being and the informational ecosystem from harms.
Whereas the U.S. imposes some limits on speech – corresponding to defamation laws and safety towards incitement to imminent lawless action – the First Modification is usually way more expansive than in different democracies.
The way forward for digital governance
The authorized battle over platform regulation shouldn’t be confined to the present battle between U.S.-based platforms and Brazil. The EU’s Digital Providers Act and the Online Safety Act in the UK are different examples of governments attempting to claim management over platforms working inside their borders.
As such, the lawsuit by Trump Media and Rumble towards the Brazilian Supreme Court docket alerts a vital second in international geopolitics.
U.S. tech giants, corresponding to Meta, are bending to the free speech winds popping out of the Trump administration. Musk, the proprietor of X, has given support to far-right groups overseas.
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 by which U.S. free speech absolutists are in search of to ascertain authorized precedents which may problem the way forward for different nations’ regulatory efforts.
As nations proceed to develop regulatory frameworks for digital governance – as an illustration, AI regulation imposing stricter governance guidelines in Brazil and in 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 long run stability between company affect and the rule of regulation.
