Mark Zuckerberg reveals which side he's on. And it's not Brazil's

Mark Zuckerberg's announcement will reverberate throughout Brazil in 2025. Meta's CEO changed the content moderation policies of the company's social networks. In the same vein, he indicated that he is aligned with the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, when it comes to putting pressure on governments that seek to regulate the digital environment. The message was given loud and clear: Brazil is in Meta's sights.

In a post titled “more speeches, fewer mistakes”, the billionaire, owner of Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Threads criticized Europe's efforts to regulate social networks and accused “Latin American countries” of having secret cuts that require companies to take air content discreetly.

Zuckerberg may not have mentioned Brazil by name, but, for many, he didn't need to. After all, in the entire South American region, the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court was the only court that proposed removing platforms like X/Twitter from the air.

“It is a very strong statement, which tacitly calls the STF a 'secret court'”, stated the secretary of digital policies of the Presidency of the Republic, João Brant, in a statement public. Brant says he hopes that Meta will begin to act “in conjunction with the Trump administration to combat policies in Europe, Brazil and other countries that seek to balance rights in the online environment”.

For Humberto Ribeiro, co-founder and legal and research director at Sleeping Giants Brasil, Zuckerberg's choice of words spoke loud and clear. “The statement indicates a tendency for Meta to join the attacks that Elon Musk is making against the advancement of legislation and jurisprudence in Brazil”, he states.

AMERICA FIRST

Zuckerberg not only spoke out against the rules adopted in Europe and in “Latin American courts” but also indicated which laws should be followed – North American ones.

“We will work with President Trump to resist governments that are persecuting American companies and pushing for more censorship. The United States has the strongest constitutional protections for free speech in the world,” he said.

For Ribeiro, the billionaire rekindled the logic of the “extraterritoriality of American constitutionalism” which says that the North American constitution is above that of other countries. It is no surprise that Elon Musk also uses this same speech.

Unintentionally, Meta assumed that it did not have the technology to deal with network content.

In 2024, the billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink raised his tone against the Brazilian judiciary and even published personal attacks on minister Alexandre de Moraes. At the time, Musk used the first amendment of the North American Constitution to defend himself and to attack Brazilian justice.

The country's government understood Zuckerberg's position, as well as Musk's, as a geopolitical issue. “The statement is explicit, it signals that the company does not accept the sovereignty of countries over the functioning of the digital environment and sounds like an anticipation of actions that will be taken by the Trump administration”, analyzes Brant.

In the view of Márcio Borges, associate researcher at the UFRJ Internet and Social Network Studies Laboratory (NetLab) and columnist for Fast Company BrazilZuckerberg made a bet that goes “in the opposite direction of the world”. Not only here, but Australia, England and the European Union are discussing tougher rules for social networks.

In Brazil, the discussion is also in the judiciary. The STF is analyzing the constitutionality of article 19 of the Marco Civil da Internet, which would make platforms responsible for the content posted. Borges highlights that the judgment of this article has become even more necessary, given the threats from Zuckerberg, owner of the platform used by 96% of the Brazilian population.

For data privacy researcher at Unico IDTech, Yasodara Córdova, Zuckerberg's stance on reinforcing North American law will have international consequences. “More democratic countries will block Meta networks. And they won’t be looked down upon for that”, he believes.

REVELATION TEA

With golden necklaces and voluminous hair, the Zuckerberg who appeared in Meta's institutional video doesn't even look the same as the one who, a year ago, publicly apologized in the North American Congress.

At the end of January 2024, the billionaire participated in a public hearing in Washington, where he was pressured to apologize to the families of children who were victims of harm caused by Facebook and Instagram.

At the time, the scene became a symbol of a change in the relationship between society and social networks. With the public more attentive to holding platforms accountable than excusing them. The theme was recurrent in 2024, both via international regulations and via the STF.

In this week's video, Zuckerberg revealed a nuisance that Meta had tried to hide for years – at least publicly. In Brazil itself, the network has already provoked boycotts against disinformation researchers and supported, behind the scenes, changing the rules of bill 2630/2020, known as the Fake News PL.

“Platform owners are coming out of the closet. We have been saying for years that platforms profit from disinformation at the same time that they count on the extreme right to prevent any regulation that gives these companies parameters of transparency and responsibility”, says Rose Marie Santini, founder and director of NetLab and also a columnist from the Fast Company Brazil.

For Ribeiro, from Sleeping Giants Brasil, Meta was going the other way and its CEO's statement represented a “hobby horse”. “It is the dismantling of the entire image that the company wanted to build after the Cambridge Analytica scandal”, he states.

Unintentionally, Meta also assumed something it didn't say out loud: that it doesn't have the technology to deal with network content. Zuckerberg explains that, over the years, Meta created a complex system to filter publications. And even so, this program removed posts from “innocent” users from the air.

“Between the lines of complex systems, there is the assertion that existing technologies alone were not capable of resolving disinformation, fraud and hate speech”, adds Rose Marie.

ELON MUSK EFFECT

Meta appears to be experiencing the “Elon Musk effect”. When he took over Twitter (which he renamed as X), Musk reduced the moderation team and left content filtering to users. At the time, the justification was that they were measures to reduce costs. This is the system that Meta will replicate from now on, the so-called “community notes”.

Yasodara explains that, although there is a certain degree of activism in favor of freedom of expression, the motivation for following this system is, basically, economic. “For the platforms, it is a way of returning the responsibility of moderation to 'the audience', who will basically do the unpaid work of denying and completing the networks' content”, he analyzes.

The Elon Musk effect also appears in the quality of content. The use of community notes has not proven to be a good filter to stop fake news or hate speech. According to Lupa agency investigationonly 8% of community notes in Portuguese reach users. Furthermore, these notes often reaffirm fake news and distorted world views, explains Borges.

A year ago, Zuckerberg was pressured to apologize to families of children who were victims of harm caused by Facebook and Instagram.

Another measure copied from X is the “simplification” of content moderation policies, with the aim of avoiding the silencing of “different opinions” and not restricting political debate. On the same day as Zuckerberg's video, Meta updated the North American version of its community guidelines.

For example, posts that associate transsexuality and homosexuality with mental illnesses will not be blocked. OX also suspended protections for migrants and LGBTQIA+ people after passing into Musk's hands.

“There will be an increase in the toxicity of Facebook and Instagram,” says Borges, from NetLab. Experts predict that some users will leave these platforms due to the toxic environment. For Yasodara, other tools will be used. “It’s not going to be a smooth journey, unfortunately,” he says.

With more hate speech, perhaps more users and advertisers will decide to leave Meta's platforms. This creates a complication, since these are networks used by billions of people, which support billion-dollar markets.

THE QUESTION OF FACT CHECKING

Meta's fact-checking program has been operating since 2016 and partners with more than 90 organizations around the world. One of them is the International Fact Checking Association (IFCN), a data verification network created by the Poynter Institute.

Less than a month ago, the IFCN had announced a fund to support journalists who are victims of political repressionenvironmental disasters and violent conflicts. Meta was credited with being responsible for the initiative.

In Brazil, the independent fact-checking program has six partners: Agência Lupa, AFP, Aos Fatos, Estadão Verifica, Reuters Fact Check and UOL Confere. Media outlets that Meta's CEO now criticizes.

“After Trump was elected in 2018, the mainstream media wrote endlessly about how the disinformation process was a threat to democracy. In good faith, we attempt to address these concerns without becoming judges of truth. But the fact-checkers turned out to be quite politically biased. They destroyed more trust than they created,” said Zuckerberg.

The message was given. “We felt it was a declaration of war on the press. A war that already existed, but is becoming declared. Meta is the biggest competitor of the press, but the press insists on treating it as a partner”, says Humberto Ribeiro.

According to Zuckerberg's speech, the social network's commitment would be to freedom of speech and voices on the platform. For Borges, the position shows that he was uncomfortable with media scrutiny. “Freedom of expression goes hand in hand with transparency”, recalls the researcher.

Meta says that once the Community Ratings system begins, there are plans to inform the public about the number of posts taken down. There are no plans to disclose more than that – especially because moderation data is considered strategic even for the “Supreme Court” of Meta.

In Zuckerberg's five minutes and 13 seconds of speech, the term “censorship” was repeated 14 times and “freedom of expression” eight times. The word “transparency” was not mentioned.

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