Brazil’s Supreme Court allows holding big tech liable for user-generated content

In an important ruling on the liability of big tech companies for illegal content, Brazil’s Supreme Court has ruled that digital platforms must monitor and remove hate speech and posts that promote serious crimes.

The court agreed on Thursday on key details of an earlier decision by the government to hold social media firms liable for what their users post. This means that the law will go into effect within weeks.

The 8-3 ruling also means that tech giants like Google, TikTok, and Meta will need to actively monitor content that involves hate speech, racism, and incitement to violence. After detecting such posts, the companies will have to act to remove it.

When the verdict is published by the court, Brazilian users will be able to sue social media companies for hosting illegal content if they don’t remove it after a victim demands action.

One important caveat, though, is that the Supreme Court didn’t actually set out clear rules on what content is illegal. This will reportedly be decided on a case-by-case basis, as per the court’s statement.

Brazil, a country of over 212 million people, is a huge country for global tech giants. Unsurprisingly, the social media companies (and the current US administration, eager to resist what it sees as censorship against American firms and citizens) have been preemptively criticizing the decision.

“We see troubling instances of foreign governments and foreign officials picking up the slack. In some instances, foreign officials have taken flagrant censorship actions against US tech companies and US citizens and residents when they have no authority to do so,” said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Google is, predictably, among the critics who have expressed concern that the move could threaten free speech if platforms preemptively remove content that could be problematic.

The company’s president in Brazil, Fabio Coelho, told Folha de S.Paulo this week that the consequences of holding platforms liable even before a court or extrajudicial order could be concerning.

“One unwanted outcome would be platforms preemptively removing a much larger volume of content. There are countless cases where we choose not to take down content without a court order because we believe the public has a right to know,” said Coelho.

In what might be called a conciliatory move, the justices also agreed that social media companies will not be liable if they can show they took steps to remove illegal content in a timely fashion. That could be vague enough for social media firms.