On July 30, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing additional tariffs on Brazilian goods, raising the total rate to 50 percent, with the measure taking effect on August 6. While officially framed as a response to currency manipulation and unfair trade, the deeper message was clear. The tariff signals not just economic retaliation, but a transnational backlash against Brazil’s emerging digital constitutionalism.
At the heart of Brazil’s approach is a legal framework that treats platform governance as essential to democracy. The Supreme Federal Court (STF) has taken a leading role in countering disinformation, political extremism, and digital abuse. In doing so, it is redefining the boundaries of platform responsibility and free expression — not as private matters, but as constitutional questions vital to the health of democracy itself.
From the Marco Civil to Judicial Assertiveness
The groundwork for Brazil’s constitutional approach to digital governance was laid with the passage of the Marco Civil da Internet in 2014, which codified principles like net neutrality, user rights, and transparency in content moderation. In 2018, the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD) established a comprehensive data protection regime, and in 2021, data protection was recognized as a fundamental right through a constitutional amendment.
But legal architecture alone was not sufficient to contend with the turbulent political reality of the late 2010s and early 2020s. The rise of Bolsonarismo (a form of far-right populism marked by anti-establishment rhetoric, institutional confrontation, and nationalist identity politics), the institutional destabilization of public life, and the weaponization of social media platforms forced Brazil’s judiciary into an active role. In 2019, the STF initiated Inquérito 4781 — the “Fake News Inquiry” — to investigate the spread of online attacks against justices and efforts to undermine democratic institutions. This inquiry marked the STF’s first sustained intervention in platform governance and signalled that the judiciary saw the digital sphere as squarely within its constitutional jurisdiction.
Subsequent rulings escalated the Court’s involvement. In 2022, the STF ordered the temporary suspension of Telegram after it failed to share Court-ordered information pertaining to neo-Nazi groups believed responsible for inciting violence. In other cases, the Court adopted similar coercive measures against platforms over electoral misinformation. Taken together, these episodes show a consistent pattern in which the STF uses fines, service blocks, and other enforcement tools to compel compliance with judicial orders in the digital realm, regardless of whether the underlying content concerns violent extremism or disinformation.
The STF as Digital Constitutional Actor
By 2025, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) had positioned itself as a central force in platform regulation. In June, it issued a landmark ruling that partially invalidated Article 19 of the Marco Civil da Internet, which had shielded tech platforms from liability unless they failed to act after court orders. The Court redefined this framework: judicial authorization remains necessary for content removal in individual harm cases—such as defamation or privacy violations—but tech platforms must now act proactively against clearly illegal content that threatens democratic order, which the Court defined to include incitement to violence or electoral manipulation.
This shift reframes tech platforms not merely as private service providers, but as essential components of the public sphere, subject to constitutional obligations. It introduces a doctrine of “constitutional immediacy,” as a method to counter tech platform inaction in the face of systemic threats. In short, constitutional immediacy refers to the obligation of platforms to act proactively against content that poses systemic threats to democratic order, without waiting for judicial orders. Brazil is now one of the few democracies that legally mandates proactive platform responsibility in matters that are deemed to be of public interest, as defined by the Court.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the STF has defended this model as essential to preserving democratic institutions. His rulings cite constitutional protections against hate speech and authoritarian disruption — understood in this context as coordinated efforts to undermine democratic institutions, including incitement to coup attempts, electoral disinformation, and digital campaigns to delegitimize the judiciary. His actions have been controversial – for example, critics argue that his decision to suspend the messaging app Telegram in 2022 for its failure to remove disinformation and appoint a legal representative in Brazil amounted to judicial overreach and censorship. Nevertheless, his actions have received broad judicial backing and withstood constitutional scrutiny.
Many STF interventions were shaped by Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, during which disinformation networks attacked electoral institutions by spreading false claims about the integrity of the voting system and by circulating conspiracy theories and incitement to unrest — culminating in his disqualification. Bolsonaro was declared ineligible until 2030 by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), which ruled that he had abused political power and misused media channels in ways that endangered the democratic process. His ally, Donald Trump, vocally condemned the decision as a “witch hunt,” signaling political solidarity.
Legislative Backing and Expanding the Framework
The judiciary has not acted alone. Legislative proposals have increasingly moved to reinforce and systematize Brazil’s digital governance model. Brazil’s “Fake News Bill” (PL 2630) “) remains under debate in the legislature, but its core ambition is clear: to codify platform obligations for transparency, moderation, and accountability. It would require user identity verification, algorithmic transparency, limits on anonymous accounts, and independent oversight mechanisms potentially involving external regulatory bodies or multi-stakeholder entities, rather than being operated solely by the platforms themselves.
In parallel, Brazil’s Congress is considering proposals like PL 4530/2023, which would expand penalties for the misuse of personal data by both public and private entities — including government agencies and corporations — and PL 526/2025, which regulates artificial intelligence by banning mass biometric surveillance and requiring human oversight for high-risk automated systems, such as AI used to generate disinformation, enforce discriminatory profiling, or issue judicial or administrative decisions without human review. These efforts reflect a shared commitment across branches of government to operationalize rights-based governance in the digital sphere.
Underlying these proposals is a constitutional shift: whereas digital platforms were previously treated as private companies governed primarily by market logic and contractual terms, they are now increasingly viewed as actors embedded within public law structures — subject to constitutional norms, democratic oversight, and obligations tied to fundamental rights. Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) has taken on an increasingly prominent role in coordinating this framework, issuing technical guidance, enforcing compliance, and serving as an intermediary between State power and private infrastructure.
Sovereignty, Resistance, and the Global Stakes
Brazil’s legal trajectory has faced resistance — not only from platforms, but from transnational political actors. Elon Musk’s X has publicly refused to comply with Brazilian court orders, claiming censorship. U.S.-based think tanks and political figures aligned with Thiel and Vance have portrayed Brazil’s judiciary as authoritarian. Yet these critiques ignore the clear and public legal processes through which Brazil’s digital governance framework has developed.
They also obscure the geopolitical asymmetries at play. Brazil’s legal assertion is a form of sovereignty — an effort to maintain domestic jurisdiction over digital infrastructure that is increasingly dominated by foreign firms. When the United States imposes tariffs citing tech censorship as justification, it leverages economic coercion against a sovereign State’s attempt to enforce its own domestic constitutional order. Also, while decrying Brazil’s attacks on “online free speech,” American authorities now deny visas based on political social media posts, indicating that they, too, have an interest in regulating (at least certain kinds of) speech.
Brazil’s legal response to these dynamics is not without controversy. Unlike the opaque policy decisions made by corporate content moderators, Brazil’s system is legible, justiciable, and subject to judicial review. It places questions of content, data, and algorithmic power into a democratic process — even if that process is slow, flawed, and intensely contested. Critics, however, have raised concerns about risks of over-compliance, particularly among foreign tech companies with limited fluency in Brazilian constitutional law and high sensitivity to liability exposure.
There is apprehension that such actors may adopt overly restrictive moderation to avoid penalties under broadly defined categories. Others warn of potential bias or censorship stemming not from the law itself, but from how platforms interpret and apply legal expectations without adequate local grounding. These risks are real, but Brazil’s framework incorporates institutional safeguards that mitigate them: legal challenges to takedown requests can be adjudicated by the judiciary, including the Supreme Federal Court, which has emphasized proportionality, due process, and fundamental rights in its digital jurisprudence. Indeed, judicial review has already shaped the evolving boundaries of content regulation — for example, by reaffirming that prior judicial authorization remains required in individual harm cases.
There are, nonetheless, ongoing debates about jurisdictional reach, especially regarding foreign companies with no legal representation in Brazil, and about whether certain emergency judicial orders have bypassed procedural guarantees. These tensions are part of Brazil’s constitutional experiment: rather than insulating digital power from public institutions, it seeks to embed platform governance within the same structures of rights, accountability, and contestation that define democratic legitimacy.
Constitutionalizing the Digital Public Sphere — and Shaping the Global South’s Digital Future
Despite critique, what Brazil is attempting is neither censorship nor deregulation, but a constitutional approach to digital governance — anchoring platform accountability in human rights, democratic oversight, and legal legitimacy.
For many in the Global South, Brazil offers a rare example of digital self-determination — a break from imported governance norms and an assertion of sovereignty over online infrastructure. By grounding internet policy in constitutional law and public process, Brazil is helping reshape the normative debate.
Though contested by platforms and critics abroad — and actively debated through democratic and judicial processes at home — Brazil’s model offers a transparent, accountable response to digital harms. As AI manipulation and platform impunity escalate, its experience may chart a path for other democracies navigating the digital age under geopolitical and institutional pressure.
