Brazil’s Senate and Supreme Court have overturned rules last week by President Jair Bolsonaro that banned social media from removing what they consider to be misinformation about the upcoming presidential election.
Double court and congressional moves Tuesday afternoon quickly killed one of the most restrictive and intrusive internet laws imposed in a democratic country. It was a strong rebuke to a president who was already in trouble for a series of political crises.
When Bolsonaro issued the policy, it was the first time a national government had moved to prevent social media companies from removing content that violated its rules.
The move alarmed Mr. Bolsonaro’s technology companies and political opponents because it looked like it was intended to allow the president and his allies to undermine confidence in next year’s presidential election.
In recent months, Mr Bolsonaro has used social media to spread claims that the only way he will lose the election is if the vote is rigged. These claims would have been protected under the emergency measure Bolsonaro issued last week, which gave social media companies 30 days to comply.
But, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court quickly suspended the entry into force of the rules, while the president of the Brazilian Senate effectively filed them.
“It is a very positive sign that the Brazilian political class has reacted,” said Mauricio Santoro, a professor of international relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “Brazilian leadership finally understands the importance of the Internet for Brazil’s political life.”
Bolsonaro relied on the Internet to help him become president in 2018, using social media to spread his brand of right-wing populism. Now, in the face of crises that include the pandemic, corruption investigations and the reduction in the number of polls, he is once again turning to social media, this time to try to save his presidency.
In publications and videos via the Internet, Mr Bolsonaro has attacked the Supreme Court, announced unproven remedies for the coronavirus and called for nationwide protests against his political enemies. Social media companies removed some of their posts about the coronavirus.
Then, last week, on the eve of protests across the country, it issued the so-called interim measure, a type of emergency order intended to address urgent situations. Under the policy, social media companies could only remove posts that contain certain types of content, such as nudity, crime promotion, or copyright infringement. To remove other places, companies had to obtain a court order.
The Bolsonaro government also set limits on the ability of social media companies to remove user accounts, potentially protecting Mr. Bolsonaro from the fate of his political ally, former President Donald J. Trump. Trump had his megaphone turned off earlier this year when major social media banned him from his posts.
Social media companies attacked the new rules, saying they would allow misinformation to spread. On Wednesday, a Twitter spokeswoman, who praised the actions of the Senate and the Supreme Court, said Bolsonaro’s policy “undermines the values and consensus” of Brazilian internet laws. Facebook and YouTube declined to comment.
The government of Mr. Bolsonaro did not respond to a request for comment.
The Brazilian Supreme Court has been investigating misinformation operations in the country, and Mr. Bolsonaro became the target of such investigations last month. A member of the court, Judge Alexandre de Moraes, has jailed several of the president’s supporters for allegedly funding or inciting violence or anti-democratic acts.
Bolsonaro has called these arrests politically motivated and Judge Moraes was the target of nationwide protests by supporters of the president this month.
In the United States, conservative politicians have tried to pass similar laws, part of their biggest battle with Silicon Valley for what they consider censorship of tech companies to right-wing voices.
Florida passed a law in May that sought to prevent social media from removing political candidates from their seats, but a federal judge blocked it a month later. The Texas governor signed a similar law last week.
In Brazil, the rules issued by Mr. Bolsonaro had many odds.
These provisional measures expire in 120 days, unless the Congress of Brazil makes them permanent. Instead, Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco sent them back to Mr. Bolsonaro in just over a week, effectively killing the measure.
Both the Senate President and the Supreme Court said the rules should not have been published as an interim measure because they did not address an urgent situation and because Congress was debating a bill to regulate social media.
They also said the rules would have been bad for the country, said Carlos Affonso Souza, a professor at Rio de Janeiro State University who specializes in Internet law. “There was all the concern that the online environment could become more toxic and more dangerous,” he said.
Affonso Souza said the Senate decision restricted Bolsonaro from issuing the same rules this year, but that he could try again in 2022.
Given next year’s presidential election and Bolsonaro’s low number of polls, Santoro said he hoped the president would try something else to make sure he could continue to use the Internet to spread his message.
“He won’t leave this fight so easily,” he said. “The Internet is very important to him.”