MEXICO CITY (AP) — President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party presented for public comment draft regulations on Twitter, Facebook and other social media companies, a move that drew criticism Tuesday.
The new law proposed Monday by López Obrador’s Morena party would expose companies to fines of up to $4.4 million for violating users’ right to free speech. The law would only apply to platforms with more than one million users in Mexico, apparently only covering sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.
The proposal would allow anyone whose account is blocked or canceled to appeal the decision. Appeals would first be made to the company’s own internal committees, which would have 24 hours to confirm or revoke the suspension. Users could then appeal to telecommunications regulators, and if they don’t like the ruling, they could then appeal the cancellations to Mexican courts.
“After the blocking in January of the personal accounts of the then President of the United States, Donald Trump, we had already warned of the risk of the appearance of disproportionate bills to regulate information on these platforms”, declared Jorge Canahuati, President of the Inter-American Press. Association. said in a statement.
The head of the group’s freedom of press and information committee, Carlos Jornet, wrote that “a bad law can generate a boomerang effect, deconstructing decades in which freedom of expression was consolidated in Mexico”.
Senator Ricardo Monreal, leader of the Morena party in the Senate, hopes to submit the new law for approval in three weeks.
“One of the things that affects freedom of expression happens by preventing the right to receive information, blocking content, as happened in recent cases with Twitter,” according to a bill that Monreal published on its website.
The law could run counter to the U.S.-Mexico Free Trade Agreement, which states that “no party shall impose liability on any provider or user of an interactive computer service due to … any action taken voluntarily in good faith by the provider or the user to restrict access to or the availability of material accessible or available through its provision or use of the Interactive Computer Services and that the provider or user considers harmful or objectionable.”
Monreal argues that the clause does not apply in Mexico for 2½ years, although it would presumably invalidate the law in the future.
The bill acknowledges that companies have their own rules for online community use and behavior, but says “it is necessary that these (internal) procedures be regulated by law, so that, on the basis of this decision, an administrative or judicial appeal can be made, in order to enforce the human right of users to justice.
The bill states that companies cannot resolve disputes over account blocks or cancellations using algorithms, but must instead use human committees.
In January, López Obrador pledged to lead an international effort to fight what he sees as censorship by social media companies that have blocked or suspended former US President Donald Trump’s accounts.
López Obrador was close to Trump and was outraged at the blocking of his accounts. Like Trump, López Obrador believes the mainstream media is biased against him, and like Trump, the Mexican president has used the term “fake news” or Spanish variations of it.
López Obrador said in January that his administration was reaching out to other governments to form a common front on the issue.
“I can tell you that at the first G20 meeting that we have, I will make a proposal on this issue,” López Obrador said. “Yes, social media should not be used to incite violence and all that, but it cannot be used as a pretext to suspend freedom of expression.”
“How can a company act as if it were all-powerful, all-powerful, like a kind of Spanish Inquisition on what is expressed? He asked.
