Tech Won't Save Us - Brazil's Battle to Rein In Big Tech w/ Laís Martins

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Paris Marx is joined by Laís Martins to discuss the recent enforcement measures against tech companies like X and Rumble in Brazil, how the country is grappling with the overreach of US tech companies, and the wider discussion about tech policy in Brazil.Laís Martins is a technology reporter at The Intercept Brasil.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.Also mentioned in this episode:Laís has reported on Rumble's fight against the Brazilian Supreme Court as well as the decisions the Brazilian government is making to welcome AI data centers.Former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff was spied on by US intelligence services.The Brazilian government has long used and supported open source software.Support the show

Big tech platforms from the US think that because they're American, they have to play by their rules. But when you're in someone else's country, you play by our rules. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host Paris Marks and this week my guest is Laiz Martins. Laiz is a tech reporter at The Intercept Brazil and has been doing a lot of fantastic work looking at a number of tech related issues in Brazil in recent months and years and I thought it would be a good time to have a conversation about those things. I feel like a lot of people heard about Twitter

or X being banned from Brazil last year because it was refusing to carry through orders from Brazil's Supreme Court. But I feel like for many of us, the exploration stopped there. But there has been a lot of interesting developments happening in Brazil on tech policy. Not know, not all of them great things but I feel like especially at a time when we see the United States being increasingly belligerent

toward countries that are regulating its tech companies and trying to make sure that they align with the values of the countries that they actually operate in instead of just pushing American values out to the world and expecting that they won't be regulated because they don't want to be. That it's about time we look at how things are working in other parts of the world to see that it's about time we look at cases like Brazil and what is happening in other countries to understand how things could potentially work differently and also to try to encourage those countries to actually have the courage to push through on this because there's always a lot of criticism and a lot

of lobbying that happens when any country or government tries to restrict the power and authority of these very dominant American tech companies. So in this interview, we talk about what actually happened with the orders against Twitter X and also against Rumble. What motivated that politically within Brazil, recognizing that there's a political context to all of these things and that in Brazil, like in actually many countries, the understanding of free speech and free expression is quite different than how it is understood in the United States, an understanding that is often pushed out to the rest of the world and that

everyone else is expected to just accept without thinking whether it makes sense in their particular context. And in many cases, it doesn't. But then beyond that, we also look at other efforts of tech regulation within the Brazilian context around economic regulation, social media regulation, and increasingly AI regulation too. And whether the government down there can really push through the dependence that it has on American tech companies to try to carve out more digital sovereignty for itself. So there are many interesting questions and topics that we explore in this episode in relation to Brazil and in the same way that I have been doing more episodes on Europe and on Canada and on Australia I hope to start doing even more looking at what's happening in other parts of the world, too, so we can get a better insight

into how these issues are playing out in many different parts of the world instead of being so focused on the United States all the time. And I don't know about you, but personally, I'm just getting a bit tired of paying attention to the US constantly. And I think that there are a lot

of interesting things happening in other parts of the world that we should know about and potentially help to move forward as well. So I hope that you enjoy this conversation. I really loved speaking with Laease. I feel like I learned a lot and I hope that you will too. If you do enjoy this episode, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, or you can share the show with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making Tech Won't Save Us every single week

so we can keep having these critical, in-depth conversations to help you better understand what is going on with the tech industry in a way that isn't reflective of the PR narratives of these major companies, you can join supporters like Nick from Groningen, Chris from San Francisco, Lydia in New Zealand, Jeff in Ajax, Thomas from Vancouver, and Janine in Montreal by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Lais, welcome to tech won't save us. Thank you so much.

It's a pleasure to be here. I'm really excited to have you on the show. I've been wanting to dig into some issues around Brazil and what's going on there with tech policy for a while. And you know, I stumbled across your reporting at a number of different outlets and was like, Lais seems like the perfect person to come on the show and dig into all this with me. So I'm really excited we could do this. And I wanted to start with a case that, you know, people in North America and Europe might be a bit more familiar with to kind of get us into this subject, right? Supreme Court Justice Alexandra de Mores is

someone who I think a lot of people paying attention to technology not just in Brazil, but beyond would have probably heard about at this point because of some orders that he enforced against X and Rumble in the past couple of years that have made international headlines, right? So could you first tell us who this justice is and why he has been taking these actions against these international tech companies. Yeah, Alexandre de Moraes is a figure. He's probably one of the most important people in Brazil right now and over the past few years. So he's not from politics. He's a law professor, a lawyer, and he started out in politics as a secretary in my state of Sao Paulo, but for public security.

And he was really hated by the left at that point, because, you know, he was enforcing policies that, well, the left didn't agree with regarding violence, regarding prisons. And then now he's suddenly in the spot where he's really praised by the left somehow because of his recent actions. But he arrived to the Supreme court around, let's say five years ago, six years ago, appointed by former president Michel Temer, who succeeded Juma Husefi, and he rose to this position of prominence more recently during

the Bolsonaro government. of prominence more recently during the Bolsonaro government. He was the lead justice on many probes that we consider to be super important and key in regards to social media because they were investigating anti-democratic acts against the government, against the Supreme Court, but focusing heavily on platforms and how these actors were using social media to execute this type of anti-democratic acts. These probes are still ongoing, and that's part of the criticism against Justice Morais. These probes are ongoing and they're under seal of law,

so we don't know much of what is happening. But at this point, we know that a lot of what was in the probes has now led into the trial against Bolsonaro and against many of these other high ranking officials that plotted the coup and that were involved in the events of January 8th. And well, he's very relevant in regards to social media because he was also the one who determined that eggs should be banned in Brazil, the suit against rumble. And among the other Supreme Court justices, he seems to be the one that has taken more closely attention to social media platforms, but that has also understood

the role that these companies play in a democracy. So that's why he has become the most hated, but also maybe most loved figure by others at this moment. Yeah, depending on how you look at it, right? I think that gives us a really good introduction, though. And there are a number of things in your answer that I want to unpack and dig into a little bit more. And I feel like we should probably start with the political situation, right? Because you mentioned the coup there. Some people will probably be familiar with what happened in Brazil, but there are probably going to be a lot of people who have heard about January 6th in the United States, but not heard about what happened in Brazil. So can you give

us some of that political context to explain to us what has been happening in Brazil over the past few years that kind of sets the stage for these types of actions that Justice Morais has been enforcing? So Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 democratically, he was voted, and then we have the pandemic in Brazil. And I think that's a really important point to mention because if Bolsonaro's government had been going sideways before during the pandemic, it just derails completely. Because he mishandled the pandemic in a way that Brazil recorded an insane amount of deaths, but that was also a non-partisan issue.

I think even people who had voted for him became disappointed in how he handled this emergency. So that's when things start going badly for him. And then in 2022, we had another election in Brazil. The term is four years. And we start seeing that he's not going to let go of power that easily. Already in 2021, he starts raising suspicion about Brazil's voting system. We have an electronic voting system.

It has been ruled one of the most secure in the world, but Bolsonaro rises suspicion against it. And this is kind of his big agenda for that year. Everyone around him, his allies start playing into this idea that, you know, maybe it's not a safe, we should use paper voting. And that's his big thing. When 2022 comes, that has become his main point. And that leads into also a fight

with the Electoral Supreme Court, which at that time is presided by Justice Moraes. So that kind of also explains why they have become foes. And he starts raising suspicion about Moraes being in charge of this authority. So how are they gonna be able to attest that voting is safe in Brazil if this guy hates me, this guy in charge hates me. That's kind of the narrative they're playing.

And then when voting comes in October 2022, we already have during the first round of voting or the second round of voting on the day, we have something that we now understand was part of the coup attempt. The Federal Road Police, this is another federal police in Brazil, not the main one, but they're responsible for like roads and highways. They implement these blockades in the northeast of Brazil, which makes it really difficult for voters from one town to go to their voting stations in another town. And people during that day start complaining, like, I'm not going to be able to vote.

And these are regions that vote heavily for Lula. Lula being the current president and he was president before of the Workers' Party, right? Exactly, the Workers' Party candidate. And many people were impeded from voting. This was like kind of chaotic at that day. People who were covering, I was covering that day. I was like, what is happening, right?

Is this really what we think it is? Or is it just, they were implementing blockades and they asked like everyone to get off the bus and they wanted to check everyone's bags this doesn't happen right. Post-Night Oluz's election with a very thin margin Lula is elected president coming back after 20 years after this incredible story he was arrested right like until very few years before he gets out of prison, charges against him are dropped and he is reelected. And the days after the second round of voting, Bolsonaro supporters start storming the country.

So they start blocking highways around the country. Truck drivers, but also just supporters, they start doing these barricades and the situation becomes kind of chaotic. This is cleared up eventually. And then we think, okay, now everything is done. Let's, let's just wait for it. Lula is sworn in on January 1st and then January 8th happens.

And this is funny because every time I tell someone, oh, our January 8th, someone tried to correct me. No, it was January 6th. And I say to correct me. No, it was January 6th. And I say, no, but in Brazil, it was January 8th. So history almost really repeated itself, but two days later. And we have an event that is very similar to what happened in the US,

where Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. But I think it's even worse because they stormed not only Congress, they also stormed the presidential palace and the Supreme Court. You know, there are pictures of people sitting on Alexandre de Morais chair, Justice Morais chair, they invaded his office and it was really serious. There were, there was lots of violence that day and that caught everyone kind of by surprise

because at that point we thought the feelings have been put away, they have accepted. And Bolsonaro was in the United States when this happened. In reclusion, he had been silent all this time. Democracy was almost lost in Brazil that day. And this was really serious and all the institutions around start working in regards to trying to understand how do we prevent this from happening again.

And part of this involves trying the people who are involved. It feels like in Brazil, this would be much more kind of like front of mind, right? Thinking about how the dictatorship was so much more recent than say, if you look at like American past, right? You know, it has this long history of democracy. There were issues with that democracy with many groups of people not being allowed to vote for a very long time and, you know, restrictions that made it difficult for people to vote, all these sorts of things. You know, there are many issues with the American electoral system.

But, you know, Brazil has this very recent history, this very recent experience with dictatorship, you know, was able to get its democracy back. I'm sure that for the vast majority of Brazilians wanting to protect those rights is very important to them, which leads to the enforcement, right? The response to this in the United States, I think it's fair to say, people have been very critical of the response of its institutions to January 6 and to the storming of the capital up there. But in Brazil, there was a much stronger response to making sure the people who tried to undertake the January 8th coup were actually held to account for that. So can you talk about what occurred

there and how these enforcement mechanisms against social media actually plays into this broader enforcement against trying to stop the kind of right-wing coup plotters and things like that. I agree on the military dictatorship part. I think that's really important because we differently from other Latin American countries, we haven't really held the people responsible for the military dictatorship to account. There are people who tortured political dissidents who are still alive today and free. So there's this idea that maybe we can do better this time around. And that's why I think we saw a very swift response from the Supreme Court and from the other institutions.

And I think we're doing better this time around and much better than the US for a fact, right? Well, in the US, the person who called people to invade the capital is now president again. And this is something that is not going to happen in Brazil because Bolsonaro has already been deemed uneligible. So at least we know that he's not running. But the challenge right now is letting people know that there are limits, right? To what you say, to what you think about democracy and the big challenges, where do we draw the line? So this is what the Supreme Court is doing right now in trying these people and sending

a really strong message to society that these people are being tried and arrested because of attempting against democracy. It's not because they think differently from the current government. Bolsonaro just finished his hearing and now the Supreme Court has this deadline, but today on the news we were saying that he might be arrested by October. So these are the last few months of maybe a history that is going to be shut. We're turning the page very soon on this, I hope. Fingers crossed that arrest warrant definitely comes and he finds himself in prison.

I think Brazilians everywhere are waiting for that with a beer in their hand and just waiting to cheer that on. But in regards to social media, that has also been challenging. Within these probes and within the coup attempt and the plot, there was a plot to murder Justice Morais and execute Lula and the Vice President, social media's role hasn't become very clear, but on the background we all know that these people were being rallied on social media. So it's not as if social media is included in this investigation at the moment,

but the Supreme Court has other cases going against social media. So I want to mention something that is really relevant. And I think the timing explains it all, which is the Supreme Court is judging this case on the constitutionality of Article 19 of our internet bill of rights. And this is a legislation from 2014 and it was really democratically built at the time but as the years have passed things have changed and this whole idea that it was built at a time when we believed more in the the promises of social media, creativity, unison, you know people getting together, everything has changed.

So the way it was built is not enough to respond to the challenges social media have brought on today. So the judges are looking at two specific cases. And I didn't mention this, but Article 19 would be equivalent to Section 230 in the US. As it is at the moment, it establishes that platforms and providers can only be held accountable if they fail to take action after a court order on third-party content. So it was built in a way that it's protective of rights such as freedom of speech back in 2014. And what is challenging this article are two cases. One is actually, to me it's funny. It's a teacher who found this community on Orkuchi.

It's a social media platform that was really popular in Brazil prior to Facebook, maybe even prior to MySpace. It was really popular and right now it has shut down. But this teacher, like let me put it into Facebook terms. This teacher found a Facebook page or a Facebook group saying, I hate teacher and her name. And she took the case to a court asking for it to be removed. And this eventually went up and up until the point that it reached the Supreme Court.

So the Supreme Court is looking at this case, but actually they're looking at this bigger question of whether platforms should be held more accountable for third-party content. And this case has been ongoing in the Supreme Court for a long time. In December, they were judging it, but then one of the justices asked to take some time to think about it,

and it was put back on the calendar last week. And it's not a coincidence, right? Two things happened last week. We knew that Bolsonaro would be testifying this week, but we also saw the US announcement on visas for foreign authorities who try to, I don't even remember exactly the wording, but it was something about foreign authorities

who try to curtail Americans' freedom of speech or something like that. Yeah, it was basically like the United States will limit the visas or deny the visas of foreign officials that have censored Americans online or something like that, right? Exactly. And like immediately it looks like something targeting Europe, right, because of all these discussions that have been happening, but obviously countries like Brazil, and you know, a whole range of other countries that are moving forward with social media, you know, regulations and things like that are going to be in the crosshairs of something like this, too.

Yeah, if there was any question, if it was directed at Justice Moraes, I think it was cleared up when Jason Miller, the former CEO of Rumble and Trump advisor, he tweets in Portuguese like, I'm looking at you and tags Justice de Moraes. You know, that's insane. I'm personally very interested in seeing how this contaminates the judging, what the justices say, but it's not a coincidence that they have brought this on, that they have picked up the case again right now. have brought this on, that they have picked up the case again right now in tandem with Bolsonaro testifying, but also with this new tension in the US-Brazil relations. Or I wouldn't even say US-Brazil relations, I would say Trump allies and Brazil relations. This is where we're at.

I feel like one thing that people might not remember about the Twitter X and Rumble cases when those platforms were banned in Brazil. Temporarily, people might remember X was banned because it didn't have a representative, it hadn't paid some fines, things like that. Then eventually, the platform started to abide by the different orders. A key piece of that was because it was unwilling to ban these right-wing accounts that the justice had determined were involved with the coup, were circulating anti-democratic speech and things like that. And this is a really key point to understand there based on what you're saying, because in the United States, we often have these

discussions. That free speech is something that can't be violated, right? That is kind of absolute, you know, you can say whatever you want, but in countries like Brazil, like Canada, like many European countries, our view of freedom of speech and freedom of expression is very different, right? And there are accepted limits that exist on those things. And that seems to be really reflected in these discussions that are being had in Brazil right now as to like, where is the line, right? What is deemed acceptable in our societies? And it seems like Brazil has, I would say, correctly determined that actively campaigning against democracy in a country that has a recent history of dictatorship is probably not something that is going to be okay for people. Exactly. That's central to where we're at right now. And this is what the Supreme Court justices

are trying to decide. I think most of them have agreed that, yes, the line starts where you're attacking democracy, where you're racism, misogyny, these types of things. But they're trying to figure out how do you ensure that these things are off limits while you're also protecting free speech. People in the US see the discussion happening here and they oversimplify it so much that it's like, how dare the Supreme Court try to exercise a limit on speech? But in Brazil, as a society, I think we've all agreed that we are willing to see the Supreme Court exercise this limit. Maybe it would be better, of course, if it were Congress, and that's a whole other story, that we are willing to see the Supreme Court exercise this limit.

Maybe it would be better, of course, if it were Congress, and that's a whole other story, but at this moment, the Supreme Court is all we have. And you're right in saying that people miss the point, the Rumble case, the Twitter case, it wasn't escalation. It wasn't Justice Demorized one day waking up and decides, oh, I don't like Elon Musk, I'm just going to block Twitter. No, they were given many opportunities to comply with Brazilian law. And the big clashes, and Brazil is such a huge example of this,

is big tech platforms from the US think that because they're American, they have to play by their rules. But when you're in someone else's country, you play by our rules. And maybe Justice Demorized was one of the first people to really show them there's this limit. So that's why he has also become this really, I mean, he has become an enemy of Big Tech in some ways, you know, they don't like him. They don't look at him nicely.

Even when earlier this year Zuckerberg and his announcement of going back to the roots, there was a message also to Morais there, something about fighting back together with the US government against foreign courts. We know this was for the Morais. So it's an interesting moment and let's see what the Supreme Court decides, but this is really what they're arguing right now. So they're trying to create these exceptions where you continue with Article 19 as it is, but in some specific cases, for example, attacks on democracy, attacks against minorities,

people of color and women, platforms would be accountable even if there isn't a court order. This is one of the proposals on the table right now. Yeah, in Canada, we see something very similar where hate speech is something deemed that needs to be enforced, right? That is outside of those protections. And the question is then, you know, what counts as hate speech and trying to deliberate that. But, you know, it's something that's very clear there, right? In those in those recognitions. And I wanted to ask you, obviously, we see in Canada, in Brazil, in Europe, this embrace by the extreme political right of this American conception of free speech because they want to be able to say all the bigoted, anti-democratic things that they can

possibly think of and not feel the consequences of that. But when we're talking about these specific platforms being targeted because they are letting particular users that the Supreme Court, that Justice de Moraes is saying should be suspended, should be banned from these platforms because of the types of things that they're saying and because of what they're doing in the Brazilian political discourse. Can you tell us a bit about some of the things that they are saying and who some of these figures would be? These are not just regular Brazilians. I think this is part of the narrative that they try to play that, oh, they're censoring

your neighbor who posted something badly about Lula. No, that's not true. These are really key figures in this ecosystem of right-wing actors. So one of them is Alan dos Santos and this guy has been evading social media blocks forever. Like he's like a magician. One account is blocked, the next day he has three others. And even for us journalists to keep track, it's really hard. But Alan dos Santos was a YouTuber and he had been on YouTube for many years talking about politics ever since the impeachment against President Dilma. And he just started to grow and he

starts to align with Bolsonaro's ideas and then he becomes a close ally of Bolsonaro. So I think the point about understanding these orders against these figures is that they were kind of social media proxies for what the Bolsonaro family would want to do. And we know at this point that there was even this operation, it was called hate cabinet, that started from inside the presidential palace to distribute content against political opposition or political foes, let's say, to produce fake content and distribute it with the help of many of these figures who are now being investigated. And then when we think about the coup attempt, it's really

important to think that these figures that are also relevant on social media were also really important in funding the coup attempt. So for example, Alain dos Santos, he's now in the U.S. He calls himself an exiled person in the U.S. He was sending money to Brazil and in some ways funding this coup. And we don't know exactly like what the money went for, but you know, buses of people were swarming into Brasília on the eve of January 8th. This had to be paid by someone. So we're also looking at how these figures and how platforms lenience against them enabled them to raise money and eventually fund this type of violence offline. So, you know, these are not just regular civilians you see outside on the street.

These are really, really important people and the court orders are the result of investigations that have been done by the federal police and the Supreme Court. So it's not at random that they're choosing these people and wanting to block. And as I said, Alan dos Santos, I think it's become even kind of like annoying because there have been so many orders to block him from all platforms and he just keeps on evading the orders. For us, it was just another order that we saw against him, but for ex under Elon Musk, that was kind of the trigger, you know?

Because before, of course, Twitter would sometimes fight against the orders, they would try to push back, but they wouldn't make it public. Like, it's not a case, but when Elon comes in and it's really aligned to what he believes and to the ideas that he is now serving in the US, it's a perfect storm. He says, well, I'm just going to make this public. And then the whole chaos ensues after that. Yeah, it always stood out to me that when say the Modi government in India asks Twitter to remove content and remove people, there's never a problem. There's never much of an

issue made of it. Elon Musk is not going to war with Narendra Modi or anything online. But when it comes to Brazil, which now has a left-wing party in power, and these orders are targeting right-wing users because of the types of things that they are spreading, as you were talking about, all of a sudden it becomes this big thing that Elon Musk needs to personally fight against. In one of your stories, you talked in particular about the role that the United States has played in this and the way that the tech companies have tried to basically appeal to US authorities to try to stop enforcement from Brazil, in particular with the rumble case, which was filed alongside the Trump media group in US

courts to try to stop enforcement and some talk of getting the organization of American states involved. Can you talk a bit about that element of this and how they are trying to interfere in Brazil's ability to basically abide by the rule of law in your own country? When Zuckerberg said, we're going to work together with the US government to fight back against foreign courts, that's really what's happening. Like he was perfect in his words because, well, beyond the glaring conflict of interest

in having a company that is owned partially by the president come together with another tech company to fight against a foreign authority, it's ridiculous that the intentions are so clear at the same time that they try to hide that they're trying to protect their business but also to protect this type of ideal and to everyone outside of the US I think it's quite clear that what they're doing is overstepping a line but do they not see it? To us in Brazil it hasn't been surprising. We expected that this would kind of follow Monais blocking eggs and then Big

Tech just cozying up to Trump after his inauguration, but it has been quite surprising how public they have been about it and in Brazil it's been seen kind of as a joke, like how do they believe that they have the authority to interfere with what is happening inside our country? You know, in Brazil, although the Supreme Court is controversial and Bolsonaro supporters might not like it, it's a well-respected institution. And I think it's clear to everyone that Moraes has not been acting partially, that think it's clear to everyone that Morais has not been acting partially, that he has taken on this role, given the lack of regulations against social media. And to be honest, I don't think it's a role he wishes he were in, but he saw the challenge and he stepped

up to the moment. And like, it really struck me that when Trump Media Group and Rumble brought this case, it was in American courts trying to get American courts to basically say they don't need to follow this ruling from Brazil, which makes no sense whatsoever. Right. But again, it just shows how these American companies think that they're beyond the authority of other countries around the world, particular countries like Brazil in the global south, you know, why should we have to listen to what these countries are doing? But Brazil is a democracy with strong democratic institutions. Yes, like any democracy, there are flaws and issues and things that you want to improve on. But that

doesn't mean that the Supreme Court of Brazil is something that does not have authority over companies that are acting within their jurisdiction, right? Like it's completely ridiculous. Exactly. And I wrote after like the X case, Morais blocking X and Elon just like waging this war and he was threatening to like cut off Starlink and I wrote, this is not a war on the Supreme court. It's a war on Brazil's sovereignty because Brazil was affirming, like, we are a sovereign nation and we have our own rules and, you know, like we're okay

with our agreement inside. And Musk just wanted to create chaos inside Brazil by saying like, hey, Brazilians, you shouldn't follow this guy's order because he's acting against your interests. Like, how dare you? It was really shocking and offensive. And I'm not naive in thinking that Big Tech didn't act in this logic before, but it was never this public. Right. Like when we think about, for example, Facebook zero or like zero rating policies, like that's also impacting a country's digital sovereignty.

But it was never this public as a campaign. I think when Elon went really public with this dispute, he wanted to get the sympathy of some Brazilians on the right wing, and he was able to at one point. Maybe now they don't like him again. I'm not sure, but yeah. We'll see. We'll have to see. I think that helps us to broaden out our conversation as well though, right? And I want to come back to this point about sovereignty a little bit later, but you talked about how a lot of this enforcement at the moment is coming from the Supreme Court, right? And the specific justice in particular. What are we seeing on the legislative front from

the Brazilian Congress? Is there attempts to pass social media laws? Are there other tech regulations kind of moving through the Brazilian government that are particularly notable? What are you seeing there? In Congress, we have been seeing some things for the past few years. We had a really big bill that was called a fake news bill. People outside of Brazil know it with that name. It started in 2020 and made its way through Congress over like four years, was really debated. It wasn't a perfect bill and I have to say that, but it was the result of lots of back and forth, lots of political construction, and it had the input of civil society and people outside of Congress. So I think in a way it was a really democratic bill, but it was shut down thanks to this alliance by Big Tech,

lobbying and the extreme right. A very convenient alliance. And I have to say, Big Tech companies were really public in lobbying against that bill. Lobbying is not regulated in Brazil. So in theory it doesn't happen, but we all know it does. But at that point, I really think Big Tech understood that they were about their activity in Brazil was about to be really impacted by this build that was

built democratically and everything so they went all out. For example all of the companies bought full-page ads in Brazil's biggest newspapers. Google ran a banner on its homepage saying something like, the fake news bill might confuse you about what is true or not in Brazil. Like, what does that say? And parentheses here, they were investigated by the federal police for abuse of economic power. So there are limits to what they can say and do. But also don't worry about Google running its AI overviews that might also confuse you about what's true and what's not.

Yeah, right? Yeah. And so they went really public. And I think they saw that that created some harm to their reputation because, well, they were investigated. But also, they really put their claws out at that moment. So now they have been really taking the backseat and letting other people lobby for them.

But the fact is that bill was shut down and, and ever since we haven't seen another bill that focuses on content come up, I have to say that was a bill that focused really on content and speech, and that's probably why it failed. Everything in Congress that has touches somehow upon discourse will be shut down. Because the far right is a really big force in Congress and they're very savvy in seeing that this will impact what they say on social media. So they're really quick in shutting it down.

What we do have in Congress right now are AI regulations, but we can chat about that later. But that's why I said that the Supreme Court has been forced to step up. You know, we're heading into another election cycle and again, we don't have a bill that regulates social media. So this is kind of why they're moving right now. So we have enough time before next year's election. But we're also seeing some other things from the federal government. So one of the ministries is set to present soon two bills equivalent to the DMA and the DSA. So one focuses on market regulation and the other focuses on services. And I say they would be equivalent, but I don't know if they're inspired because we haven't seen them yet. But it has been the

work of many years of government. Also, although I'm not really optimistic that anything this government submits to Congress right now regarding tech regulation would have even a chance of passing. Another thing we're starting to see in Brazil and that I'm more optimistic about is economic regulation of platforms. So we have our competition authority that has been looking into cases with Google and Apple, and they have been holding public consultations, which

is something new for that authority. And I think it's a really good sign that they're open to learning from civil society and they're listening to what people want to think of some type of economic regulation. And that would have a better chance, even if it passes through Congress, because you're not looking at speech and discourse. So I think even for the far right, the extreme right, they wouldn't be so reluctant to discuss

this type of regulation. Whereas if you mentioned the word content or speech, immediately they drop out of the conversation because that's not something they're interested in. That makes a lot of sense. And those actions are probably targeting companies like Apple or Google, which, you know, are not your social media companies where the discourse is, is happening to the same degree either, right?

Which, which probably helps with that too. Exactly. These cases right now that they have right now are about the App Store. So I think that's also something like that's a good way to dip your feet into it. And for us journalists, it has also been interesting to see how these companies behave

in another setting. Because we know how they lobby in Congress. We know how they lobby in the federal government. But how do they lobby in this competition setting? You know, like these are other lawyers, for example, are these are the antitrust lawyers, not the public policy people. So it has been an interesting and I think really I do believe that this authority is kind of testing out the waters to see how far they can go and how other people, how society receives an eventual ruling against one of these companies. I also wanted to pick up on what you were saying there around the lobbying from the tech companies, because I think what you're saying actually sounds really similar to things

that we saw in Canada and that I'm sure other countries have experienced as well, where a tech regulation is presented. And basically you have these companies start coming out with very deceptive arguments around what its impacts would be, what it would actually do, what is even actually contained in the bill. And then over time, instead of the companies themselves making those arguments, you start having third party groups that are making the exact arguments of the tech companies, but not under the name of the tech companies, which makes them look more legitimate, right? But are designed to ensure that the bill does not move forward or is watered down or what have you. And I think in the way that you talked about the fake news bill, like not being perfect. I feel like I often feel that way about Canadian tech regulation as well, where I'm like, this is not the way I would have approached it. I wish they had done something else.

It could have been much better if it was designed in a particular way. But then when I start seeing the big American tech companies really start fighting against it, I'm like, this is our country. This is what we decided. You need to follow our rules. Even if it is this imperfect one that I don't totally love. I feel the same. And it was really offensive that they were able to like very quickly shut

down this thing that had taken years to build. Like really a truly democratic process and it wasn't perfect, but at that moment it was the best we had and the best we needed because it was right before the 2022 elections. But now, as I said, they're taking like the backseat and having these other people lobby for them. But at this point we know, they're taking the backseat and having these other people lobby for them. But at this point, we know, right? What are the arguments? Every time I hear, the AI bill will hinder innovation. I know it's a big tech argument. I know it's a private sector argument. So part of the coverage we do at The Intercept Brazil is really focused on lobbying

and telling people that they're being deceived. Last week, there was a really good example. On Monday, many newspapers like big ones ran this article based on a study saying that any changes to article 19 in the Supreme Court would cost millions, hundreds of millions to the Brazilian legal system or would lead to an influx of new court cases. And then I was like what is this study? And when I opened it

at the very end it was said this study was funded by Google. And like it was a law firm that is connected to a think tank and this think tank often works for Google but it wasn't a case of like making an indirect relation it was literally written. These articles didn't state this. They just said it was a study by this rec lab or whatever it was. And then we came out with an article saying like,

actually it's by Google. And it went all over on social media. Like I made this video and people were like, wow, like great investigation. Well, not really, you know, like we just looked at the tiny, tiny letters. So I think this coverage is really like compensated by the fact that the more you follow,

the more you start to understand the arguments and the actors. So we've been looking at how people who are rallying against the fake news bill are now working against the AI bill and you know, like it's just history repeating itself. And I think the repetition really gives us an opportunity to say, this is what happened last time around.

So maybe let's do it differently this time. So we have a better chance. I'm not really optimistic about that, but the strategies really haven't changed that much other than the fact that I think they know that their reputation was tarnished. So now they're being more careful. That makes a lot of sense. And you know, you've mentioned the AI legislation a few times.

Obviously, we see in a lot of countries right now, there is a lot of hype around artificial intelligence. Governments are kind of rolling out the red carpet to tech companies that are working on generative AI products to try to make sure that they are doing work in their countries, that businesses are adopting AI tools, that data centers are going to be easier to construct. What are you seeing in Brazil on that front? What is this AI legislation? What is contained within it?

And is the government doing the same as so many other governments in trying to make it easier to build data centers and to encourage the adoption of AI? We have a bill that was approved in the Senate last December. So that's the first and then it goes to the lower house of Congress. And the bill that was approved, it started with a former president of Senate understanding that the AI is coming, we need to have some rules for it. He then brought on this commission of scholars and law experts to kind of advise him on what this bill should include. And then from then on, we had a commission look at it. And during the commission, of course, lots of lobbying, like the president of the commission

traveled to the US to visit Google headquarters, like all of that stuff we already know. But by the end, the result was an interesting bill because it was based on risks. So you had a tier system, like high risk activities and applications were subject to more regulation.

And the lower the risk, less regulations, less accountable you are. It was an interesting model. It was protective of rights. At one point it even had mentions to like freedom of speech, but then the right wing was like, nope, we're talking about AI, we shouldn't even go there. Some absences were important. For example, they eventually removed something about discriminatory AI in policing. And that's a big story for Brazil. You know, we have a very big black population, people of color in Brazil,

so discrimination with AI is a big issue. But as we always say, it wasn't perfect, but it was a good starting point for the Chamber of Deputies to start working on. But now the day she, she took over the president of the commission in the Chamber of Deputies responsible for looking at this bill said, thank you so much Senate for the work, we're going to take it from here and look at what is useful and what is not.

So basically, and she's very aligned to Big Tech. Like we always cover her because she's, she's a lobbyist. I can say that because she often sides with the companies. So I think we're expecting to see the work change a lot in the chamber of deputies. And traditionally the chamber of deputies is where Big Tech lobbies strongly more than the Senate. So I can say that what we had in the Senate was a good version of this bill, but what we're having right now is not really clear.

I think it's interesting that they have been thinking about some things that are nonpartisan, for example, how to protect children and teenagers from the harms of AI. That's interesting. And in Brazil, that's a good topic that unites both the right and the left. I mean, globally, I would expect it, right? No one is against protecting children, but that is something that is appearing in the fake news or the AI bill. Also deep fakes and deep nudes that is also appearing there.

And more recently data centers. And that's a big topic of interest for me. I've been covering stories about data centers and it wasn't present in the bill when it was in Senate. And this really speaks to how this story has moved very quickly in just the six past months. So what is happening with data centers in Brazil? No, Brazil has lots of clean energy. And I think 80% of our energy matrix is made up of renewables.

So it's a really interesting country compared to the US, where, for example, Trump is saying that he's thinking of letting people explore coal to meet the energy demand of AI. So Brazil has this postcard right now that is, we have renewable energy and we have oversupply, so you could come in and use it. And the government has looked at that and said, we're gonna build an AI policy or a data center policy.

And it's a policy to attract investments in AI. So we knew that they were starting to work on this in the beginning of this year, so not that long ago, and it's still yet to be presented. They say every week is, this week we're submitting it to Congress, but we haven't seen it yet. But we have lots of details on this policy

based on what has been reported, but also on what the government has been seeing. So I'm personally, like our coverage has been critical to this policy because the way it's designed at the moment, it's a policy where you give lots of incentives for foreign companies to come in and set up their data centers in Brazil to take advantage of this clean energy,

of this space availability, because we also have lots of space, but in exchange you have nothing. Like Brazil is not gaining anything from this policy because there are many tax breaks. They're reducing taxes on importing equipment. And we know that's a huge part of the expenses in a data center, right?

The chips and the servers and everything you have to put inside, that's a big cost. So the Brazilian government to make it interesting is zeroing the taxes on the import of these equipments. But Brazilians have nothing to gain from it as it stands at the moment. So are we really giving up our energy and our water? And this is really important because our reporting has found that some of the data centers that are in the process of being installed that have been already authorized by the government are located in areas where you have a history of drought, for example, in the Northeast of Brazil, we found a project that

TikTok is backing and it's located in this town where for 16 of the past 20 years, the town has entered a state of emergency due to drought. So how is a data center going to come into this place where people already lack water, right? Based on everything we know about data center water usage, it doesn't really seem to be an intelligent decision. And more concerning is the fact that the population, both nationally but locally,

hasn't been informed of even what is a data center. Right? So that's kind of where our reporting comes in, and we're trying to educate people, like a data center is, and this is what impacts the environment, and you have the right to ask for more information about it. Yeah, and I feel like that education piece is so important, right? When we see, say, opposition in Chile or Uruguay, just to think about nearby countries,

often it has been the role of education that actually got people to realize that there was even an issue here in the first place, right? It wasn't like, oh, there's a data center project happening over here or plan to happen over here and people immediately know what that means. It's like, you know, the work to actually explain that and to explain the potential issues is a key piece

to then developing that opposition if people are not okay with it, right? And of course, if you're building a massive data center that's gonna require a lot of water for cooling in a place that is very frequently in drought and because of climate change is probably going to be even more frequently, that is obviously not going to be something that's going to be good for the community, especially when we know how few jobs these data centers even create. Exactly. And I don't think people are being informed because they buy into the narrative that it's jobs, it's good money for towns. And these are oftentimes small towns that don't have really another source of revenue. So they look at this huge investment.

And there's also like this part that I see when I talk to people, it's kind of like an ego side of it. Like, wow, TikTok, this huge international company, or like this really nice app that we all use has chosen our city over all of the other cities to come in and bring the future. Right? Like this is the narrative and part of our job, unfortunately, is debunking this thing that, you know, like data centers don't use that much jobs. Like you don't need that many people working inside a data center.

And now oftentimes they will hire people who are like really high skilled workers, so maybe not from the town. And it's sad because we're party poopers in a way we're saying like, it's not as nice as it's, as it seems, but it's important to make this dispute because so far the, the predominant narrative has been jobs, revenue, future progress, development, right? And the government, although it's a left-wing government, and I have to say this, the way this policy is being set up

is not really protective of our rights, our environment, but of our sovereignty also. It's not assisting us in developing our own ecosystem of AI tools, AI companies, nothing. It's just creating an incentive for these foreign companies to come in and take advantage of the policy. I was gonna say I understand the role of the party pooper very well, given what I do. But I think that sets me up really well to ask my final question that I had for you, right?

And that is around this question of sovereignty and digital sovereignty in particular. When I think about Brazil or thought about Brazil in the past, I always remembered this story about the Brazilian government, like adopting Linux and open source software is to like not be dependent on these major tech companies. And so I was wondering, you know, at a moment where you have a Lula government,

a workers party government back in power, and you also have these growing tensions with the United States and with these US tech companies, is there a bigger move toward digital sovereignty getting off of these platforms and dependence on these companies in Brazil? Or are we unfortunately seeing rhetoric maybe not so much match the action

that would be necessary in order to do that. Exactly. Like the rhetoric doesn't match the action. This is a really strong mark of the previous Lula governments, but also Workers' Party governments. Let's remember that when Dilma was president with the Snowden revelations, we found out that she was being like wiretapped and bugged. And the US government was listening into her conversations. Isn't that enough of an alert to think about like backdoors

into the companies and how we're letting our data be hosted on these platforms that now more than ever are connected to the US government? It doesn't seem so. So like, although the rhetoric now, and I think around the Twitter case or the X case, Lula was like, we are not going to let these companies dictate what we do in Brazil, but although he has this very strong discourse in practice, the

government is signing contracts with Google and Microsoft all the time. And with the data center policy, I think this is a really strong show of how this idea of developing Brazil's own sovereignty has been left out. And recently there have been some things, you know, Lula went the same week, the finance minister was presenting the data center policy to executives in California. Like he did this big Silicon Valley tour, Lula was in China and he signed a bunch of deals including AI and technology transfer and like cooperation.

And this is quite interesting because it shows that, you know, Lula, his past governments, they have had a good relationship with China. This was cut off during the Bolsonaro years because he's very anti-China, but Lula is trying to pick this back up. So I think that's a good sign that he's looking elsewhere other than the US to establish partnerships.

But it also doesn't satisfy people who think we should be doing more in-house than turning to other countries because you're not really reducing dependency if you're finding someone else also, right? So I think it has been overall kind of underwhelming and disappointing You're not really reducing dependency if you're finding someone else also, right? So I think it has been overall kind of underwhelming and disappointing when we see discourse is really strong and like, we're going to block Starlink. For example, Starlink is a good example, right? Around the time of the Musk whole thing, we realized that we were more dependent on Starlink

than we should be, particularly in the Amazon region. So lots of people there, even for like education, schools rely on Starlink than we should be, particularly in the Amazon region. So lots of people there, even for like education, schools rely on Starlink. So there was this whole idea of let's develop our own satellite internet, try to find alternatives. And with this visit to China, Lula signed a deal for a Chinese company to come in and take the role of Starlink. And you know, it's good that it's like a different country, but you're also like putting the in the hands of another country, the same thing that was

in Musk's hands. So yeah, overall disappointing. And I wish that we had seen more action, but we haven't really seen like nothing very concrete in terms of evolution on this front. Yeah, sadly, it's not a big surprise, right? It is a difficult lift to, you know, try to carve away that dependence on US tech companies and, you know, increasingly Chinese tech companies as well, right? It's probably better to at least have some diversification there to try to play them off one another a little bit, but actually try to develop more independent domestic capacities would be much better than just relying on these major tech companies in major powers

beyond Brazil, right? But I think this has been a really informative conversation to get a better picture of what is happening in Brazil. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show to dig into all these thorny complex issues with us to give us a better picture of this. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you so much. It really is like, I think 50 years and four years in Brazil.

This is moving so fast and it's really more nuanced than people think. And I hope listeners everywhere think about the Brazil issue right now and see like, oh, it's not as simple as I had thought because it really isn't. So yeah, but it's an interesting story to follow and I thank you so much for inviting me. It's been really nice chatting with you. Absolutely.

I'm sure we'll all have to keep a better eye on what's happening in Brazil after learning about this. Thanks again. Laís Martins is a tech reporter at The Intercept Brazil. on what's happening in Brazil after of your own. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week.