On January 6, 1941, the then President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, delivered his famous speech to the U.S. Congress on the four freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Roosevelt was aware of the dangers that Nazi-fascism posed to these four freedoms. He was probably also aware that freedom of speech must be used as a voice for the other three, acting whenever necessary in their defense and never against them, on pain of being silenced.

On January 7, 2025, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he would end fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram, while in Brazil, we were still celebrating the Golden Globe that Fernanda Torres won two days earlier, for her performance as the lawyer Eunice Paiva, wife of the journalist and former congressman Rubens Paiva, kidnapped and murdered by the Brazilian military dictatorship.

January 8, 2025 marks the second anniversary of the new coup attempt in Brazil, with the invasion and destruction of the headquarters of the Three Powers, incited by a former president who defended the dictatorship that murdered Rubens Paiva and even spat on the journalist’s statue.

The incitement and organization of coup actions, using large doses of disinformation, occurred mainly in the networks of Zuckerberg and Musk. Musk gave the Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration. Trump said he would cut funding for disinformation research.

All three billionaires are against any move to regulate digital platforms, however democratic they may be, even though they know that the profusion of disinformation about vaccines and protective measures during the Covid-19 pandemic on these platforms has caused thousands of preventable deaths. In addition to countless other cases: serious damage to public health and the environment, lynchings, murders of children, attacks on minorities and democracy itself.

Like these three in the United States, today in Brazil many of those who defend the military dictatorship, a period in which censorship was most brutal, present themselves as champions of freedom of expression, while at the same time they are complicit in or remain indifferent to religious persecution, poverty afflicting multitudes and police terror against the most vulnerable sectors of the population, mostly blacks, here and there.

Legislation defending freedom of expression is a civilizing achievement of modernity, as is the defense of other no less important rights, such as the freedom from poverty, slander, and violence based on religion, skin color, gender, ethnicity, nationality or social class.

Freedom of expression does not prevail over other rights. At least not in Brazil. And it is worth remembering that, just like today’s far right, the Nazis used and abused the broad freedom of expression of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and early 1930s, spreading lies, prejudices and hatred, to exterminate them when they took power.

Therefore, we must protect ourselves so that the flag of freedom of speech is not hijacked once again and turned into its own shroud. This is a risk that is run when a flag that originally and for centuries symbolized rational criticism of oppression is used as a disguise for the oppression of rational criticism, justifying scientific denialism, white supremacy, historical revisionism, Nazism, among other fallacies, scams and barbarities.

Zuckerberg even alluded to obscure courts in South America that would restrict freedom of speech, probably referring to actions of the Brazilian Supreme Court against the abuses of his new ally, Musk. Such actions are not obscure at all, being, on the contrary, democratic, transparent and backed by Brazilian law. Trump, in turn, comes out in defense of U.S. corporate interests when they clash with the public interests of other nations.

In reality, what the platform owners want to avoid with their supposed defense of freedom of expression are the costs of verification and responsible moderation of content committed to the public interest, but above all the public exposure of the criteria that govern the algorithmic mediation of their platforms. This mediation coordinates the traffic of information around the world, based on the surveillance of billions of people, which guides and incentivizes the actions of these people, with the aim of generating more engagement and, consequently, profits for business owners and their peers. Truth is the least important thing in this equation, especially when their political allies come into play. And free speech is only interesting to the extent that it serves its purpose.

Appealing to intense emotions, especially fear and loathing, has been amply demonstrated to generate more engagement than thoughtful, rational debate. This appeal is the lifeblood of the business, both the business of the platform owners and that of their political allies, whose disregard for truth is compounded by heavy investment in the cunning construction of imaginary enemies to fear and hate. This applies to everyone from Mussolini and Hitler to Donald Trump, including minor figures like those we have in Brazil, each making strategic use of the media of their time.

Ultimately, Musk and Zuckenberg’s opportunistic approach to Donald Trump has little to do with defending free speech and everything to do with defending their companies’ freedom to trample on national sovereignty and civil rights, including the privacy of the U.S. population. All this in exchange for astronomical profits, obtained in part from the circulation of disinformation on their networks, whose appeal generates engagement and advertising revenue, in part through their alignment with politicians who support their unregulated business model and are elected thanks to the spread of disinformation on these same networks. When one of these politicians is president of the richest and best armed country in the world, there is much to fear.

On the other hand, although these people think they own the world, they do not. They may be giants, but Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the European Union, direct targets of recent attacks by the owner of Meta and the U.S. president, are not miniatures. Neither are Russia nor China.

_{*Machine translation proofread by Janaína da Silva.}