Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged on Thursday to lead an international charge against social media bias as concerns about the overreach of big tech continue to mount.
Lopez Obrador said he will raise a proposal on the subject at the Group of Twenty, or G-20, summit, an international forum for the leaders and central bank governors of 19 countries and the European Union.
“I can tell you that at the first G-20 meeting we have, I am going to make a proposal on this issue,” he said. “How can a company act as if it was all powerful, omnipotent, as a sort of Spanish Inquisition on what is expressed?”
The Mexican president acknowledged that social media can provide a platform for those looking to stir civil unrest but maintained that these concerns should not prevent the exercise of free speech.
“Yes, social media should not be used to incite violence and all that, but this cannot be used as a pretext to suspend freedom of expression,” he added.
The Mexican government has begun to take action in furtherance of Lopez Obrador’s stance. Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said that the country is starting to lobby international allies for their support.
“Given that Mexico, through our president, has spoken out, we immediately made contact with others who think the same,” Ebrard said. “The president’s orders are to make contact with all of [these allies], share this concern, and work on coming up with a joint proposal.”
Several international leaders have already signaled potential interest in the issue. German Chancellor Angela Merkel first voiced her concerns about the broad reach of Silicon Valley, calling the sweeping social media bans of President Trump “problematic.”
“This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators, not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” a spokesman for Merkel told reporters. “Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S. president have now been permanently blocked.”
Soon after, Merkel was joined by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who said that “digital oligarchy” represented “one of the threats” to democracy.
“This should be decided by citizens, not by a CEO,” he said. “There needs to be public regulation of big online platforms.”
Several Polish leaders have since voiced their concerns about online censorship, with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki leading the charge.
“The censorship of freedom of speech, the domain of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, is returning today in the form of a new, commercial mechanism fighting against those who think differently,” he wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
The next G-20 summit is scheduled to take place in Rome, Italy, on Oct. 30 and 31. Mexico, Germany, and France are all scheduled to attend. Poland, which has been vying for G-20 membership, is not yet a member and will not partake.
