12 Dec 2025 | Americas, Brazil, News
Brazilian left-wing influencer Thiago Torres, best known as Chavoso da USP (roughly translated as the University of São Paulo’s swaggy chav), has faced increasing political persecution in the last months. This reached international levels last month when Thiago’s main Instagram profile, with more than one million followers, was taken down by Meta.
Thiago then started using an old backup Instagram account with 385,000 followers, which was also taken down after allegations that it had been created to circumvent the previous block. Arbitrarily and without possibility of appeal, Meta blocked all access to his accounts and is set to permanently delete their content. A warning on Instagram said that the account “does not follow Community Standards” although the company did not specify which specific rules had been breached. Even after a preliminary injunction was issued on the morning of 20 November that forced Meta to return Thiago’s main account under threat of a fine, three other accounts were taken down later that same evening.
By maintaining the block on the influencer, Meta is involved in yet another case of big tech insubordination to Brazilian justice according to politicians. Federal Congresswoman Sâmia Bomfim, from PSOL (Freedom and Socialism Party), classified the event as a “direct attack on freedom of speech and the work of those who denounce injustices within Brazil.” Thiago sees it as “an offensive against progressive, mainly radical, left-wing voices”.
This is not the first time Meta has taken down accounts with large numbers of followers linked to the Brazilian left. In August this year, historian and influencer Jones Manoel, former candidate for governor of Pernambuco with the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) and the Brazilian influencer with the most growth on the platform since June, was arbitrarily banned from Instagram. In October, activist and comedian Tiago Santineli also had his 850,000 followers account blocked, following online comments about the death of Charlie Kirk.
Since 9 December 2025, members of parliament from PSOL, PT (Worker’s Party), and left-wing news outlets have reported that their profiles “don’t appear in searches, can’t be tagged, and [that] their reach has plummeted in an orchestrated manner”, according to Federal Congresswoman Fernanda Melchionna. This is known as shadow-banning.
The bans follow a dispute between big tech companies and the left wing government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva which dates from January 2025, when Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office sent an extrajudicial notification to Meta because of the company’s decision to stop using independent fact-checkers. The concern was that this would further exacerbate the problem of “fake news”, which became prevalent in the 2018 and 2022 election processes, particularly on the part of the Brazilian right wing. A major dispute between the Brazilian judiciary and Elon Musk’s X also took place last year, resulting in the social network being blocked in the country until Musk complied with court orders.
The regulation of big tech companies – largely similar to what the EU has instigated – is considered by the current government as a matter of national sovereignty. In July, President Trump sent a letter to Brazil’s president, Lula, imposing a massive 50% tariff that rendered the export of a range of Brazilian products to the USA unfeasible. According to the letter, the measure came as retaliation for the sanctions against big tech and in support of former president Jair Bolsonaro, a representative of the Brazilian far right and ally of Trump who was convicted for attempted coup d’état.
In his speech at the UN General Assembly in September, President Lula said that “even under unprecedented attack, Brazil chose to resist and defend its democracy. There is no justification for the unilateral and arbitrary measures against our institutions and our economy. The aggression against the independence of the judiciary is unacceptable.”
It is not only in Brazil that US intervention in favour of big tech been felt. Back in January, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg clearly stated on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast that “the US government has a role in basically defending [big tech] abroad”.
In the same week that Brazil hosted COP30 and witnessed the preventive arrest of Bolsonaro, the suspension of five accounts belonging to a left-wing influencer shows that big tech might also have a role in defending the US government’s interests abroad in Brazil.
Researchers like the Brazilian academic Walter Lippold denounce what they call “digital colonialism”, the interconnection between imperialist interests and big tech. To Brazilian sociologist Sérgio Amadeu, “online social networks and platforms controlled by big tech companies are geopolitical structures increasingly aligned with the far right.” In June, at seminars held by Bolsonaro’s right-wing Liberal party (PL), executives from Meta gave workshops teaching how to use AI and achieve greater reach on the platform.
Born and raised in Brasilândia, an outlying neighbourhood of São Paulo, Thiago Torres first rose to prominence as a social sciences student at the University of São Paulo.
Ranked many times as the best university in Latin America, the University of São Paulo subscribes to a national public education project aimed at social development. Despite this, USP remains elitist in the social and racial makeup of both its faculty and students. Thiago spoke about the way this composition shaped the production of knowledge within USP, and used his platform to share social theory with a wider public.
Now graduated and a teacher, Thiago has become known for denouncing cases of political corruption and police violence. Overtly anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, it’s not surprising that his head is wanted by public officials and companies who benefit from the country’s social division.
In August this year, Thiago was called to testify in the controversial CPI dos Pancadões, a parliamentary commission inquiring into street funk parties. Under the pretext that they disturb public order, it is common for the military police to raid pancadões, using extreme violence and murdering the young people present, many of whom are from racial minorities and come from lower social strata.
Thiago’s account dedicated to police violence, @fim.da.pm (“End the Military Police”), is among those blocked by Meta. The company had until 28 November to return the influencer’s main account, but this didn’t happen.
“Instagram will face a daily fine for each day it fails to comply [with the judiciary decision]”, Thiago explained. “But it’s a relatively small fine for them, so it’s possible they might disregard the court order.” Unfortunately, this seems to be the case.
11 Dec 2025 | Asia and Pacific, Australia, News
Read Index’s statement on why Australia’s ban on social media for under 16s is disproportionate
When Australia passed a world-first social media ban for teens, there was a display of national pride from the prime minister, and even the Sydney Harbour Bridge was lit up in the country’s national colours, green and gold, to celebrate the historic achievement.
The law, which came into effect on 10 December, requires 10 platforms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent under-16s from having accounts on their platforms, or risk fines of up to $49.5 million.
The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 had bipartisan support and sailed through Australian parliament last December. Seventy per cent of Australians are said to support it.
Australia is being feted. The EU, Malaysia, and others are said to be watching, including the UK, although the culture secretary has expressed doubts over whether it could be enforced in the country.
But a barrage of human rights groups and others, including Index on Censorship, Amnesty International and Save the Children, have all criticised or opposed the ban.
Tom Sulston, head of policy at Australian charity Digital Rights Watch, told Index that they were broadly supportive of the idea that internet access is a human right. While the new law only restricts teens from accessing 10 specific sites – X, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Kick and Twitch – he said that the space these social media companies represent is enormous.
“They do occupy this space as the town square of digital society,” Sulston said. “So, is it proportionate to remove that right of access to a group of people in order to protect their safety, or under the guise of protecting their safety? We don’t think so.”
He added that there were alternative measures that many organisations were asking for, such as regulation and investment in digital literacy, which could have been put in place instead of an outright ban.
There is now an interesting legal conversation to be had about the ban, Sulston said. On 26 November, two 15-year-olds launched a legal challenge to the law, supported by rights group the Digital Freedom Project (DFP), in Australia’s High Court. They are arguing that all Australians have a constitutional implied right to freedom of political communication.
“Young people like me are the voters of tomorrow,” said one plaintiff Macy Neyland in a statement. “Why on earth should we be banned from expressing our views?” Neyland added that the situation was “like Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four”.
Noah Jones, who is also suing the government, told the media: “We’re disappointed in a lazy government that blanket-bans under-16s rather than investing in programmes to help kids be safe on social media. They should protect kids with safeguards, not silence.”
A direction hearing for the teens’ court challenge will be heard in February at the earliest.
Digital Freedom Project president John Ruddick, who is also a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council with the Libertarian Party, has branded the ban the world’s most draconian legislation. He said that it was “as Big Brother as you can get” and that “even the Chinese Communist Party would be drooling over this”.
Reddit was also reportedly looking at legal action, but has confirmed it will comply with the restrictions.
In submissions to Australia’s Senate Standing Committees on Environment and Communications last November, before it became law, the Australian Human Rights Commission said that it had “serious reservations” about the legislation. While it said that it understood the significance of protecting young people from online harm and the negative consequences of social media, the ban would affect some human rights outlined in international human rights treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
These include the right to freedom of expression and information, and the freedom of association and peaceful assembly, as contained in both treaties.
Digital Rights Watch’s Sulston said that he was also worried about autocracies eyeing up the law. According to digital rights non-profit Access Now, 2024 was the worst year on record for internet shutdowns.
“Young people are not represented democratically, even in democratic societies. If you’re under the age to vote, then you get nothing,” Sulston said. “So being able to organise and develop political understanding and take political action online is really important for that cohort. You can see why it would be very attractive for authoritarian regimes to clamp down on that.”
But Sulston said that even though he considered the law a “disaster” and there was no evidence that it would improve children’s lives, it had already been showcased at the UN General Assembly and “deemed a great success”.
He said: “It’s really hard to see what a path to change looks like, because no matter how harmful it is, it seems we’re stuck with it.”
Read Index’s statement on why Australia’s ban on social media for under 16s is disproportionate
10 Dec 2025 | News
Enacted today, Australia’s ban of selected social media platforms for under 16-year-olds is the most sweeping attempt carried out by a democratic state to address online harms facing young people. While we acknowledge the need to ensure young people are protected from inappropriate content and are supported in how they engage with information and content shared online, this approach raises a number of significant issues.
Any such ban on platforms curtails the user’s ability to navigate the open web and access public-interest information. As a result, it is a disproportionate threat to free expression as outlined in Australian and international law. It could also hinder young peoples’ ability to navigate these online spaces when they do come of age. This was outlined by James Ball after the introduction of the UK’s Online Safety Act’s child protection provisions in July 2025: “If we try to keep young people away from it, they will be woefully underskilled, undersocialised, and unprepared for the world they’ll first encounter as 16-year-olds and 18-year-olds,” he wrote.
The realities of social media mean that the very platforms that give access to inappropriate content also give access to a wider range of content that undoubtedly benefits society. Whether that is public-interest reporting, testimony from those living in authoritarian regimes where state control over conventional media outlets leaves online platforms as the sole route available to access international audiences, or a space for marginalised users to find communities outside their direct environment, social media bans do not attempt to differentiate between the good and the bad. They simply cut young people off from all content hosted or shared on that platform, without giving them the tools or support they need to be able to differentiate, interrogate or navigate this complex but important information ecosystem.
For too long, free expression has been presented as an opposition or explicit threat to young people, with few meaningful conversations about how young people can be supported to access their rights. But young people have free expression rights, alongside a wide range of other human rights. These rights are not only available to them once they turn 16. For instance, Article 13 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that “[t]he child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.” As in broader international law, this is not an absolute right and the Declaration of the Rights of the Child also acknowledges the need of “special safeguards” for children. However, social media bans for every young person with no way for them to consent to or challenge the law does little to give the child a choice as to the media they can use. In fact, the choice is made on their behalf.
Specific provisions in the Australian law also raise a number of significant questions that, while too early to track in terms of implementation, should be considered. Australia’s social media ban only covers a specific number of platforms, leaving several outside the law’s scope. This is inconsistent. For example, Facebook and Instagram are included, but Messenger and WhatsApp (other platforms owned by Meta) are not. While this will increase the complexity for big platforms to differentiate its access requirements across the different services it provides, it also establishes spaces where young people can turn to to avoid age checks. This could encourage bad faith actors to target their actions towards these unregulated areas in a more concerted and impactful manner. Users who are now unable to access the platforms on which they have established communities will be susceptible to such exploitation, with few avenues of recourse or support.
Any policy of this type requires the significant deployment of untested for-profit tools to ensure young people cannot access the platforms included in the law. With many of these tools, users are required to upload sensitive documents such as a passport or bank card to platforms, or consent to face scanning, run by untested and opaque third-party providers. In many cases, users will not be able to choose different methods or vendors and so will be forced to trust these providers with their sensitive data. This is not without risk. Last month, “68,000 Australian Discord users had their personal information compromised” through a tool the platform used as part of its age assurance checks. The compromised data included “government ID images, names, usernames, email addresses, and some limited billing information”.
Requiring users, including young people over the age of 16 in the case of Australia, to blindly trust such platforms, with limited forms of choice or accountability may require them to choose free expression rights over the rights of privacy. But you cannot have one without the other. Without a private space to call their own or the ability to actively choose what data they share, users may curtail their involvement in online discourse, thus undermining their rights to free expression beyond the objectives of this law. As outlined by the Australian Human Rights Commission, the social media ban “normalises broad-based age checks – whether through ID verification or invisible profiling – and creates vast new datasets about how we live and interact, all just to prove we’re old enough to be on social media.” In an age of rampant digital surveillance carried out by private opaque platforms, whose decisions are informed by profit not rights, we should be cautious as to what data we require to be shared. The development of AI age inference tools raises further fears, especially considering academic studies have monitored “higher false positive rate … for certain groups compared to others” and “that minors from East and West Africa were misclassified as older than they were compared to minors of the same age from the other regions”.
We are concerned that outright bans, like the type enacted in Australia, are presented as a silver bullet to protect young people against inappropriate content. This risks closing the door to a more nuanced and proportionate response that centres young people and incorporates a society-wide approach including anti-monopoly and algorithmic transparency measures, improved educational support, information literacy initiatives, sustainable media funding, the development of young person-specific and young person-created media content, or a more participatory strategy across government and society.
As other countries and bodies, including the European Parliament and the UK, are monitoring Australia’s laws, with many policy-makers calling for the policy to be emulated, we urge extreme caution. One day is wholly insufficient to gauge the impact on young people and we must avoid knee-jerk measures for such an important and complex issue. Bans are seldom the answer to the challenging issues of our time. We owe it to young people to approach this issue with the care, complexity, nuance and depth it requires.
9 Dec 2025 | Afghanistan, Asia and Pacific, Tyrant of the Year
More often than not, we talk about “the Taliban” rather than individual leaders in Afghanistan. But this forgets the real human beings driving the decisions. So today we’re using the name of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Emirate – Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada. A reclusive leader based in the southern city of Kandahar, since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 he has presided over the collapse of the Afghan economy, the disappearance of activists, the gutting of media and the removal of girls and women from public life.
Last year the Taliban published its Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law, which covered every area of public and private life from rules about women’s covering to beards and music. This June, Akhundzada announced adherence to his decrees was obligatory. One month later, arrest warrants were issued by the International Criminal Court for Akhundzada and his Chief Abdul Hakim Haqqani for their gender-based crimes against humanity.
That didn’t deter him. On the four-year mark of the Taliban takeover in August, Akhundzada doubled down on his demands, threatening any Afghans ungrateful for its hardline rule with severe punishment from God.
It was Akhundzada who issued instructions for the internet to be cut in September, and it was only restored upon the orders of the Taliban’s Prime Minister, Hasan Akhund. So is Akhundzada too extreme even for the Taliban? Perhaps. Either way, despite his low profile, on any objective measure Akhundzada is surely one of the most tyrannical leaders on earth.
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