Outrage at Meta is mounting. “Meta, don’t meddle,” Brazilians protested last week, angry over reported restrictions on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his supporters across Meta platforms. Days earlier, when thousands rallied across the US ahead of the midterms, Instagram shut down the organizers’ “No Kings” account. Patterns repeat: Meta’s supposed “technical incidents” occur at times most crucial for public debate. The Oversight Board called them “recurring enforcement failures.”
Yet as concerns over political expression broke headlines, more outrage at Meta, outside of high-stakes elections, stayed under the radar. The company has been trying to bury a controversial provision in its newly updated commercial terms of use: it would allow content scraping from websites tied to business accounts on Meta platforms, legal experts warned Nieman Lab. That would affect, among others, news publishers.
Initially set to take effect on October 30, the updated terms explicitly mentioned that the company could use content it gathered from associated websites to “train” Meta products. “AI at Meta” is one such product. “If you do not agree to the updated terms,” the update read, “please stop all access or use of our Products for business or commercial purposes.” To keep using Meta—and almost every news organization has at least one Meta business account—one would have to permit the scraping and crawling. The day after it announced the new terms, Meta removed the word “train.”
US news publishers called on Meta to suspend the update. European publishers wrote to the European Commission, citing possible Digital Markets Act violations. Facing pressure, Meta delayed the rollout of new terms until November 20 “to allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what’s changing and what’s not.”
So far, Meta has failed to offer clear reassurances. “My fear is that this is merely a measure by Meta to reduce the risk of court actions for interim measures,” Thomas Höppner, a competition law attorney, told Nieman Lab. Do experts and publishers really need even more explanations, however more elaborate? What they do need is a strong commitment to copyright law.
Meta, don’t meddle. And Meta, don’t steal.
Left: Viviana Giacaman Sarah is a Chilean journalist, political scientist, and former head of a UN national office. Photo credit: El Mostrador. Right: Daniela Salazar Marín is a former Judge and Vice President of the Constitutional Court of Ecuador. Photo credit: María del Cisne Larrea Cabrera.
CGFoE celebrates the recent appointments of two women leaders to positions significant for the protection of freedom of expression and broader human rights:
Viviana Giacaman Sarah as Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and CGFoE expert Daniela Salazar Marín as a member of the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls representing Latin American and Caribbean States.
We wish them every success in these new roles.
Speaking to CGFoE last year, Daniela Salazar Marín reflected on how Ecuador’s Constitutional Court transformed the protection of freedom of expression. Revisit the interview here.
United States
Commonwealth v. Meta
Decision Date: April 10, 2026
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts affirmed a lower court’s refusal to dismiss an action brought against the social media platform Meta. The case had been brought by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts alleging that the platform was deliberately engineered to exploit the psychological vulnerabilities of children and adolescents to maximize their screen time and the company’s advertising revenue, while the company simultaneously made false public statements about the platform’s safety and its efforts to exclude very young children. The Court found that the federal intermediary liability provision, which shields internet platforms from liability for content created by their users (Section 230(c)(1) of the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996), does not extend to protecting those platforms from claims arising from the platform’s own engineering decisions, its own representations to consumers, or its own failure to implement effective measures to keep underage users off the platform.
Anderson v. TikTok, Inc.
Decision Date: August 27, 2024
The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal statute that protects online platforms from liability for content posted by third parties, did not immunize TikTok from claims based on its own algorithmic recommendations of third-party content. The case arose after a ten-year-old girl died while attempting to imitate a dangerous challenge depicted in a video that TikTok’s algorithm had recommended to her. Her mother alleged that TikTok was responsible for recommending and promoting harmful videos to minors, and the district court dismissed the complaint on the basis of statutory immunity. The Court distinguished between a platform’s role in hosting content created by users and its own role in selecting and recommending content through a personalized feed. Relying on the United States Supreme Court’s reasoning on social media curation, the Court concluded that algorithmic recommendations could constitute the platform’s own expressive activity rather than merely the publication of third-party information. It therefore reversed the dismissal in part, vacated it in part, and remanded the case for further proceedings without determining whether TikTok was ultimately liable under state law.
Lemmon v. Snap, Inc.
Decision Date: May 4, 2021
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law that shields online platforms from liability for content posted by their users, did not immunize Snap Inc. from a negligent-design lawsuit arising from the alleged dangers created by Snapchat’s design. The parents of two young men who died in a high-speed car accident alleged that Snapchat’s Speed Filter and reward system encouraged users to drive at dangerous speeds. The Court found that the claim concerned Snap’s own decisions in designing Snapchat rather than its role in publishing content created by users. It therefore concluded that the lawsuit did not treat Snap as the publisher or speaker of third-party information and did not depend on information provided by another information content provider. The Court reversed the district court’s dismissal and remanded the case for further proceedings.
● India: Defending Digital Rights and Press Freedom Amid Protests. The Software Freedom Law Center, India (SFLC.in) condemned the removal of Bitchat—a peer-to-peer messaging app that uses Bluetooth mesh networks to operate without an internet or cellular connection—from Google Play and the Apple App Store in India. The organization is challenging the blocking order in court and has published a toolkit explaining how users can still download the app on Android. Since October 9, SFLC.in’s Free Speech Tracker has documented over 260 cases of content restrictions affecting protest-related posts, among other digital rights violations.
● Slovenia: Voters Back the License Fee, but RTV Slovenija’s Independence Remains Under Threat. Earlier this month, in one of the closest referendum results in Slovenia’s history, 50.14% voted to keep the mandatory payments that finance public service media RTV Slovenija. The Public Media Alliance calls on the Slovenian authorities to respect the referendum result, due to be officially confirmed on October 30, as Prime Minister Janez Janša says his party intends to make the license fee voluntary and as a draft law threatens to overhaul RTV Slovenija’s governance.
● Exposing AdFection: How Discover-Tech Turned Targeted Ads Into a Pipeline for Zero-Click Mercenary Spyware. CitizenLab published the first-ever public confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered via targeted online advertisements. They named the technique “AdFection” and uncovered how it was deployed to infect devices at international news network Al Jazeera with highly sophisticated, commercial surveillance software. CitizenLab also revealed that Discover-Tech, an Israeli company, purchased the malicious advertisements.
Last Thursday in Tunis and Jebiniana, Tunisia, police clashed with demonstrators after two deaths in connection with police and security officers. On Saturday in Brazil, over 2 million rallied for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in São Paulo and over 1.1 million in Rio de Janeiro ahead of the presidential election’s second round. That day across France, between 410,000 and 800,000 rallied over public services, rising costs, restrictions on protests; police reported 1,314 arrests. Also on Saturday, thousands marched across Italy; 371 were briefly detained; a journalist and admin of the protest group’s Instagram page is under investigation. That day in Tirana, Albania, police deployed tear gas, water cannon, rubber bullets; dozens were detained, more than 300 injured. Also on Saturday across Türkiye, thousands protested the media crackdown. That day in Tel Aviv, Israel, thousands demanded a change of government ahead of pivotal elections. On Sunday in Portugal, police with dogs and batons cleared housing protest camps in Lisbon and Porto, arresting over 30. On Monday in Nairobi, Kenya, fuel-price protesters clashed with police; several were arrested.
It was another extraordinary week of protests. Find many more we have tracked here.
Serbia’s close-to-two-year student-led protest movement drew hundreds of thousands into the streets and culminated in an election victory this past Sunday.
Background & Demands: On November 1, 2024, a concrete canopy collapse killed 16 people at the railway station in Novi Sad. Student-led protesters held corruption responsible for the tragedy and demanded accountability and criminal prosecutions. By 2025, their demands evolved into a call for early parliamentary elections. Students campaigned on a non-partisan effort to restore democracy: the 250 people nominated for the election as part of the “Student’s List,” which declared no leaders, included doctors, professors, athletes, and engineers, among other experts. On Thursday, October 22, around 150,000 rallied in Belgrade.
Significance: On October 25, Serbia’s leaderless youth movement turned street mobilization into an electoral defeat of President Aleksandar Vučić, whose party had governed for 14 years.
Results: President Vučić conceded, blaming independent media and alleged foreign interference for his defeat. According to preliminary results, the “Student List” secured 52% of the votes, amounting to 140 of 250 seats; Vučić’s party won 39% (104 seats). While the formation of the new government is still at least a month away, some immediate effects of the election are already becoming visible, like changes in key public media positions, indictments against individuals close to the ruling party, and a mandatory instruction to the prosecution offices, requiring swift action on suspected election-related criminal offenses.
State Response: On October 21, authorities detained six people for allegedly planning election-day unrest. On election day, riot police cordoned off the electoral commission; gendarmerie vehicles were parked at the Presidency. As part of the earlier protest crackdown, authorities repeatedly used excessive force, conducted widespread arrests, and allegedly deployed a sonic weapon for crowd control. Physical and online attacks on journalists have surged amid unprecedented surveillance and pressure on universities and civil society.
FoE Violations: Since the beginning of 2026, the Media Freedom Rapid Response has documented 157 attacks affecting 261 journalists and media in Serbia. A month before the vote, attacks on media freedom escalated and included physical violence, seizure of equipment, obstruction of reporting, and pro-government editorial takeovers. The 2026 investigations led by the SHARE foundation revealed that at least 16 civil society members have been targeted or infected with mercenary spyware.
Op-Ed: Lula’s Win Signals Fight to Regulate Social Media Will Escalate in Brazil, by Tatiana Dias. Tech Policy Press fellow Tatiana Dias argues that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s extraordinary win also dealt a blow to Big Tech companies, “a symbol of US imperialism over Brazil.” The election result could accelerate efforts to regulate social media platforms.
This newsletter is reproduced with the permission of Global Freedom of Expression. For an archive of previous newsletters, see here.