Is AMLO promoting a global fight against social media ‘censorship’?

According to the New York Post, Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has vowed to lead an international fight against censorship by social media giants that have blocked President Trump from using his accounts.

“I can tell you that at the first G20 meeting we have, I am going to make a proposal on this issue,” López Obrador said Thursday. “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.”

Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the administration has already made contact with other governments to form a coalition over the issue.

“Given that Mexico, through our president, has spoken out, we immediately made contact with others who think the same,” Ebrard said, noting they had heard from officials in France, Germany, the European Union, Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

“The president’s orders are to make contact with all of them, share this concern and work on coming up with a joint proposal,” Ebrard said. “We will see what is proposed.”

López Obrador’s effort comes a week after platforms including Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat, among others, suspended Trump’s accounts following the deadly riots at the US Capitol.

“How can a company act as if it was all powerful, omnipotent, as a sort of Spanish Inquisition on what is expressed?” López Obrador said.

On Tuesday, the Mexican president posted a Facebook message urging his followers to switch to Telegram. He’s referred to the platforms as “the blessed social media.”

“When he talks about the blessed social media, he is referring to the citizens who use it freely to express opinions freely and get information,” Ramírez Cuevas said. “The mass use of social media has allowed his message to get through, when before it was blocked by traditional news media.”

World leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel have spoken out against the actions taken against Trump.

Merkel called the move “problematic.”

Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, called for new regulations that would govern the use of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in the European Union, saying “the owners of corporate giants should not decide which views are right and which are not.”

Source: New York Post

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