Brazilians on Social Media at Fore of Free-Speech Battle

Brazil is locked in a debate over freedom of expression, and at the center are its social-media users.

Brazil is the country where Google says it receives the most take-down requests from courts and governments in the world. Though Brazil's constitution protects free speech, the country's laws against anonymity and defamation have been increasingly used by celebrities, companies and government officials to censor their critics. Brazil lacks protections, common elsewhere, which free Internet service providers from responsibility over user-generated content. That tension, between free speech and legal protections, has consequences offline as well.