Governments are becoming ‘mods.’ Here’s what they’re in for

Elon Musk’s ongoing war against the Brazilian judiciary is more than just another high-profile feud between arguably the world’s most prolific right-wing troll (who also happens to be one of its richest men) and the liberal governments that vex him. By going after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes after he ordered numerous right-wing accounts removed from X in that country, Musk has turned a debate over Brazilian censorship into a global conservative cause celebre. He’s also, perhaps unintentionally, giving a voice to one of the great unspoken transformations in the global politics of tech. World governments have taken their first tenuous steps into a new, fraught role: “the mods.” That is, the moderators: The people responsible on forums and social media platforms for policing speech online, banning users, removing posts and generally reducing conflict in digital arenas. This puts governments squarely into a decades-old online power struggle that has been brewing since before the “internet” per se existed—and the shape and persistence of that fight should give them pause about what exactly they’re getting into here.