Bolsonaro accuses Brazil’s electoral court of “cowardice” for possibly shutting down Telegram

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On Thursday, January 27, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro accused the country’s highest electoral authority of “cowardice” for considering the possibility of banning the messaging app Telegram, the leading social media channel he uses to communicate with his followers.

Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) is considering banning Telegram during the run-up to the October elections because it has not responded to requests for collaboration to combat the “spread of disinformation.”

“It’s cowardice what they are trying to do,” Bolsonaro told supporters when asked about the possible banning of Telegram. “We are dealing with that,” he added, without elaborating.

Social media platforms were vital to Bolsonaro’s election in 2018, and the President still actively uses Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook, where he does a weekly live stream for supporters.

But he and his children have increasingly turned to Telegram because the app, which was born in Russia and is now based in Dubai, does not limit the size of groups or message recipients (mass messaging) and does not censor any content as most other social media do.

Telegram is a thorn in the eye of most global authorities because it does not censor any content and guarantees its users total freedom of expression.

The TSE claims there is no way to control the spread of “fake news and hate messages” in Telegram, unlike other networks cooperating with Brazilian authorities.

But the truth is, much of what is considered “preventive measures to combat fake news or disinformation” is nothing other than blatant censorship against any content that questions or criticizes the official narrative.

Although Telegram is the second most popular messaging service in Brazil, it has no representative office in the South American country.

Since mid-December, the head of the TSE’s electoral tribunal, Luis Roberto Barroso, has been trying to meet with Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov to discuss ways to censor content shared on the app but has received no response.

The TSE has partnered with almost all major social media platforms to curb what it calls “fake news and the spread of conspiracy theories” about the legitimacy of the Brazilian electoral system, Barroso said last week in a statement.

In other words, the TSE is trying everything it can to impose its official narrative by limiting and controlling the information available to the public and removing any instrument that does not comply with their demands.