Can a lawsuit hold fossil fuel companies responsible for climate-change and its impact? That’s the question a Washington State-based woman is hoping to answer. Misti Leon is suing several big oil companies — including ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and others — over the 2021 heat-related death of her mother Juliana, who died during a record-breaking heat dome over the Pacific Northwest.

For years, individuals and institutions have attempted to protect human lives from climate change using litigation. In 2015, a public interest law firm called Our Children’s Trust, representing nearly two dozen young people sued the federal government for failing to protect them against the impending impacts of fossil fuel emissions. Courts dragged their feet for more than a decade only for the case to reach a dead end at the United States Supreme Court in 2025.

Leon’s civil suit is significant, not just because a Washington judge unexpectedly cleared the case for discovery and trial, but because Leon can directly link her mother’s death to climate change. Scientists concluded that the 2021 heat dome was, in the words of one research paper, “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.” It’s about a crime that already occurred instead of hypothetical harm.

“Ms. Leon’s case is unique in that it is the first of its kind to seek to hold big oil companies accountable for their role in an individual’s death in a climate-related disaster,” Mike Meno, communications director at the Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit advocacy group that supports community efforts to hold Big Oil accountable for climate change, explained in an interview.

Juliana Leon was one of an estimated 1,200 people across the Pacific Northwest whose deaths were linked to the heat dome. “She was found unresponsive in her car,” said Meno. “The medical examiner determined that her death was caused by hyperthermia,” a condition that is the opposite of the more well-known cold-related condition of hypothermia.

Hyperthermia-related deaths have sharply risen over the past decade, a predictable outcome of fossil fuel emissions. Oil companies such as Exxon have long been aware of the devastating impacts their product would have on the climate. “Major oil and gas companies decades ago knew, their own scientists told them internally, that if we kept burning fossil fuels, it would lead to, in the words of one internal Exxon document, potentially catastrophic events, just like the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome,” said Meno.

Juliana Leon was one of an estimated 1,200 people across the Pacific Northwest whose deaths were linked to the heat dome.

Big Oil’s failure to act on this information has drawn comparisons to Big Tobacco. Companies like Philip Morris knew about the impacts of cigarette smoking on human health and kept it secret for years. Since that information was made public, individuals suffering from their addictive products have sued repeatedly and won.

A major lawsuit brought by state attorneys general culminated in 1998 in what became known as the Master Settlement Agreement, where dozens of tobacco companies settled to the tune of billions of dollars for public health. Notably, the federal government also sued tobacco companies for violations of racketeering laws over their deception.

Yet while individuals and states are taking action in the case of oil companies, the federal government clearly has no interest in holding Big Oil accountable for climate change. Instead, President Donald Trump says he wants the Justice Department to investigate fossil fuel companies for raising oil prices in the wake of the Iran war. This appears to be a classic case of deflection, given that a majority of voters blame Trump for price increases at the pump. He isn’t interested in holding companies accountable for climate change; he’s upset they made it harder for people to consume oil. Moreover, his administration is suing states for trying to enforce environmental regulations aimed at oil companies.

In addition to keeping their own research secret, fossil fuel companies spent years sowing doubt over the cause-and-effect relationship between greenhouse gases and a warming climate. “What that decades-long deception campaign did is it stole a generation’s worth of time when action could’ve been taken, and we could’ve averted the worst of some of these climate disasters,” said Meno.

This year, more extreme weather records are expected to be broken as climate change intensifies. The first half of 2026 was the third-warmest half-year on record. An El Niño phenomenon developing this year is expected to be one of the strongest in modern history.

Whether or not the Trump administration admits that the climate is changing, Americans know it is. “Anyone of a certain age who can look back over enough time just knows, as a matter of common sense, that the climate we are all living in today is not what we had a few years ago,” said Meno.

The industry knows it too — and, according to Meno, oil companies “are in absolute panic mode, fighting tooth and nail to escape accountability.” Leon’s lawsuit is hardly the only one they fear. Numerous states, counties, cities, and tribal governments are suing Big Oil, and making headway.

Meno explained that companies have “been pleading with the U.S. Supreme Court to take up one of these cases for years.” The Supreme Court finally agreed to review a case in Colorado where that state’s supreme court in May 2025 ruled the City of Boulder and Boulder County could move forward with discovery and trial in their suit against ExxonMobil and Suncor.

Not content with leaving it to the U.S. Supreme Court, Big Oil has been lobbying Congress to grant the industry immunity over its role in climate change — and conservative lawmakers have complied. In April, Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz introduced the “Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026.”

If Congress were to pass the bill, according to Meno, it “would be a truly unprecedented legal shield that would strip the public of their right to hold these corporations accountable for the harm they’ve caused.” Meno’s Center for Climate Integrity is urging members of the public to demand their elected representatives vote against Hageman and Cruz’s bill.

Big Oil says it deserves immunity because it shouldn’t be penalized for giving the public what it wants. In a joint statement, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers President and CEO Chet Thompson and American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers said: “These efforts to retroactively penalize companies for lawfully meeting consumer demand are misguided and counterproductive.”

What they didn’t say is that they have worked for years to prevent fair competition from renewables. It’s why the state of Michigan launched an antitrust lawsuit against ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and others because they acted “as a cartel … to forestall meaningful competition from renewable energy in order to maintain their dominance.”

Fossil fuel companies have long known their products are deadly, kept it secret, unfairly ensured their dominance, then argued that they ought not to be sued for delivering a product the public wants. Now, as climate-related deaths stack up, the industry claims it isn’t responsible. Misti Leon, whose mother might be alive today if governments and courts had reined in Big Oil, told The New York Times: “I never would have in a million years guessed that a heat dome and climate change would be what killed my mother and what took her from me. There’s no way to comprehend that and to kind of even rationalize it.”

This week, Mark Leonard is joined by Adriana Abdenur, a Brazilian policy expert and co-president of the Global Fund for a New Economy, and Jorge Castañeda, former foreign minister of Mexico and professor at Sciences Po, to explore debates about development and ideas of strategic autonomy across Latin America.

Jorge explains why China’s role is varied across the region, arguing that Mexico and much of Central America remain deeply constrained by their economic ties to the US. Adriana discusses Brazil’s long tradition of strategic autonomy, describing how policymakers engage with China as both an economic partner and a source of ideas on development, technology and global governance.

Together, Mark, Adriana and Jorge explore how intensifying US-China competition is reshaping the region’s choices. Can Latin American countries balance relations with both powers? Is China a model, a market or simply another partner in a multipolar world? And what does strategic autonomy look like in an increasingly coercive geopolitical environment?

This podcast episode was recorded on July 31st 2026.

Bookshelf
Latin American Foreign Policies in the New World Order: The Active Non-Alignment Option, by Carlos Ominami, Jorge Heine and Carlos Fortín
Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibal Manifesto), by Oswald de Andrade

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Se procura aquele Algarve que ainda se sente virgem e selvagem, a Praia de Vale dos Homens, perto do Rogil, no concelho de Aljezur, é o seu destino.

Mas prepare-se: o acesso não se faz por um caminho qualquer. É através de uma imponente escadaria de madeira com quase 300 degraus que se desce até este areal dourado.

Como diz o ditado, “para baixo todos os santos ajudam”, mas é na subida que o corpo sente o esforço.

Felizmente, a autarquia pensou nisso e instalou bancos estratégicos onde pode descansar enquanto enche os pulmões com o perfume da maresia e das estevas.

Ao chegar lá abaixo, a recompensa é absoluta.

Rodeada por enormes arribas de xisto que parecem muralhas naturais, esta praia no concelho de Aljezur é o refúgio perfeito para quem foge das multidões.

Quando a maré vaza, o cenário transforma-se e surgem pequenas piscinas entre as rochas, ideais para explorar com calma.

É um daqueles recantos onde o tempo parece parar e onde a natureza manda em tudo.

Embora o acesso exija algum preparo físico, a vista panorâmica durante o percurso e o sossego que encontra no areal fazem de Vale dos Homens uma experiência obrigatória.

É o Algarve no seu estado mais puro: exigente, deslumbrante e profundamente revigorante.

The war in Iran began five months ago. Headline news about the conflict tends to focus on when and how it might end. In the meantime, the impacts of the conflict are felt worldwide—by drivers, farmers, business owners, and families. The Associated Press shares the stories of seven people suffering because of the war. Among them is Edgar Funelas, a jeepney driver in the Philippines who lives with his ten-year-old daughter:

He uses laundry soap—harsher, but cheaper—to wash his body and his clothes in the same motion, stretching what little money he has. Even before the war in Iran, he was living on the margins. A fire took their home and their belongings, forcing them to move into the brightly colored minibus he drove.

He’d hoped to be able to rent a room by now. Then diesel prices surged, and he could no longer afford the fuel to run his jeepney.

He hasn’t earned a single peso in days. There will be no breakfast. Hunger gnaws, but it’s the small rituals of privacy that he misses most: to be able to wash out of sight, to sleep behind walls, to keep his desperation from being laid bare.

Mark Seal is very fond of the phrase “Who Ya Gonna Call? Scam Busters!”—he uses it three times in this piece. Yet it’s still refreshing, despite being from last year, to read a story that focuses on the painstaking effort to trace scammers rather than lingering on the victim’s humiliation (looking at you, Netflix). Seal does explain how a French woman named Anne fell for “Brad Pitt” online and subsequently lost her fortune to the scammers, but her supposed savior, cyber‑detective Marwan Ouarab—sporting a cat‑in‑a‑trench‑coat T‑shirt—gets most of the page time here. Ouarab apparently found the scammers within 48 hours, but no charges have been made, and Anne is still fighting to recover any of her money. You can call the scam busters, but you’re still in for a long wait.

“All during the scam, Anne was suspecting something,” he says over a vanilla flan, a sweet treat for a very determined guy. “But every time, the crooks had fine words, the right words. They were really poetic. They knew what words were right for her. They really understood Anne’s psychological profile.”

It was a classic “sentimental scam,” says Ouarab—a carefully produced, all-encompassing “theatrical event” that uses love as the bait to hook the target and then envelops them completely in the con. (In this case, the divorced interior designer, Anne, whose last name has not been made public, and a convincing facsimile of Brad Pitt, achieved via A.I., deepfake technology, and, according to Ouarab, “ridiculous photoshop tools to create pictures of the fake Brad in his hospital bed.”)

Por Juan Manuel de Prada El capitalismo –escribió Hilaire Belloc– constituye una calamidad no porque defienda el derecho legal a la propiedad, sino porque representa, por su propia naturaleza, el…

As wildfires raged across Canada on Thursday, sending dangerous smoke across the border into major US cities, climate advocates called for accountability for the fossil fuel industry, which knew for decades that its products were largely responsible for the climate crisis, yet chose to push climate denial instead.

While fire is a natural part of the lifecycle of Canada’s boreal forests, the heating of the atmosphere due to the burning of oil, gas, and coal has made fires more frequent and extreme.

“We need Nuremberg trials for Big Oil,” the youth-led Sunrise Movement wrote on social media in response to the fires.

We need Nuremberg trials for Big Oil. https://t.co/nHhbDXB06X

— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) July 16, 2026

Climate Defiance agreed, posting, “Nuremberg-style trials are in order for the fossil fuel executives who knew what they were doing to our children’s futures and did anyway.”

There were 884 fires burning in Canada on Thursday, with 124 out of control, according to the country’s national wildland fire summary. Over 100 fires were raging in Ontario alone, where they have forced the evacuation of at least 15 rural communities; destroyed homes in the Indigenous community of Collins First Nation, or Namaygoosisagagun; and polluted the skies over parts of the upper Midwest and Northeastern US.

As of Thursday evening Eastern time, the four cities with the worst air quality in the world were Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Toronto, according to IQAir.

People have shared dramatic footage of the fires on social media. One video shows a train moving through a blaze near Armstrong, Ontario. Thankfully, all crew members were evacuated safely, The Guardian reported.

This is near Armstrong, Ontario.

When will the Canadian National Railway Company make a statement about this incident? pic.twitter.com/6bKJYugeR0

— Sol Mamakwa (@solmamakwa) July 14, 2026

Indigenous photographer Nadya Kwandibens shared images of flames rising over a lake with the words, “”My family hometown, Collins Ontario, is GONE.“

View this post on Instagram

Residents of the community fled the blaze in boats before the flames damaged and destroyed several homes and other structures, according to CBC News.

“Collins has burned to the ground. This is a tragedy and we are grateful that everyone got out safely,” Lise Vaugeois, the provincial representative for the region, said, as The Guardian reported. “Fires are part of a natural cycle, but the extreme temperatures we are experiencing across the county and the growing severity of weather events are indicators of climate change.”

Laura Chasmer, a professor of geography and the environment at the University of Western Ontario, noted that fires in Canada like the ones raging across Ontario have increased since 2015.

“This is associated with some of the extreme climate warming that we’ve been seeing, and the atmospheric drying of the surface,” she told BBC News.

Brandi Morin, a Cree-Iroquois-French journalist from Treaty 6 territory in Alberta, noted in her Substack that Canada was warming at twice the global average. Despite this, the Canadian government has made progress on three major fossil fuel pipelines this July.

“Every barrel these new pipelines are built to move adds to the exact warming that’s turning our boreal forests into tinder,” Morin wrote.

On the other side of the border, Michigan regulators late Wednesday approved important permits from the controversial Enbridge Line 5 pipeline.

Political leaders and climate advocates responded to the fires and smoke with calls to abandon fossil fuel projects, transition to renewable energy, and hold oil and gas companies accountable for the harms they have caused.

“We have the technology and the policy roadmap to replace fossil fuels with green energy extremely rapidly. The only thing stopping us is a handful of billionaires getting rich while our world burns,” the Sunrise Movement said.

We have the technology and the policy roadmap to replace fossil fuels with green energy extremely rapidly.

The only thing stopping us is a handful of billionaires getting rich while our world burns. https://t.co/6oqGxoC8m3

— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) July 16, 2026

As smoke drifted over Boston on Wednesday, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wrote on social media: “Look outside in Massachusetts right now. The climate crisis is here. Wildfire smoke is suffocating our communities and our children are breathing dirty air. We need a Green New Deal.”

Look outside in Massachusetts right now. The climate crisis is here. Wildfire smoke is suffocating our communities and our children are breathing dirty air. We need a Green New Deal. https://t.co/pXo5XOOt0q

— Ed Markey (@EdMarkey) July 15, 2026

“Climate change isn’t a tragedy, it’s a crime. The fossil fuel industry are arsonists at a global scale. It’s their pollution that’s fueling these horrific wildfires,” Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, told Common Dreams. “Instead of approving new pipelines, the Canadian government should be holding the industry accountable and using their record profits to help communities on the frontlines of this crisis.”

In this edition: in a pickle; gut feeling; king of pain; life (or something like it); for those about to rock.

I’d be lying if I said I understand everything Michael Levin believes. But I’m also not alone; sometimes his own colleagues can’t even follow his arguments. Elizabeth Weil’s profile of the renegade (and genius) biologist bridges that gap, sketching out Levin’s research and claims in a way that’s just grokkable enough to blow your mind. I mean this as a true compliment: When’s the last time we had a genuine mad scientist on our hands?

Critics accuse Levin of all kinds of teleological crimes — making unfalsifiable claims, using words in ways that render those words meaningless. Levin is unfazed. In his talks, he tries to disarm his detractors by preempting the accusation that he’s nuts: “I have some unusual things to say and then I have some crazy things to say”; “So this is a kind of crazy claim I’m making.” His true retort is his wet lab. There, at the bench, he’s working to prove his metaphysics by running old-school (in a way) biological experiments. He studies flatworms with two heads. Frogs with eyes on their stomachs. Little round creatures called xenobots, synthesized from frog skin cells. They swim like tiny Pac-Men. They do not exist in nature.

“The only thing that ever settles arguments is technology,” Levin tells me, a line he borrowed from biophysicist Chris Fields. “People have been saying for thousands of years what they think” about minds, consciousness, souls, energy fields. “What I can contribute is ways to test some of those things.”

The EU’s foreign ministers will meet on July 13th to discuss reducing trade with Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. The move comes long after the 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that reminded countries of the obligation to “take steps to prevent trade or investment relations” that help sustain the illegal settlements.

Trade with the EU is a critical contribution to the economic viability of these settlements. Although small when compared with overall trade with Israel, the bloc is the largest export market for the type of agriculture products typically produced in the settlements. The EU accounts for 63% of Israeli exports of fruits and vegetables and it is reasonable to assume that a similar share would apply to exports from the settlements.

The EU condemns Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and has refused to apply its association agreement with Israel to trade with the settlements. But this policy is not enough. Currently the bloc applies a so-called “differentiation policy” under which products from the settlements are identified through a postal code and should pay the full tariff when entering the EU. However, this policy has not done much to limit trade with the settlements partly because the full tariffs are often low and enforcement is weak. But even if enforcement was reinforced, trade with the settlements would continue to thrive since Israel compensates exporters of settlement products for their EU tariff payments. The EU’s current policy is therefore insufficient to comply with the ICJ.

This move would not be a sanction on Israel but rather a measure to ensure the consistency of EU trade policy with international law

Several member states are in the advanced stages of adopting the legislation to ban trade with settlements, and some already have. Most of these also include bans on services. National bans are, however, of limited effectiveness because of the free circulation of goods within the EU. Instead, the EU needs to rapidly adopt a bloc-wide ban covering both goods and services. This move would not be a sanction on Israel but rather a measure to ensure the consistency of EU trade policy with international law, as required by the EU’s foundational treaties. 

The EU has long adopted trade policy measures whose primary objective is not economic but rather designed to contribute to the protection of human rights. Examples include import restrictions on conflict minerals or goods used for torture or more recently the ban on products of forced labour. The EU has suspended trade preferences for human rights or labour rights abuses with countries such as Cambodia or Sri Lanka and has placed others such as Myanmar or Kyrgyzstan under close watch. These are not foreign policy measures but simply a strict implementation of the EU’s own trade policy; and the same is true for banning EU trade with Israel’s illegal settlements.

The ruling of the ICJ and Israel’s continuous expansion of its illegal settlements in Palestine calls for a unified EU response. There is a compelling case and precedent for the EU to use its trade policy powers. Immediately following the debate by foreign ministers, the European Commission should come forward with a proposal for a well-calibrated EU ban. It is high time the EU followed its own rules regarding trade with Israeli settlements. Anything less goes against the bloc’s own founding principles.

This commentary was co-authored by Sigmar Gabriel (former vice-chancellor of Germany), Arancha González Laya (former foreign minister of Spain and ECFR council member), Pascal Lamy (former EU trade commissioner and director-general of the World Trade Organization and ECFR council member), Enrico Letta (former prime minister of Italy and ECFR council member) and Cecilia Malmström (former EU trade commissioner and ECFR council member).

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On April 24, Brazil’s competition authority, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) announced it was opening an investigation to assess whether Google’s use of news content amounted to unfair competition practices against the Brazilian press. The announcement was welcomed by civil society organizations that have tried to push regulation to limit the reckless power of Big Tech for years. Ajor, Brazil’s Digital News Association, said that “a balanced relationship between digital platforms and journalism organizations is fundamental to the flourishing of journalism committed to the public interest. By ensuring a fair competitive environment, Cade directly advances that goal.”

In spirit and intent, CADE’s investigation into Google is similar to legislation in Australia that recognized that value is being extracted from news publishers without proportionate recompense. In Brazil, the case has been debated since 2019, but the adoption of AI Overviews helped alter the perspective of Brazilian judges. The overviews are artificially generated summaries that synthesize information from several sources and appear at the top of Google Search results. They “raise potentially more concerns,” ruled Judge Camila Cabral Pires Alves, “as they may more profoundly alter the economic function of the interface and expand the ability to retain attention within the platform's own environment.”

CADE will now investigate whether Google should be sanctioned for “alleged abusive exploitation of a dominant position, in light of the technological evolution of the conduct.” While there is perhaps a greater global appetite to regulate the impacts of AI – even the Trump administration has recently acknowledged that some oversight may be necessary – the CADE judges have been under considerable pressure from Big Tech executives to stop investigations into how their control of the market harms Brazilian businesses. 

For those of us who have reported on Big Tech, this aggressive lobbying is not surprising. Companies like Google, Meta, Twitter, TikTok, Amazon, and Microsoft have long attempted to interfere in any decision or legislation that can harm their interests in Latin America. According to a joint investigation by journalists across 13 countries, Big Tech lobbyists got away with convincing legislators in Colombia to weaken a rule meant to protect children’s mental health and prevent enforcement of privacy regulations in Ecuador. It took a team of over 40 journalists from 13 countries to uncover this while reporting on the ‘Big Tech Lobby’ in the continent and across the world.   

Threats by the U.S. government to retaliate against any country or international entity that sought to regulate Big Tech added another layer to an already complicated and uneven relationship with Silicon Valley. “Digital Taxes, Digital Services Legislation, and Digital Markets Regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology,” wrote Donald Trump on social media. “Show respect to America and our amazing Tech Companies or consider the consequences!” During the past year, Trump’s envoys have forced dozens of governments around the world to dilute or even shelve regulation in exchange for lifting tariffs. 

In “Big Tech’s Invisible Hands,” which I coordinated alongside Maria Teresa Ronderos, from CLIP (Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodistica), journalists mapped a total of 75 executives that were part of “public policy” or “government relations” teams in Brazil. Tech companies utilized a “revolving door” in which public sector employees could go straight into highly paid jobs leveraging their contacts and influence. Doors opened more easily. Invitations to hangouts and events were more likely to be accepted. 

Lobbying in Brazil is dialed up to eleven. The country has 163 million internet users, with over 150 million on WhatsApp, and over 120 million on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. With AI, Brazil is a similarly large, influential market. Portuguese is the sixth most widely-spoken language in the world, with 70% of speakers based in Brazil. Which means that, if an LLM has been trained in this language, it probably used content created by millions of Brazilians going about their business of making friends, debating politics and football online. It’s not just about journalists; we are all unpaid labor for Big Tech. 

In the words of Arthur Lira, the Speaker in Brazil’s Congress who filed a criminal complaint against Big Tech executives in 2023, companies adopted a variety of tactics “to shut down democratic debate and intimidate lawmakers” and defeat any attempt at using legislation to force accountability. Google, he said, used its search homepage, used by over 85% of Brazilians, to spread fear that proposed laws would “make the internet worse” or “make it harder to know what is true or false on the internet.” A report by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro found that Google invested in ads on its own platform so extensively that it tweaked the search, prominently featuring the word “censorship” in connection to the Brazilian bill. Google also hired Michael Temer, a lawyer and former President of Brazil, to influence lawmakers and Supreme Court Justices. Of course, it was not Google alone. Meta executives, for instance, even argued that proposed legislation in Brazil could lead to the Bible being censored.

But Brazilian lawmakers, the Supreme Court, and civil society have persisted. On August 28, 2025, the “Felca Law” was approved, after a video by the influencer Felca denounced the exploitation and exposure of children on social media. The law establishes that digital platforms must take measures like verifying user age, implementing parental controls, and preventing children's exposure to adult content, gambling, and pornography. They must create reporting channels and may face fines of up to 10% of their annual revenue in Brazil.

Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Donald Trump have had a testy relationship, in part because of Lula’s criticism of Big Tech. In February, at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Lula called for global governance of AI, warning: “When few control the algorithms, it is not innovation, but domination. Regulating the so-called Big Tech companies is linked to the imperative of safeguarding human rights in the digital sphere, promoting information integrity, and protecting our countries’ creative industries.”

By sticking to his guns, Lula may now be seeing the tide turn. He was in the White House on May 7, and though neither he nor Trump took questions, both appeared encouraged by the meeting. “Very dynamic,” was how Trump described Lula, while Lula said he was “very, very satisfied” with how the talks went. With a general election in Brazil approaching in October, Lula will be sensitive to how the White House, as it has done in other elections, and Big Tech might offer vocal support for right wing candidates.

But his willingness to stand up to Big Tech is popular with voters. A recent poll found that 78% of Brazilians want to see tech companies being held responsible for the content they publish. Another poll found that 55% of Brazilians defend regulating Big Tech, with 43.9% against it. 

And as scams, fake news, and AI slop dominate ever larger swathes of all our digital space, in Brazil, as in much of the rest of the world, the entire experience of the internet is becoming more unappealing. Big Tech, with the assistance of the U.S. government, may be succeeding in slowing down the pace of regulation and watering down the content of that regulation, but in the long run its victories might be pyrrhic. People have had enough and their governments might be forced to listen.

The post How Brazil is starting to rein in Big Tech appeared first on Coda Story.