President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced today in his morning press conference that he will launch a national discussion in Mexico over what steps must be taken to prevent big private social media corporations like Twitter, Facebook and the others, from taking away people’s right to freedom of information, and from collecting data on everything people do. Other nations will do the same, he forecast, as he urged everyone, from governments to human rights organizations, to speak out and take action.
We must “guarantee the right to information,” he stated, quite emphatically. “It cannot be allowed, I repeat, that a private company establish itself as the world censorship institution, like the Holy Inquisition of our day, over social media. That cannot be accepted; it cannot be permitted, because this goes against freedom….
“I don’t know if you have observed that, since [Twitter and Facebook] took those decisions, the Statue of Liberty in New York is turning red with anger, because it does not want to be turned into an empty symbol…. Freedom is even the first amendment of the United States Constitution.”
We must also discuss the invasion of our privacy by these private corporations, AMLO stated.
