The World Briefly

April 14, 2023

A Growing Disease

Brazil

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Brazil will implement new restrictions on social media in an effort to curb an “epidemic” of violent school attacks that have plagued the country since last week, Agence France-Presse reported.

On Wednesday, Justice Minister Flavio Dino said that platforms will be ordered to take steps to ban content and users who “are promoting or supporting attacks or violence against schools.”

Social media firms will also need to deliver data to police on all users sharing violent content and restrict offending users from creating new profiles.

Those that do not comply with the new rules could face fines of up to $2.4 million and possibly have their sites suspended.

The new restrictions come a week after a hatchet-wielding assailant killed four children between the ages of four and seven in a preschool in the southern Santa Catarina state. Two other attacks on schools – neither with fatalities – occurred on Monday and Tuesday.

Although school attacks were relatively rare in Brazil, the South American country has experienced an increase in the past year that has sparked national debate, according to NPR.

There have been nine attacks in the eight months since August. There were 13 in the previous 20 years.

Meanwhile, Brazilian authorities are increasing security and patrols in the coming days following a number of social media posts about a potential wave of violence on April 20.

The date marks the anniversary of a 1999 shooting in Colorado, US, where teenage shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people at Columbine High School, before killing themselves.

This story originally appeared in the April 14, 2023 newsletter, On the Precipice.