Mexico gives social networks one month to remove violent content
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has ordered major technology companies to remove content that incites violence from their platforms within 30 days, threatening sanctions if they fail to comply. The directive targets Meta, TikTok, X, Apple and Microsoft in response to recent deadly attacks at schools across the country.
The decree comes after two separate incidents in the past two weeks claimed two lives and injured several others. On Oct 1, 18-year-old twin brothers who were former students at Secondary School No. 13 in Torreón, Coahuila state, attacked staff and pupils with machetes and bladed weapons, killing a female assistant principal and wounding three others. Authorities indicated the brothers had been exposed to violent content and extremist ideology online.
A second attack occurred on Oct 13 when a teacher was shot dead at a school in Oaxaca state.
Sheinbaum, who became Mexico's first female president on Oct 1, 2024, making history as both the first woman and first Jewish person elected to the position, drew a direct connection between the violence and online content. The president, who holds a doctorate in energy engineering and was part of the UN climate panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, is known for bringing a data-driven, scientific approach to policy-making.
The incidents have alarmed a nation long terrorized by brutal drug cartel violence but largely unfamiliar with attacks inside educational institutions. According to a review by newspaper Reforma, there have been 25 attacks inside Mexican schools over 12 years, leaving 16 people dead. The Oct 1 Torreón attack was the fourth such incident in 2026, marking an unusual spike in school violence for a country where such attacks remain rare despite high levels of organized crime.
Platform requirements and potential sanctions
Under the new decree, social networks must prevent minors from accessing images and videos that lead to or encourage violence in school settings, including abuse, suicide, self-harm, cyberbullying and hate speech. The platforms are also required to alert authorities when they identify content that endangers life.
Sheinbaum warned that if tech companies do not adjust their algorithms to remove all violent content linked to accounts of children and adolescents, she would pursue legislation to impose sanctions. However, in a discussion with TikTok and Instagram users, the president denied the rules amounted to censorship, stating:
We're not banning social media.
Legal and historical context
The decree represents the latest in a series of efforts to regulate social media in Mexico. In 2021, Senator Ricardo Monreal proposed similar legislation that would have given Mexico's telecommunications regulator power to overrule content moderation decisions and impose fines up to $4.4 million, though the proposal did not pass. More recently, in November 2023, Mexico's Chamber of Deputies approved reforms to the Federal Law to Prevent and Eliminate Discrimination to address hate speech and discrimination on social media platforms.
The current legal framework includes Mexico's 2014 Federal Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law, which prohibits Internet Service Providers from proactively obstructing, interfering, inspecting or filtering content. Constitutional reforms in 2013 established internet access as a human right and guaranteed net neutrality, creating a complex legal landscape for content regulation efforts.
The tech companies now have until mid-November to implement measures complying with the presidential decree or potentially face unspecified sanctions from the Mexican government.
