Mexico Decree Expands State Reach Over Digital Platforms

On 14 October, Mexico’s government published a decree requiring digital platforms to restrict minors’ access to specified online material. The same day, a poll put President Claudia Sheinbaum’s approval at 69.1%, the lowest reading in the series since 1 July. Platforms must check users’ ages, remove prohibited content and accounts, and maintain a contact point for prosecutors.

The decree’s requirements

The decree, published in Mexico’s official gazette, covers content promoting harassment, sexual abuse, hate speech, violent extremism, pornography, suicide, self-harm or eating disorders. New accounts must also have the strictest privacy settings by default. Platforms have 30 calendar days from publication to document and report their actions; the deadline falls around 13 November.

For now, the decree sets no penalties. Sheinbaum said the rules are mandatory, and that a law with sanctions would follow if platforms failed to comply. On 13 October, she said platforms “totally agreed,” Infobae México reported. El Informador listed Meta, Microsoft, Apple, TikTok, Google, X and Huawei as willing to implement the decree, but said its report found no public statements from those companies. The decree itself names no company.

Sheinbaum connected the rules to school violence on 9 October, citing four recent cases. One involved a teacher’s death and showed signs of contact through social networks, according to the presidency’s bulletin. On 1 October, the Coahuila state prosecutor’s office said the deputy head of a secondary school in Torreón had been killed and two former pupils, both 18, detained.

What the poll measured

MetricsMx conducted its telephone poll on 14 October, surveying 800 adults through automated calls, a recorded voice and keypad responses. It weighted results by gender, age and state, and reported a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 points at 95% confidence. SDP Noticias published the findings on Monday 19 October. The outlet didn’t publish a response rate or the exact question wording.

The poll found 57.7% approved of Sheinbaum a lot and 11.4% approved somewhat. Another 19.6% disapproved, 7.9% were neutral and 3.4% didn’t know. Approval stood at 69.4% on 7 October, 70.4% on 30 September, 70.9% on 1 July and 75.3% on 29 July. The 1.3-point fall from 30 September sat within the poll’s margin of error; the October result was 6.2 points below the 29 July reading.

On online child protection, 67.7% very much agreed and 11.2% somewhat agreed that the government should require platforms to protect minors from violent content and harassment. A further 15.7% disagreed. The poll also found 67.0% said Sheinbaum should attend the Ibero-American Summit in Madrid on 4 and 5 November, while 12.2% said she shouldn’t.

Limits and comparisons

The report said no one knew who commissioned and paid for the MetricsMx series. Its results appeared in SDP Noticias reports, not on metricsmx.com, which redirects to the consultancy Metrics.

On 5 August, the same pollster found 71.2% named parents or guardians as chiefly responsible for protecting minors on social networks; 9.2% named platform owners and 3.1% the government. The October question differed, so the results weren’t a before-and-after test.

Other polls produced different approval figures. El Financiero found 70% approval and 30% disapproval in a telephone poll of 800 adults conducted between 10 and 20 September. Mitofsky put Sheinbaum at 72% for September, as reported by Político MX. The firms asked different questions at different times. El Financiero also found 60% viewed the government’s handling of USMCA negotiations favourably, compared with 49% for the economy and 27% for security.