Sheinbaum wants a bill next week ordering platforms to pull violent posts

President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Friday that Mexico will bring forward a bill next week requiring social media platforms to remove content that incites violence. She told her morning press conference that a working group will draft a decree obliging platforms to take down messages or actions tending to violence, abuse or harassment at the moment they find them.

The announcement came the day after an attack at Secondary School No. 13 in Torreón, Coahuila. Two 18-year-olds, former students and twin brothers, were arrested. Reuters reported that the vice-principal was killed and four people were injured. AP, in a later dispatch, said a teacher was killed and eight people were wounded, and described machetes and firecrackers. The two accounts agree on the school, the city, the age of the arrested pair and the fact of a death. They differ on the injured count. Sheinbaum's bill does not depend on which count stands.

She framed the decree as a duty on the companies rather than a new criminal offence for users. Platforms, she said, have to assume their responsibility and stop the spread of violent messages. She added that it cannot be the case that child-abuse material appears on social networks and the networks do nothing. That second example widens the draft beyond the Torreón attack. A takedown rule written for incitement and a takedown rule written for child-abuse images are different instruments. The morning remarks ran them together. The text due next week will show whether they stay in one decree.

The calendar is short. Sheinbaum said the working group should have a decree ready no later than next week. A decree in the Mexican system can be issued by the executive and then face Congress, or it can be sent as a bill. Reuters described what she promised as a bill. AP described an obligation the government will impose. The distinction matters for platforms. A statute with a defined notice procedure gives a company a clock and a defence. An executive order that says take it down at the moment you find it leaves the finding, and the liability, inside the company.

Torreón is the second school attack Sheinbaum referred to this week. AP said the measures are meant to prevent a repeat of attacks at two secondary schools that left a teacher dead and eight wounded. The public record of Thursday's case is the one with names of a place and an office: Secondary School No. 13, the vice-principal, two former students of 18. What has not been published is a finding that either attacker posted a prior threat that a platform could have removed. Sheinbaum did not cite such a post on Friday. The bill is a response to the attack, not a reconstruction of its online trail.

Mexico already asks platforms to handle some content under existing rules on advertising and on data. A duty to remove incitement on discovery is a step further, because it assumes the company is scanning, not only answering complaints. The large platforms publish transparency reports that count removals for violent threats. A Mexican decree would add a local penalty or a local order to that machinery. Sheinbaum did not name a fine, a regulator or an appeal. Those blanks are what the working group has a week to fill.

The families in Torreón have a dead vice-principal and an injured list that the wire services have not yet reconciled. The decree, if it arrives next week, will not change that list. It will tell the platforms what Mexico expects them to delete, and how fast, the next time a violent message is on their systems. Until the text is published, the operative words are the ones she used on Friday morning: take it down at the moment it is found.