This thread is for those who do not speak Portuguese and would like to understand what is being discussed in the Brazilian Congress on disinformation and platform regulation.
The pandemic & the political crisis following it in Brazil sparked legislative efforts to address disinformation issues & platform regulation. Even though some of the discussions brought to the table are relevant, this effort may endanger online expression.
The first drafts of the law bill on “freedom, liability and transparency online” attempted to compel platforms to ban “inauthentic accounts”, “non-labeled” bots, disinformation botnets and other kinds of disinformation-related behavior and content.
In case platforms don't comply with it, they would be subjected to huge fines and even the suspension of their activities – what goes against the intermediary liability regime established by the Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet, centered around judicial decisions
The idea of removing platform immunity under certain conditions is somewhat similar to was demanded to the Federal Communications Commission by Trump in his May 28 executive order. whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…
In addition to it, the first drafts endangered encryption, by demanding platforms to act on contented shared in IM apps. It also had very open-ended definitions – including a “disinformation” one – which could lead to legal uncertainty and risk of excessive removals.
Besides all technical issues which could endanger users’ rights, the main flaw of the legislative effort was keeping relevant stakeholders, such as civil society, academia, and industry at bay – everything moved quickly and with very little space for discussion.
Early this week another version of the law bill, which was supposed to be voted yesterday at the Senate, included several categories of crimes for people disseminating disinformation – including people sharing fake news without malicious intent.
It also demanded platforms to request users’ documents for the creation of “identified profiles”, while “non-identified” profiles would suffer huge restrictions, and proposed the creation of reputation rankings, which would be attached to users’ profiles.
This reputation ranking would affect the visibility of content – platforms would be expected to develop tools for identified accounts to filter content shared by lower reputation accounts. User reports on content policy’s violations would affect the reputation of accounts.
Another issue: it demanded platforms to label problematic content when users report it, including the number of reports each piece of content received – what seems worrisome considering coordinated attacks on people could unfairly reduce visibility of certain issues & narratives.
These changes were not discussed with relevant stakeholders. After civil society and academic organizations highlighted the pressing issues and risks related to the draft, the voting was suspended.
