Ministers and advisors from the (Federal Supreme Court) are cautiously observing the move towards the X (former) model. At the same time, members of the court minimize the statement by the company’s CEO, , that .
In a video published on Instagram this Tuesday (7), the founder of Meta announced what was created in 2016 to contain the spread of misinformation on its applications. In the same speech, he attacked the role of the Judiciary on the continent.
“Countries in Latin America have secret courts that can order companies to remove content silently,” Zuckerberg said.
According to the assessment of court members and people close to them heard by the Sheetthe change in the Target only affects the United States. However, the mention of Latin American courts demonstrates that the new policy may soon be applied in the region.
At least four judges say that it is necessary to reflect more on the issue and Zuckerberg’s new steps before drawing conclusions and reacting. It would, therefore, be too early to understand the extent of the impact of changing the Meta both on the Supreme Court’s judgment regarding the regulation of platforms and on the company’s own relationship with the court and Brazil.
Furthermore, they understand that the changes may not have reached Brazil at this time because the country has already demonstrated that it has a different stance, in reference to the decision that was unanimously confirmed by the First Panel, as determined by at the end of last August. The platform was offline in the country for 38 days at the time.
Last November, the Supreme Court began analyzing the two appeals that deal with content published by third parties, in a judgment on the Marco Civil da Internet. Three votes were cast: from the rapporteurs and the president. André Mendonça requested a review and suspended the analysis of the case.
Meta criticized the proposals made by the ministers and defended the need to reach a “balanced solution” with “clear guidelines”.
“No major democracy in the world has ever attempted to implement a liability regime for digital platforms similar to what has been suggested so far in the STF trial,” said the text at the time.
Barroso voted for the current rule to be declared only. With that, the president of the STF opened the divergence.
Toffoli said that the current model grants immunity to social networks and voted for the current model to be completely unconstitutional, as did Fux.
In the plenary sessions dedicated to , the minister, who had conflicts with Telegram and X, even praised the stance of WhatsApp, Meta, during the last presidential elections.
“In the 2022 elections, WhatsApp, to be fair, was extremely collaborative with the Electoral Court. It reduced the number of group participants. When it realized that hate speech was being disseminated towards the participants, it blocked that group. Until, After some initial turmoil, Telegram did this too,” he said.
The Attorney General of the Union, Jorge Messias, believes that the change underway at Meta does not change the framework for the Marco Civil trial at the Supreme Court. This is because there is already a tendency in the court to establish a more rigid model of accountability for platforms than the current one. Still, for him, the declaration puts more pressure on the need for Brazil to create a new legal framework for regulating social networks.
He used the same expression used by Zuckerberg in reference to Latin America to talk about the company itself.
“Meta decided to focus on expanding its business model. Unfortunately, as the company’s algorithms are secret, this choice tends to intensify information disorder in a digital ecosystem that already faces significant challenges related to the dissemination of fake news and hate speech ” said Messiah.
Likewise, judges and the attorney general state that there is no point in talking about secret decisions. The court has televised trials and public decisions on the subject, unlike the USA.
