The government will call digital platforms for a meeting in the coming days to present the Big Techs regulatory bill before sending to Congress. The idea is to show the text to representatives in Brazil of Goal, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, Google and Tiktok.
The meeting, which may take place later this week, will be coordinated by members of the Ministry of Justice, Attorney General of the Union and Secretariat of Social Communication (Secom). Civil society organizations that accompany the theme will also be invited.
The articulation of the text has been taking place on several fronts within the government. The Ministry of Justice and the AGU have been talking to the legal environment, while the Minister of Institutional Relations, Gleisi Hoffmann, dialogues with deputies and senators. Secom was ahead of the articulation with the platforms. The goal is that this meeting will take place almost simultaneously to send the initiative to Congress.
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In discussion in the government for more than six months, the text has been completed and should be sent to Congress next week. The Planalto Palace decided to wait for the Federal Supreme Court to judge, in June, Article 19 of the Internet Civil Marco. By eight votes to three, the Court has decided that the article is unconstitutional and that networks must be held responsible for illicit content published by users. After the Supreme’s decision, the government has a project in line with the Court’s understanding.
With the onslaught of President Donald Trump against the Brazilian government, using the regulation of networks by the Supreme Court as one of the justifications for surcharge in Brazilian products, and with repercussion of the video of the Felca influencer, which raised discussions about the early exposure of children and adolescents on social networks, Lula decided that the time is the time for the government to position itself on the subject.
First, however, the government will wait for the vote on the project that fights the so -called “adultization” of children and adolescents. The House of Representatives approved on Tuesday the urgent request for the bill. The measure accelerates the processing of the proposal and allows it to be analyzed directly in plenary, which should happen as early as on Wednesday. With the repercussion of Felca’s video, the mayor, Hugo Motta (Republicans-PB), began to publicly defend the approval of the text, which has already received green light from the Senate.
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Authored by Senator Alessandro Vieira (MDB-ES), the project has among its main objectives to ensure that digital platforms facilitate access to information about what children do online, preventing exposure to crimes such as pedophilia. The rapporteur of the proposal in the House is by Jadyel Alencar. In Planalto’s view, Alessandro Vieira’s text is complementary to the project that the government will present.
The proposal will predict that platforms remove, without a court order, publications that undermine democracy and promote other crimes, such as terrorism, murders and those who have children and adolescents as targets. It will be up to the networks to maintain an inspection so that their systems are able to protect children and adolescents, with compulsory prevention measures. If this is breached, there will be staggered punishments: warning, fine and, in repeated cases, suspension of 30 days of the provider, extendable for another 30.
The government, however, has made Congress to Congress in order to facilitate the processing and avoid criticism of the opposition, which presents itself against legislations that move in the dynamics of the big techs with the discourse of the “defense of freedom of expression”. All crimes against honor, such as injury, slander and defamation, will only be removed from publications on social networks by court order. The proposal also brings a retreat from the item that provided for “removal from notification” of “illicit contents that promote misinformation on public policies”, included in an earlier version.
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Another basis of the project to avoid controversy among parliamentarians is that the text does not create any new crime, but determines that companies need to act on what is already offered in offline life. In addition to the protection of children and adolescents, one of the great focuses will be the prevention of what has been called internally the “epidemic of scam and fraud” on the internet. In the government’s understanding, platforms have not done enough to avoid this type of crime. The project will also ban children’s access to up to 12 years to social networks.
