The bench in the Chamber of Deputies decided to annul the effects of the new rules for social networks (PT) last Wednesday (20).
In the piece, the party’s five deputies maintain that the government exceeded its constitutional power by issuing a decree that is not based on a law approved by the National Congress. “Regulatory power is strictly subordinate to the law and cannot be used to create unprecedented obligations, restrict rights, expand administrative powers or innovate autonomously in the legal order.”
The decrees signed by the president this week expand the list of obligations of social media platforms, requiring the removal of nudity content published without consent, for example, and restricting the creation of synthetic nudes, generated by AI.
The powers of the ANPD (National Data Protection Agency) also increase, which now monitors compliance with the standards established by the two decrees.
“Under the pretext of ‘protecting democracy’, the Decrees advance precisely against one of its most essential pillars: freedom of expression”, argue the Novo deputies in the justifications for the draft legislative decree. “In truly democratic regimes, it is not up to the State to define in advance which opinions can circulate, nor to impose indirect censorship mechanisms through regulatory intimidation of digital platforms.”
The decree determines that social media platforms must, when notified, take down content generated by third parties that constitutes a crime according to national legislation, with the exception of crimes against honor.
The article states, however, that to ensure freedom of expression, companies must consider the context of the publications, freedom of religion and belief and the possible informative, educational or critical purpose, satire and parody of the content.
“The internet application provider may keep the content available when, after diligent and well-founded analysis, it concludes that there is reasonable doubt about the criminal nature of the content, considering the proportionality between the doubt and the seriousness of the crime, in which case it will communicate to the notifier the reasons for not making it unavailable”, the rule published by the federal government also states.
In the project sent to Congress, Novo also criticizes the expansion of ANPD’s powers. According to the party, the agency is governed only by the law that created it, in 2018, and by ECA Digital, approved last year. “In no [dos marcos legais] there is authorization for the body to exercise generic powers of supervision of online speech, broad regulation of social networks or investigation of violations of the Marco Civil da Internet”.
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