The Lula (PT) government recommended to the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) that it adopt a clause to avoid video cuts in the 2024 elections and that the court prohibit chatbots from advising users to vote for certain candidates
The PT administration also asks that the court not limit the blocking of social media profiles to fake accounts or robots during the election. The measures are part of the suggestions sent by the government to the resolution that will regulate internet use and this year’s election.
The memos with suggestions, obtained by Sheetwere sent by Secom (Secretariat of Social Communication of the Presidency), the AGU (Attorney General of the Union), CGU (Comptroller General of the Union) and the Ministry of Justice. They will be released by the court until March 5th, when the court announces the new resolution, whether or not it accepts the recommendations.
Negative propaganda
The government also requests the exclusion of a provision included in the draft resolution by the rapporteur, minister Kassio Nunes Marques. The sole paragraph of article 3-B determines that criticism of the public administration, carried out by a natural person, does not characterize negative early electoral propaganda, even if there is a contract for promotion.
Under current law, only parties and candidates can pay for promotion, only positive advertising, and expenses must be declared to .
In the view of Secom and the Ministry of Justice, the section opens doors to circumvent electoral financing laws, as it can create . The parallel would be the network of influencers hired by Banco Master to promote criticism of the Central Bank.
This would put an end to electoral equality, as it would allow negative propaganda to be promoted against the government and, indirectly, against President Lula, but the practice would remain prohibited if it was directed at rival candidates.
The court banned the promotion of publications that criticize the performance of governments in the pre-election campaign.
Cortes
The Lula government requests that remuneration for contests, sweepstakes and prizes of a political-electoral nature be added to the list of prohibited electoral propaganda.
The objective would be to prevent the holding of cutting championships, such as those promoted by Marçal in 2024. With the financial incentive of the championship prizes, users flooded social networks with videos of the candidate for Mayor of São Paulo. But this was not classified as electoral propaganda nor did it have to be declared as an expense to the Electoral Court.
Profile removal
The Lula government also requests that the paragraph establishing that the removal of profiles should only be applied when it is a proven fake user, automated profile or robot be removed from the resolution.
The excerpt is seen as an anti-Alexandre de Moraes vaccine, since the Supreme Court minister, at the time as president of the TSE, deleted a series of social media profiles during the 2022 election.
In the government’s reasoning, this measure would take away from electoral judges the power to block profiles of real people who repeatedly violate electoral laws. According to the justification of the PT administration, electoral crimes are often carried out by authentic profiles.
Anti-democratic content
Secom asks that the promotion of content with anti-democratic acts, threats against the Judiciary and hate speech be prohibited, in addition to the already prohibited information that is notoriously untrue and seriously out of context.
Planalto sees that this expansion is necessary to more comprehensively protect the integrity of the electoral process. Critics, however, point to the difficulty of establishing what constitutes anti-democratic content and the risk of interpreting criticism of the Judiciary as “threats”.
AI and network responsibility
Within the scope of artificial intelligence, the government recommends that a measure be included determining that, when asking a chatbot for information about the electoral process, specific candidacies or list of candidates, the AI must direct the response to official information sources from the Electoral Court. This would, for example, prevent AI system providers from recommending applications or presenting partial lists.
Planalto wants both potential distributors of deepfakes, such as social networks, and creators to have joint responsibility for the damage caused to the electoral process. This would then include, in addition to networks like Instagram and TikTok, companies like OpenAI and X (Grok).
Information ‘blackout’
The CGU has already sent proposals to avoid what it sees as an “information blackout” during the electoral period. Following this vision, in order not to disrespect electoral legislation, the government ends up removing information from websites that is relevant to citizens and related to public services.
