“Brazil against fake”: Lula da Silva launches a crusade

The fight against fake news has become one of the priorities of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government.

On March 26, the first of three campaign phases was launched to fight fake news at all costs, but only those that concern the government and its services.

For the sum of US$4 million, a platform entitled “Brasil Contra Fake” (Brazil Against Fake) and a bombastic media campaign, both conceived by the Secretariat of Social Communications of the Presidency of the Republic (Secom), will explain to Brazilians what is fake, at least from the government’s point of view.

This clarification is important because the initiative has generated much controversy, especially after Lula made serious remarks against former judge Sergio Moro.

According to Lula, Moro fabricated news about a kidnapping plot by the First Capital Command (PCC), the country’s main criminal group, to secure the release of its leader Marcos Herbas Camacho, alias Marcola.

Among the initiative’s opponents is Moro, who accuses Lula of spreading “serious disinformation,” questioning the validity of the government’s new anti-fake news platform.

“It’s a big risk to give the executive branch a power of control that could lead to a kind of censorship,” Moro said.

“Giving a kind of blank mandate is a very big risk.”

“This project needs to be discussed and needs many improvements.”

It was Lula who defended the project on the internet.

On his Twitter feed, the president wrote:

“Brazil has suffered a lot in recent years with the lies in social networks.”

“Fake news goes hand in hand with hate and can have irreversible societal consequences.

“It is necessary to strengthen a network of truth.”

However, during his three months in office, Lula has repeatedly struck sharp tones against the head of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, accusing him of stupidity for keeping the Selic rate at 13.75%.

Not to mention Dilma Rousseff, whose impeachment in 2016 Lula repeatedly called a coup d’état, fueling the impression that the country’s democratic institutions were not behaving democratically.

This would also contradict Lula’s decisions in his new government, in which three of his ministers voted to impeach Rousseff.

The big problem is that Brazil has no legal definition of disinformation.

The bill PL 2630/2020, which is supposed to regulate this, is still being debated in Congress.

For Secom Minister Paulo Pimenta of the Workers’ Party (PT), the passage of the bill is of “fundamental importance.”

Meanwhile, the Brasil Contra Fake website, launched by Pimenta, has been heavily criticized by the main independent fact-checking agencies, which accuse the entire operation of politicizing an issue, namely disinformation, which is important in any democracy.

“We have a lot of reservations. We don’t know if this platform will adopt the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) criteria,” Alexandre Gimenez of UOL Confere told the Brazilian daily Folha.

An even harsher criticism comes from Agencia Lupa, which says the site is filled with government clarifications rather than fact-checking.

One example is a text about the increase in deforestation in the Amazon in February.

In the short article, the government acknowledges that the data is accurate. Still, it does not provide links to the sources and then, in justification, says that government environmental policies are medium- and long-term and not immediately effective.

“The fact-checking companies lack methodology in favor of informative confusion that seems to go in the opposite direction of stated intentions.” Tai Nalon of the Aos Fatos agency stated that the government is engaging in “propaganda.”

One wonders, therefore, whether it is not dangerous for Lula to embark on a path that could lead to censorship and propaganda, words that should be forbidden in any self-respecting democracy.

And that the path is treacherous is also shown by the hearing held last week before the Supreme Federal Court (STF), where the main companies that manage social networks, such as Twitter, Google, and Meta, discussed their regulation in Brazil and a possible amendment to Article 19 of the so-called internet civil framework, which is the only law currently available.

Under this provision, which aims to “guarantee freedom of expression and prevent censorship,” social networks are “liable for damages caused by content created by third parties if they fail to take action to remove the content in question after a specific court order.”

Lula’s new administration now wants social networks to be held legally responsible like publishers, without the ability of a court to force the removal of a comment.

There were some tense moments at the hearing.

With STF’s accusations of failing to crack down on illegal content and remove fake news or posts that violate the platforms’ policies, companies like Google and Meta defended their work.

Meta said it had invested billions of dollars and has always complied with hundreds of court orders from Brazilian courts, including about the events of January 8.

“During the first round of elections alone, Meta removed approximately 135,000 electoral advertisements,” the lawyers said during the hearing.

“Between August 2022 and January 2023, it removed more than 3 million Facebook and Instagram posts that incited violence and hate speech.”

To Google’s lawyers, “In Brazil alone, YouTube removed more than one million videos in 2022 that violated the company’s principles: against misinformation, violence, and hate speech.”

In addition, since the attack on New Zealand’s Christchurch mosque in 2019, the major social platforms, along with more than 50 governments and civil society organizations, have initiated the Christchurch Call, an international community action plan to remove terrorism and violent extremism from social media.

The Brazilian government never participated.

At last week’s hearing in Brasilia, the STF did not mention the specific case of Tik Tok, which now faces a ban by the United States because it has long been considered a stooge of the Chinese Communist Party.

However, according to the hearing, regulation of social platforms is a priority of the new government.

Justice Dias Toffoli pointed to the increasing depression and suicide among young people and cited the attacks in Brasilia on January 8 as problems caused by social media.

Alexandre de Moraes’ tones were even harsher.

Since March 14, 2019, the Justice has been the rapporteur of a much-criticized investigation into fake news, which examines the existence of “false news that could be considered slander, defamation, and insult against members of the STF and their families.”

For Moraes, the current regulation model is “absolutely ineffective, failed and destroyed reputation and dignity.”

Moraes was sharply criticized last year by The New York Times in a scathing article titled “To Defend Democracy, Brazil’s Supreme Court Goes Too Far?”

The text referred to a July 2022 search and asset freeze order requested by Moraes against a group of Brazilian business people who commented on the upcoming election campaign in a private Whatsapp chat with memes, posts, and the phrase “better a coup than the return of the Workers’ Party,” which was published by the local press.

Moraes also had five people arrested without trial for allegedly publishing posts on social media that he said attacked Brazilian institutions.

The most striking case, however, is that PTB former congressman Daniel Silveira, who was sentenced to nearly nine years in prison by the STF in April for sharply attacking Moraes in a live stream on the internet.

Silveira was pardoned by Bolsonaro the day after his conviction.

A week ago, Moraes authorized an investigation against Silveira for the events of January 8.

However, Brazil’s approach to controlling disinformation is at odds with the rest of the world.

Although the debate is already underway at the international level and was even discussed at the last G20 meeting in November, much depends on national legislation.

For example, the First Amendment, which guarantees free speech, has always dominated the debate in the United States.

In Europe, on the other hand, the proposed Digital Services Act requires platforms to disclose information that is currently secret, such as how algorithms work to moderate and spread false content.

Unlike Brazil, however, Europe is focused on regulating processes, not content.