Big techs put more pressure on Brazil, says European deputy – 05/22/2023 – Politics

European Union deputy Anna Cavazzini, from the Green Party of Germany, was in Brazil last week and was amazed at the intensity of lobbying by internet platforms against the regulation discussed through the PL on Fake News.

“[Na UE], companies were not as aggressive as in Brazil; they put pressure on specific points [da legislação], a very powerful lobby, they are the biggest companies in the world and they spent a lot of money. But they have not lobbied in frontal opposition to the legislation. Here in Brazil it was crazy”, says Cavazzini.

The deputy actively participated in the negotiation of the new internet regulation in the European bloc —the Digital Services Act (DAS), as leader of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee. Deputy leader of the delegation of European Union relations with Brazil, she met in Brasília with deputy Orlando Silva (PC do B-SP), rapporteur of PL 2630, inspired, in part, by European regulation.

Cavazzini closely monitors the implementation of the legislation in the EU, which came into force in February this year.

The first step was to announce the internet platforms that would receive the designation of Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), those that have more than 45 million active monthly users, and that will be subject to the strictest rules. These are companies like Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter, but also Amazon, AliBaba, LinkedIn and Booking.com. By August, these platforms will have to comply with many of the obligations under the DSA.

The Brazilian Congress is discussing a bill inspired, in part, by the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). You were in Brasilia talking to legislators and authorities. What’s your impression? In the EU, we are one step ahead and we have experience that we can share. The law has not yet been fully implemented, so we don’t know exactly how it will work. But we went through a two-year process of negotiation and public debate, seeing what worked and what we could have done differently.

Talking with Congressman Orlando Silva, I could see that there are similar debates in Brazil, about freedom of expression, even if they are stronger in Brazil. And the platforms also lobbied to influence the law in the EU, but in Brazil it was much more intense, which I thought was insane.

What is your assessment of the implementation of the DSA in the EU so far? The committee I lead, the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, has appointed two working groups to oversee implementation of the DSA and the Digital Markets Act (DMA, legislation addressing market concentration and anti-competitive practices in the digital environment) .

We do not create monitoring groups for all the laws, but these two are so important that we parliamentarians decided to have a structure to follow how the European Commission is conducting the implementation. the commissioner [Thierry Breton] discussed with us the next steps, the challenges. They strengthened the structure in the commission, created units to monitor the application of the law. It is broad legislation, we are moving forward, but it is too early to make an assessment.

So far, what have been the main obstacles to implementation? It was reported that some platforms were not transparent regarding the number of users in an attempt to not be designated VLOPs. Yes, in the beginning there was this debate, about which companies would be designated VLOPs. There were concerns that Twitter would not be nominated because they reported very small numbers, but they ended up making the list. It was an obstacle for us, as we wanted the regulation to reach as many platforms as possible.

Was there resistance to the legislation by companies? Yes, there was a lot of lobbying from the platforms, but not like in Brazil. There, from the beginning, the platforms understood that there would be a law. They weren’t saying don’t pass the law or else such a thing will happen, they knew it was impossible to stop legislation from passing. They lobbied on specific points of the law, such as the ban on micro-targeted ads (using user data).

We Greens believe that targeted advertising is one of the main tools for spreading hate and misinformation. Even I got microtargeted ads from Facebook — a parent pushing a baby stroller, saying how the ban on microtargeting would cripple a small company that manufactures children’s goods because it could no longer use effective, targeted ads.

The pressure worked, because they weakened the law, which included a complete ban on targeting children, but for the rest of the ads, only the use of sensitive data was prohibited. [como orientação sexual e religião]. Companies also campaigned heavily against some of the algorithmic transparency requirements that were in the law, and we also had to give in, giving access only to researchers.

In Brazil, Google included a link on the home page of its search engine, stating that PL 2630 could “worse your internet”, and sent emails to content creators, saying that the law would reduce monetization. In the EU, companies used “shadow lobbying”, funding associations and entities that did not reveal their connection with the companies and pressed for changes in the law. Have platforms used other aggressive tactics in the EU? [Na UE], companies were not as aggressive as in Brazil; they put pressure on specific points [da legislação], a very powerful lobby, they are the biggest companies in the world and they spent a lot of money. But they have not lobbied in frontal opposition to the legislation. Here in Brazil it was crazy.

Why did you think it was necessary to increase platforms’ responsibility for content that violates laws? (The DSA requires platforms to make periodic systemic risk reports detailing how they combat hateful language, threats to democracy and other content that is harmful but not necessarily illegal; furthermore, upon notification of content that potentially violates the law, companies must quickly check and remove if necessary. They also make reports about these actions, which are analyzed by regulators). We kept the idea that platforms are not responsible for third-party content as such, because that would destroy the way the internet works. But after being notified of potentially illegal content [por usuários, autoridades, qualquer um]they need to act quickly and take action if necessary.

I think this is an excellent path, which does not threaten freedom of expression and allows the internet to function. But with the DSA, we increase the obligations [com os relatórios e análises de risco], was necessary. We see across the world how social media platforms, without regulation, become a threat to democracy.

Since 2000, the EU has the e-commerce directive, with the principle of “notice and action” —once the platform has been notified about content, it knows of its existence and can be held responsible if it is really illegal. In Brazil, since 2014, we have the Civil Rights Framework for the Internet —it determines that platforms can only be held civilly liable if they do not remove content after a court order. The new Brazilian law under discussion adopts the principle of “notice and action”, but companies and some NGOs have said that this will lead to platforms self-censoring and removing too much content, the so-called “chilling effect”. Have you had excessive content removals? No way. And the platforms never openly contested that, it wasn’t an issue.

The DSA also provides that companies need to act on content that poses systemic risk, which would not necessarily be illegal. Couldn’t this be a threat to free speech, with companies assessing what is a risk and should be removed? Platforms are already judging, themselves, what content is allowed and what is removed. Facebook sometimes removes nude photos of people, but keeps death threats on the German chancellor, for example.

Today, usage rules are formulated and applied by platforms. We just want this to be done within the democratic sphere, let’s also make the rules, not just the companies. And we’re doing it with freedom of expression as our principle.

In the EU, the alleged threat to freedom of expression has not been as strong an argument against regulation, except perhaps on the far right. Here, the main criticism was that regulation could end up harming small and medium-sized companies, which would overburden them and generate costs.

Another controversy here is the need for a regulatory body to oversee compliance with the law and apply sanctions. Some believe that the agency could become a Ministry of Truth. How does it work in the EU? In the EU, the discussion was the opposite, there were criticisms that supervisory bodies could not be too weak.

We had the example of the privacy law (GDPR), whose supervision was in charge of entities in the Member States. In some countries, like Ireland, where a lot of big tech is based, the bodies are weak. So, in the case of the DSA, each Member State needs to designate a body that will be the coordinator of digital services, which will be responsible for overseeing compliance with the law. [além disso, a Comissão Europeia analisará os relatórios de riscos sistêmicos das VLOPs, para avaliar cumprimento da lei].

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Anna Cavazzini, 40
An MEP for the Green Party of Germany, she graduated in European studies from the University of Chemnitz and has a master’s degree in international relations from the Humboldt University of Berlin. She has been a member of the European Parliament since 2019.