Bill on content moderation on social networks advances in the Senate

The Senate’s Communication and Digital Law Commission (CCDD) approved this Wednesday (20) the bill by senator Jorge Seif (PL-SC) that establishes rules for the moderation of accounts, profiles and content on social networks. The project, which received a favorable opinion from Senator Hamilton Mourão (Republicanos-RS), now goes to the Human Rights Commission (CDH).

The text aims to make it difficult to remove user profiles and content without due justification and creates guarantees that deal with “elimination, banning and extirpation” in the digital environment, as Seif said in a record of the Senate Agency.

Among the changes proposed by the project are changes to several laws, including the Civil Code, the Internet Civil Framework, the Copyright Law, the Abuse of Authority Law and the Consumer Protection Code. The objective is to include the rights and guarantees of social media users into legislation.

For rapporteur Hamilton Mourão, the project fills a gap in rules for moderating user accounts and profiles and content on social networks. He highlights the importance of clear criteria in moderation to guarantee freedom of expression and other fundamentals of internet use.

“There is little clarity regarding the criteria observed in the moderation of conduct and posts on social networks, which creates harm to the full exercise of freedom of expression in the virtual environment. In this context, users end up exposed to the risk of having their content removed and their accounts blocked or even deleted due to diffuse criteria that are difficult to understand,” said the senator.

The project establishes that the deletion, cancellation or suspension of accounts and content can only occur with just cause. Hypotheses include lack of payment by the user, fake accounts, robot accounts, offers of products or services that violate intellectual property rights and court decisions.

It also defines as just cause for account deletion and suspension the repeated publication of content that contravenes laws, such as the Child and Adolescent Statute, and that incites crimes or violent practices.

The project determines that the user is notified before or at the time of suspension, exclusion or blocking, with identification of the measure adopted and motivation for the decision. All measures must be substantiated with the legal basis of the decision.

Furthermore, the project provides for penalties for infractions, such as a warning and a fine of up to 10% of the economic group’s revenue in the country in the previous year, in addition to the possibility of a daily fine. Sanctions will depend on administrative procedure, with the right to full defense and adversarial proceedings.

The text also includes in the Abuse of Authority Law two new crimes related to the determination without just cause of exclusion, cancellation or suspension of services and functionalities of accounts on social networks, and the determination of censorship or blocking of dissemination of content in any medium, including social networks. The penalties will vary from six months to four years of detention, in addition to a fine.