Facebook says that 8/1 is to blame for those who broke the law – 02/28/2023 – Power

Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, said this Tuesday (28), when disclosing data on the period from the election to the coup attack in Brasília, that “responsibility for the events that occurred in Brazil on January 8 lies with those who infringed the law by breaking into and destroying public buildings”.

“And the idea that we did not act to protect the elections in Brazil in 2022 is simply not supported by facts or data”, he adds.

Meta’s report on its measures comes as the government accelerates initiatives to regulate social media.

Until this Tuesday, the company had published data on content removal in the first round. This afternoon, he provided information about the entire electoral period until January 8, when Bolsonarists invaded and destroyed the Praça dos Três Poderes.

From August 16, the start of the election campaign, to January 8, the company took down 1 million pieces of content on Facebook and more than 960,000 on Instagram for violating the policy of violence and incitement, which includes requests for military intervention.

A few days after the second round, Meta changed its policy for Brazil and began banning publications inciting the military coup.

Regarding hate speech, the company says it removed 570,000 posts on Facebook and 520,000 on Instagram in the period.

Big techs release reports on electoral performance, as YouTube and TikTok did. Data on January 8, however, represent an attempt to account especially to the authorities, who gave traction to the idea of ​​regulating social networks after the coup acts.

The first to lead this movement was TikTok, which a few days ago delivered a document to the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) stating that it barred 10,500 videos within the scope of the coup attempt, in the period from January 8 to 15.

In the document, which was delivered to the president of the court, Minister Alexandre de Moraes, the Chinese company argues that, of that amount, only five URLs were removed from the network as a result of a court order.

Meta does not disclose data only on January 8th and does not distinguish, in its report, how many contents were overturned following a court order. It says, however, that it complies with requests from authorities and courts about the removal of content “in a timely manner”.

The company also defends a “clear and consistent regulation to be followed by all platforms” and says that it is not up to private companies to make “so many important decisions alone”.

The private sector tries to apply a kind of vaccine against the discourse that it remained unskilled during the violent acts in Brasilia. Government members were dissatisfied with the performance of the platforms during the 8th.

One of the readings among professionals from different social networks is that the coup attacks were carried out in the open in the camps in front of the barracks and that the burden could not fall only on social network platforms, which complied with court orders.

The government delivered to federal deputy Orlando Silva (PC do B-SP), rapporteur of the so-called fake news PL, a regulatory proposal that began to be designed in the wake of anti-democratic acts. The measure, initially created as a provisional measure, must have sections incorporated into the Orlando project, which has been in process for three years and has already been approved by the Senate.

Developed at the Ministry of Justice, the proposal gave platforms a “duty of care” to prevent the dissemination of content that violated the democratic rule of law and accountability for content of the type before there was a court order. The measure would change an article in the Civil Rights Framework for the Internet, from 2014, which currently makes platforms civilly responsible for third-party content only if they do not comply with a specific court order.

As shown by Sheet this Tuesday, Orlando may accept a possible change in the Marco Civil and include a regulatory body in the bill to oversee compliance with the new legislation, as it understands that “it is not possible to leave everything on top of the Judiciary”.