Google used BRL 2 million in ads against the Fake News PL – 06/23/2023 – Politics

Google representatives confirmed to the Federal Police that the company had spent BRL 2 million on advertisements on the Fake News PL (PL 2630/2020), pending in the National Congress.

Executives, however, denied that the platform has acted to interfere with internet search results about the proposal.

The testimonies took place within the scope of an inquiry by the STF (Federal Supreme Court) that investigates the performance of big techs. The investigation is the responsibility of Minister Alexandre de Moraes.

“The declarant initially clarified that the advertisements were not contrary to PL 2630/2020, being
linked to questions regarding the need for improvements in its text”, says an excerpt from the testimony of Marcelo Oliveira Lacerda, responsible for Google’s government relations and public policy area, a copy of which was sent to the Supreme Court.

“Next, he confirmed that such services had been contracted and that campaign spending totaled around 2 million reais.”

Lacerda and the president of Google in Brazil, Fábio José Silva Coelho, were heard on the 15th by the PF team in charge of investigations that are being processed in higher courts.

Coelho, in turn, told investigators that he endorsed the text on the Fake News PL and said he believed that the objective was “to alert the legislative body” about the risk of approval
of the project and the need to improve the text.

Lawyers from the law firm Barroso Fontelles, Barcellos, Mendonça, who represent the company in Brazil, had already sent to the STF a spreadsheet of expenses with advertisements in press vehicles to defend their points of view on the project.

At Sheet, the company spent around BRL 634,000 per advertisement aired on April 30, according to the document. The spreadsheet was sent to Minister Alexandre de Moraes on May 4th.

The minister had asked for the data in the decision of the 2nd of May in which he ordered the platform to remove, within a maximum of one hour, all ads and texts published, propagated and promoted from the official Google blog with attacks on the project.

Among them, there were texts that referred to the text as “PL of censorship”, “How PL 2630 can make your internet worse” and “PL 2630 can impact the internet you know”.

The office also stated that the link with the company’s institutional position on the current version of the PL was displayed for about 24 hours, only on the Google search homepage (and not as an alert or suggestion on pages with search results made by users ).

He also said that this is an institutional space directly associated with Google’s brand and image, not being marketed for advertisements and only used, for limited periods, to convey links related to topics of interest to the company or of general interest.

“While the link with the company’s institutional position was being displayed, the Google search engine worked in a usual and routine way, that is, the functionality of the search page could be accessed normally without interference”, he said.