Lira says that the Fake News PL will not be voted on; new text will be discussed

The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), said this Tuesday (9) that there is no consensus to vote on PL 2630/20, known as PL das Fake News or Censorship PL, and that a Working Group (GT) will be created to discuss a new text on the regulation of social networks.

The topic returned to public debate after criticism from Elon Musk, owner of X, formerly Twitter, to Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF). On the one hand, government supporters defend the need to vote on the regulation of social networks and claim that Musk’s statements would represent some type of risk to Brazilian democracy. The opposition endorses the businessman’s criticisms, but points out a series of problems in the current wording of the PL of Fake News.

Matter of People’s Gazette has also shown that Bill 2,630/20 could facilitate the suppression of content from social networks based on broad and subjective criteria such as “misinformation”. In May 2023, the vote on the initial text of the Fake News PL was postponed and will now be shelved.

Faced with the rejection of the current text, the solution found by the Chamber was to re-discuss the issue. According to Lira, the creation of the working group to prepare the new project was discussed at this Tuesday’s meeting of party leaders and the idea also has the support of the federal government.

“PL 2630/20 is destined to go nowhere, we didn’t have peace of mind with the parliamentary support to vote with the majority”, stated Lira, at a press conference.

The president of the Chamber denied that the proposal did not advance in the Chamber due to the rapporteur, Orlando Silva (PCdoB). According to him, the way it was constructed, the current text did not receive enough parliamentary support to go to plenary.

“It is nothing new that we have tried several times [o atual PL das Fake News], on several occasions, with the effort of all leaders, the rapporteur, the presidency of the House, vote on the project. We subdivided the text into the issue of streaming and the issue of copyright and were unable to reach a consensus. All leaders assessed that the project would not be able to go to the agenda”, said Lira at the press conference.

According to information from the Chamber, the working group should last between 30 and 40 days and will try to “develop a less controversial text”.