Moraes: Big techs will be framed and held accountable – 05/10/2023 – Politics

The president of the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) and minister of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), Alexandre de Moraes, said this Wednesday that the so-called big techs feel they are above the law, but will be framed in Brazil to guarantee voters of the country the free exercise of the vote.

“Real corporations that feel above the law, social media corporations, big techs, big platforms that simply think that no jurisdiction in the world can protect them and determine that they comply with the fundamental rights of the Constitution”, said Moraes in a speech during the 10th edition of the National Meeting of Electoral Judicial Schools (Eneje), in Brasília.

“In Brazil we have demonstrated that there is no land without law. The platforms, the big techs, the digital militias were framed, they will be penalized, they will be held accountable, because that is to guarantee the voter’s freedom to vote.”

The speeches by Moraes, who is also the rapporteur for the investigation into digital militias in the STF, come at a time when social media platforms and big techs such as Google and Telegram are publicly taking a stand against the Fake News PL, which is being processed in the Chamber of Deputies. Deputies and aims to regulate the action of platforms in the country.

Google published on its home page a link to a text criticizing the proposal, pointing out that it could “worse” the internet. In response, Senacon (National Consumer Secretariat) of the Ministry of Justice notified the company for misleading and abusive advertising, leading Google to withdraw the link from its page.

Telegram, on the other hand, sent messages to users of the application stating that “democracy is under attack in Brazil” because of the proposal and that “Brazil is about to pass a law that will end freedom of expression” and that would give “the government powers of censorship without prior judicial oversight”. The shooting of the messages led the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office to ask the company for explanations.

The rapporteur for the fake news bill in the Chamber, Orlando Silva (PC do B-SP), said that Telegram “spreads lies in Brazil, stating that the Brazilian Parliament wants to approve censorship, wants to end democracy. scandalous”.

After the postponement of the vote on the bill of fake news in the Chamber, the president of the STF, Rosa Weber, scheduled for May 17 the judgment in the plenary of the court of an action that questions points of the new Civil Rights Framework for the Internet, which could also result in a new platform regulation.