Organizations charge big techs with actions against scams – 02/07/2023 – Politics

More than 100 civil society and academic organizations will deliver a document to the main social media companies that requests policies against coup d’état and political violence.

The assessment is that the electoral integrity policies in force in the last election were limited, not very descriptive and disregard local specificities, with few mechanisms to restrict content that incited violence and the coup d’état.

The document suggests the adoption of a policy or the detailing of existing actions to “prevent calls to revolt against the democratic order or to interference in the peaceful transmission of power, even if there is no explicit call for violence.”

The report is signed by organizations linked to communication, Internet rights and human rights, such as Rights on the Network, Abraji, Conectas and Oxfam. The letter brings 22 demands, which also deal with socio-environmental denialism.

The demand was already present in the first joint report of these entities, which warned of the need for a policy against coup d’état in Brazil, in September.

Although they have terms against violence and hate speech, in general, companies do not include content that directly threatens democracy.

“Notions such as bullying and hate speech, present in the terms of use of the platforms, may be insufficient with regard to the Brazilian context”, says the document, suggesting that these concepts must be in line with the Law of Political Violence and the Law of crimes against the democratic rule of law.

The policies of the main companies are global, with some specific points developed for the context of each country. In Brazil, changes were implemented in the face of the political context, such as the prohibition of false allegations about fraud in past elections (the case of YouTube) and the removal of requests for military intervention (the case of Facebook and Instagram).

The letter’s suggestion is also similar to the content of the provisional measure drawn up by the Ministry of Justice in the so-called package for democracy, delivered by Minister Flávio Dino to Lula at the end of January.

The text, still under analysis by the federal government before being sent to Congress, intends to impose more obligations on big techs in relation to attacks against the democratic rule of law.

“Electoral integrity policies generally do not include coup-mongering content, that is, those that claim military intervention and the abolition of the democratic rule of law, as well as the closure of public institutions”, says the letter.

Another criticism of researchers is that there was “little or no effort to work together to contain disinformation campaigns at a cross-platform level” and that the scenario was aggravated by the profusion of publications on short video platforms, such as TikTok and Kwai, for applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

The report will be delivered to companies a month after the Bolsonarist attacks on the headquarters of the three Powers in Brasília.

Experts have raised the challenge of considering what constitutes coup content in the face of the lack of jurisprudence on the subject.

For Nina Santos, a researcher at the National Institute of Science and Technology in Digital Democracy and academic coordinator at Desinformante, there is a difference between expressing an anti-democratic individual opinion and articulating acts against democracy.

“When we talk about having specific rules to curb the upheaval of the democratic order, we are not talking about individual defense of another type of political regime, but about this type of collective articulation that aims to destabilize the democratic system”, he says.

In addition, a common criticism is the lack of data and transparency around policy implementation. “In general, platforms do not publish complete, specific and immediate reports, and the numbers, when presented, do not have a denominator (or indicative of prevalence) or discussion about the efficiency of policies, which makes the reports insufficient.”

The document also points to the need to insert political violence –in particular, gender and race– among priorities during election periods. Since 2021, it has been a crime to harass, embarrass, humiliate, persecute or threaten a candidate, with contempt or discrimination against her condition as a woman or her color, race or ethnicity.

According to the report, although efforts have been made to provide users with reliable information and more context, in the case of online gender and racial political violence, actions have not been implemented to explain how to report hate crimes to the Electoral Public Ministry.

Only Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, adopted preventive measures to contain the sending of threats via direct messages in order to try to reduce the exposure of candidates and candidates from minority groups.

Regarding socio-environmental denialism, the entities suggest that companies create councils focused on the socio-environmental agenda, do not monetize channels and accounts that disseminate content that denies the climate crisis and deforestation, do not allow promotion of channels that propagate disinformation about the Amazon and anti-scientific content on climate change, among others.

The report breaks down the policies of Facebook, Instagram, Kwai, Telegram, Youtube, TikTok and WhatsApp. With the exception of Telegram, companies have been updating their policies around electoral misinformation.

In a note, Kwai says that “all actions and initiatives developed by the platform to contain the advancement and propagation of content that have the potential to harm the democratic process remain in progress”.

TikTok said it will not comment on the report for now, but listed changes made in the last year, such as informative labels, agreement with the TSE, partnership with fact checkers, media education actions, among others.

Meta said it is continually improving its content policies and has begun removing posts calling for military intervention on Facebook and Instagram, “in the context of the country’s temporary designation as a high-risk location.” “In another action, we quickly designated the invasions of Três Poderes buildings in Brasilia as a violating event, allowing the removal of any content supporting or extolling the acts.” The other companies did not comment on the report.