PL 2630: Anatel is the safest way, says rapporteur – 05/04/2023 – Power

The rapporteur for the Fake News PL, Deputy Orlando Silva (PC do B-SP), says in an interview with Sheet that the best way to resolve the impasse over the supervision of social networks is to assign the function to Anatel (National Telecommunications Agency).

The rapporteur defended that this supervision should take place via an entity linked to the indirect administration of the government, but was forced to remove the device from the text due to lack of support.

The Fake News PL, whose vote was scheduled for Tuesday (2), was postponed to avoid a defeat by the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) government. The text faces resistance from different segments in the Chamber.

In the rapporteur’s view, opposition parliamentarians work against the Fake News Bill for fear that the regulation of social networks will force changes in the policy anchored in lies.

He cites as an example deputies who said the bill would ban verses from the Bible. “These people feed on the polarization of society and it is very functional for social networks, because the business model of social networks is based on extremism”, he says.

the vote

Because it is such a sensitive and important issue, I considered that it would not be worth simply voting and winning by one vote, just as it would not be worth losing such an opportunity by one vote. I bet on more conversations, more clarifications, more adjustments to have greater convergence in the plenary.

It is very common, when I talk to deputies, that each one of them presents an experience of [ataques por] fake news experienced by himself.

Whoever suggests modification and maintains opposition to the proposal, the opposition ceases to be opposition by content and becomes of a political nature. Which is legitimate, but there are no merit arguments.

I saw a deputy saying that he could not be in favor of a proposal that was reported by a communist. I do not have anything to do. I just say good morning, good afternoon, good night, thank you very much and I leave the room, because there is simply nothing to do.

Accusations that PL promotes censorship

It is a project that explicitly reinforces freedom of expression, when it creates a due process mechanism in content moderation, in those evaluations that are made of published content.

Today, digital platforms simply do the moderation and communicate to the user. Under the proposal, they are obliged to justify why that moderation was made and to create a quick channel so that the user himself can contest that decision. That is, we are demanding that a path be created for the user to defend his freedom of expression.

We’re proposing that, first, if there’s pay for boosting, the platform takes responsibility — if the content does any harm, it seems logical that if someone made money to take that message further, they’re responsible for the message they carried.

Second, if it is notified that there is illegal content, the platform is obliged to evaluate this content and, if after notification, this content remains there, it will also be held responsible, if any damage occurs. This mechanism is called “duty of care”.

There they say that platforms could withdraw legitimate content to avoid a sanction. We have established that notifying the user is not enough, but a security protocol must be created so that the platforms can assess the content and eventually moderate it. It is an additional layer of protection, different even from the proposal the government made me. A protective layer against the risk of withdrawal of legitimate content.

Regulatory agency

The best model would be for us to create an autonomous supervisory entity, with a legal nature linked to indirect administration, which would be an autarchy and whose directors would have a mandate. A body close to what are the regulatory agencies.

This proposal did not find good support in the plenary and I decided to remove it from the text, so as not to interdict the debate.

Colleagues pointed out that self-regulation mechanism could be fixed. Self-regulation is what we have today and it seems insufficient to me.

I was also presented with the model of national authority for the protection of personal data, [entidade] which already exists, but is under construction, which would give it few tools to make it effective in the short term.

The third hypothesis, which is not the one I was most enthusiastic about, but which seems to me the most ready for the current moment, is that we attribute it to Anatel. This here will require a change in Anatel’s attributions, an improvement in its functioning, probably the creation of a thematic chamber, perhaps a board to be able to take care of a new frontier, in addition to telecommunications. In my opinion, Anatel adjusted to the attributions of this new task is the safest path.

opposition criticism

A part of parliamentarians has a vision of the state without intervention. A second part is a political attitude of parliamentarians, especially the opposition, who imagine that, if there is regulation of social networks, this could cause some embarrassment for the type of politics they carry out.

For me, the crystalline example of the type of politics that these people do was given by Deputy Deltan Dallagnol [Podemos-PR], when he made a publication saying that the text of the law would prohibit pastors from quoting Bible verses during services. This is strictly a lie. And these people make politics anchored in lies. It makes politics anchored in narrative, no matter the fact.

These people are nourished by the polarization of society and it is very functional for social networks, because the business model of social networks is based on extremism. The more extreme the speech, the more engagement it generates. The more engagement it generates, the more the artificial intelligence reads it as relevant. The more relevant, the more distribution, and this is structured in a bubble.

The extreme right operates functionally for social networks and social networks are functional for the operation of the extreme right.

Who talks about voting the text of Deputy Mendonça Filho [União Brasil-PE] you shouldn’t even have read it. First, the deputy’s text is anchored in the self-regulation of platforms. Second, it is a text that expands the powers of the Public Ministry.

I would be surprised if the plenary chose to give up its legislative competence by establishing responsibilities and attributions and transfer this power to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

big techs

What we’ve seen in the last few days is something, in my perception, frightening. What the big techs operate at this moment is to bring the National Congress to its knees. It’s deciding what can and what can’t be voted on. And what is serious, playing outside the four lines of the Constitution, to use an analogy that became famous in Brazil.

Google has 96% of the search market in Brazil. They abuse the monopoly status in the market and set a path pointing to critics of the project, including politicians. There was a deputy from the PL who was recommended by Google.

Some say to me: but Google can not participate in the public debate? In my opinion, it can. As a company, you have the right to speak. It is a relevant economic agent. I had numerous meetings with their leaders. It is legitimate for them to participate in the debate. What is not legitimate is for them to disguise a neutrality approach to users in order to lead them to a distorted, biased debate.

There was abuse of economic power. There was a spread of misinformation. They themselves hurt the terms of use. Spotify, in terms of use, prohibits political advertising. And Google paid ad with the political content served on Spotify, which made a lame excuse that it didn’t know it had political content. Twitter narrowed the reach of supporters and broadened the reach of critics.

So big tech played dirty to impose its position on the National Congress. And that’s not democratic

Orlando Silva de Jesus Junior, 51

Born in Salvador, he was the first black person to preside over the UNE (National Union of Students), from 1995 to 1997. Federal deputy for São Paulo in his third term, he has been a member of the PC do B since 1989. From 2013 to 2015, he held a vacancy councilor in the São Paulo City Council. He was Sports Minister (2006-2011) in the Lula and Dilma (PT) governments.