PL 2630: For specialists, Google’s offensive reinforces PL – 05/02/2023 – Power

Google’s offensive against the Fake News PL strengthens the need for transparency about platform content, experts say. Some of them, however, point out that there is no evidence that there was abuse by the company when it took a stand against the project.

As reported by the Sheet, a survey by NetLab, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, indicates that Google has privileged content in search results over content contrary to the approval of the text. Alerts and messages were also published for content creators on Youtube about the “negative impact” of the text.

A Sheetthis Monday, Google denied favoring links against the PL in its search engine and stated that its ranking systems apply to all web pages, including those it manages.

On the same day, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office in São Paulo issued an official letter giving Google ten days to respond on the criteria for search results on the project.

Already this Tuesday (2) the Lula government issued a precautionary measure in which it obliges Google to inform whether it is advertising the link on its home page with the words “The bill of fake news can increase confusion about what is true or lie in Brazil”. The link was removed by Google the same afternoon.

Ivar Hartmann, an associate professor at Insper, says there is no evidence that Google manipulated search results to harm the project.

“Tools that Google and Meta have been using only show the need for the PL, but we don’t have enough information to say that there was manipulation, which is a problem. This shows the need for legislation to have more access to concrete data and then be able to verify whether Google manipulated it or not,” he says.

Specialist in telecommunications and digital rights at Idec (Brazilian Institute of Consumer Protection), Camila Leite says that there are strong indications of violation of consumer rights and competition.

“It is yet another example of how platforms have acted unilaterally against various rights, such as access to information”.

The same aspects are highlighted by lawyer Caio Vieira Machado, executive director of Instituto Vero. For him, just the fact that there is doubt about Google’s conduct in the case already illustrates the need for approval of the Fake News PL – pending a vote in the Chamber of Deputies.

Ronaldo Lemos, director of the Institute of Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro and columnist for Sheetadds that there have already been cases in Brazil of companies that hired campaigns to demobilize app delivery people through fake accounts.

“These hidden behaviors are anomalous and can indeed be reprimanded”, he says.

Professor at UERJ and FGV, Anderson Schreiber claims that technology companies cannot select or highlight just one side of the discussion, which unbalances the public debate.

“This would be equivalent to a kind of private censorship in which one side ends up silenced through the selection of content”, he says, citing the prediction of plurality and diversity in digital media provided for by the Civil Rights Framework for the Internet.

Lawyer Micaela Ribeiro, from the area of ​​digital law and data protection at Medina Guimarães Advogados, adds that Google practices omissive manipulation, which is punishable by the Consumer Protection Code, and jeopardizes the exercise of democracy in the country.

A researcher for Global Freedom of Expression at Columbia University, lawyer Marco Antonio da Costa Sabino, a partner at the Mannrich e Vasconcelos law firm, disagrees with the interpretation and claims that there is a lack of detail for the abuse to be characterized.

Lawyer specializing in Digital Law and Data Protection, Natanrry Reis claims that there was only one expression of opinion from the companies, which does not characterize abuse. On the other hand, she agrees that it is necessary to question whether algorithms were used to privilege only content contrary to the PL.

Alleged violations committed in Google’s offensive

Marco Civil da Internet (law 12.965/2014)

Art. 3. The discipline of internet use in Brazil has the following principles:
IV – preservation and guarantee of net neutrality;

Art. 9. The person responsible for the transmission, switching or routing has the duty to treat any data packets equally, without distinction by content, origin and destination, service, terminal or application.

Consumer Protection Code (law 8.078/1990)

Art. 6. These are basic consumer rights:
IV – protection against misleading and abusive advertising, coercive or unfair commercial methods, as well as against abusive or imposed practices and clauses in the supply of products and services;

Art. 36. Advertising must be conveyed in such a way that the consumer, easily and immediately, identifies it as such.

Art. 37. All misleading or abusive advertising is prohibited.
§ 1 Any type of information or communication of an advertising nature, wholly or partially false, or, in any other way, even by omission, capable of misleading the consumer regarding the nature, characteristics, quality, quantity, properties , origin, price and any other data about products and services.

Art. 67. Making or promoting advertising that you know or should know to be misleading or abusive:
Penalty: detention from three months to one year and a fine.

Competition Defense Law (12,529/2011)

Art. 36. Acts in any form manifested, which have as their object or may produce the following effects, even if they are not achieved, constitute a violation of the economic order, regardless of fault:

I – limit, falsify or in any way harm free competition or free enterprise;
IV – exercise a dominant position in an abusive manner.