PL 2630: Moraes orders PF to listen to big techs leaders – 05/02/2023 – Power

Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF (Supreme Federal Court), determined that the Federal Police take depositions from leaders of big techs within five days on the offensive on the PL of Fake News.

In a decision this Tuesday (2), Moraes says that the objective is to clarify – among other issues that the police authority deems necessary – the reasons for having authorized the use of mechanisms to constitute abuse of economic power.

He also cites the case of possibly characterizing an illicit contribution to the misinformation practiced by digital militias on social networks.

The minister also requests that the companies Google, Meta, Spotify, Brasil Paralelo proceed with the complete removal, within a maximum of one hour, of all ads and texts published, propagated and boosted from the official Google blog and with attacks on the project .

He cites publications that refer to the text as “PL da Censura”, “How PL 2630 can make your internet worse”, “PL can impact the internet you know”, under penalty of a fine of R$ 150 thousand per time of non-compliance for each announcement.

“Companies, within 48 hours, must submit a detailed report on the announcements made and amounts invested, as well as the terms suggested by the Google search engine on the subject”, adds the minister.

Google must also explain, within 48 hours, the methods and algorithms for boosting and inducing the search on “PL da Censura”, as well as the criteria Boosting the site, in disagreement with its own self-regulation rules.

In addition to the reasons for having announced information against PL 2630 without the “meta ads” label, the indication of hyper-partisan sources on the first search page, as mentioned in the UERJ study” and on the research homepage, an alert message to all users, stating that the PL would “increase the confusion between what is true and false in Brazil”.

This Tuesday, Google removed from its homepage the link with the words “The bill of fake news can increase confusion about what is true or false in Brazil”. The measure took place during a press conference at the Ministry of Justice in which Minister Flávio Dino explained requirements and possible sanctions to the company.

The minister said that he issued a precautionary measure that obliges Google to inform that the link was an advertisement. In addition, he must make a counter-propaganda showing the benefits of the Fake News PL pending in the Chamber of Deputies.

As shown to SheetGoogle launched an offensive against PL 2630, the bill that regulates the internet, show emails, prints and reports obtained by the report.

A survey by NetLab, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, indicates that the company has prioritized content contrary to its approval in search results over the bill. It has also been posting warnings on YouTube about “negative impact” to creators and messaging youtubers about it.

A Sheetthis Monday (1st), Google denied that it is privileging links against the PL in its search engine and stated that its ranking systems apply to all web pages, including those it administers.

The link, now withdrawn, led to a blog post by Google with numerous criticisms of the project.

On the subject, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office in São Paulo issued an official letter this Monday demanding explanations from Google about the platform’s offensive against the Fake News PL.

The vote on the Fake News PL in the Chamber of Deputies, scheduled for this Tuesday (2), may be postponed in view of the chances of the text being rejected by the plenary. If approved in the House, the text will return to the Senate, which had approved the original text in 2020.