The freedom to report threats to freedom – 09/06/2023 – Opinion

Provided for in the Federal Constitution, in Articles 5 and 220, underlined by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and quoted in verse and prose by many people of good will, freedom of expression is one of those fundamental rights that has long been used by different —and antagonistic— purposes.

Thought of as a form of protection, freedom of expression is also used for attack; exercised as citizenship, is wielded to sustain unlawful acts. In many cases, this mixing is not random, but a way of resorting to it to spread hate speech and deliberate misinformation.

When denounced, not rare disseminators of hatred and misinformation, dressed in the mantle of preachers of freedom, say they are the target of censorship. Such spokesmen of this false freedom were inspired by the authoritarian cycle that Brazil has experienced in recent years. And so the country became fertile ground for the mass production and dissemination of illicit and unwanted content, adorned by the space of fragile rules that social networks have become. But the large-scale threat also inspired reaction and resistance — from state institutions and civil society.

Sleeping Giants Brasil, the national chapter of a movement present in 16 countries, emerged in this context. Founded by three young people who sought solutions to the problems of fake news and hate speech, the Brazilian movement has become the group’s largest operation in the world. It seeks to promote good corporate practices by encouraging advertising companies to dissociate themselves from false content that threatens, for example, the independence of the Powers, the security of elections and public health. By highlighting how their brands are linked to unwanted content, it helps companies to reflect (and act) on their social responsibility and ethics in their advertising strategies.

For producers and disseminators of fake news and hate speech, this type of warning, questioning and denunciation is a form of censorship. Nothing more false. They resort to freedom of expression —always it— to discredit actions like that of the Sleeping Giants and protect their voices from hate and lies.

They deliberately ignore that the movement does not hold the coercive forces of the State to impose censorship on anyone, much less to force companies to take any decision. These, as private agents, have full autonomy and freedom to direct their resources according to their own assessments.

Sleeping Giants has the role of conducting awareness campaigns aimed at discouraging sponsorship of fake news and hate speech. It offers guiding subsidies for ethical and socially responsible decision-making regarding the allocation of resources. It is no coincidence that more than 1,100 companies have already publicly reported adhering to the movement’s recommendations in the 80 campaigns developed over the past three years.

It is a collaborative and pedagogical effort about values ​​and principles that companies reflect when associating their brands with lying, hateful and illegal content. All of this is part of an ecosystem for promoting good corporate practices that has conquered the planet, installing itself in international organizations such as the UN and the OECD, or even in the main Stock Exchanges around the world. The cut-off line for denunciations is not censorship or the usurpation of freedom of expression, but the crimes foreseen in our Constitution, such as against democracy, terrorism, racism, pedophilia and violence against women. None of this, it must be reiterated, is protected by the fundamental right of freedom of expression.

In the classic “Romanceiro da Inconfidência”, from 1953, the poet from Rio de Janeiro Cecília Meireles wrote: “Freedom – that word that the human dream feeds, that there is no one to explain, and no one who does not understand!”. Brazil and the world have changed since then. And in the healing of so many open wounds, it is time to rebuild and reaffirm values ​​that —these, yes— must protect and be protected by fundamental rights such as freedom of expression. That public agents concerned with the protection of this freedom know how to make this separation.

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