Brazil’s government plans to introduce legislation to regulate social media to prevent “fake news” and “hate speech,” according to Flavio Dino, Brazil’s Minister for Justice and Public Security.
Dino made the comments in a seminar organized by TV Globo, the Getulio Vargas Foundation, and the Brazilian Institute of Education. He said that the proposal was going to be presented to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva next week before being introduced to the National Congress for debate.
“We are concluding the debate between the Ministry of Justice and Secom, and this project already has the general lines defined,” Dino said. “There is unity in the government team and, next week, it will be delivered to President Lula so that, if he approves it, it will be forwarded to the House of Representatives.”
Dino said that the bill is modeled around a study ordered by controversial Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the supreme federal court.
According to Dino, the creation of a body to regulate social media is being debated, and the body would “have certain attributes of independence” but cannot be a “new heavy, bureaucratic, unwieldy apparatus.”
“The idea is a project that protects freedoms and ensures that the Internet is not a war,” Dino said, “So that there is duty of care on the part of companies and responsibility in the case of committing crimes where these platforms have been used.”
Moraes, who also attended the seminar, said that the “extreme right” has been using social media to spread “misinformation” and “instrumentalize” its users.
“A very radical far right realized, in an extremely competent way, that it was possible to manipulate information and, especially, the internal hatreds, revolts, and traumas of various segments of society,” de Moraes claimed, “to bring these people together socially and, from this, to instrumentalize them.”
Defending the need for censorship on social media, he added: “It is not possible for us to treat social networks and platforms as a no man’s land. It is not possible for us to think that it is a metaverse, that you can enter and practice everything you do in real life. You can’t.”
