Brazil's Supreme Court makes social media directly liable for illegal content
Posted by oursfort@reddit | anime_titties | View on Reddit | 66 comments
Posted by oursfort@reddit | anime_titties | View on Reddit | 66 comments
Moikanyoloko@reddit
A summary of the ruling is that now generally illegal posts can be requested to be taken down extrajudicially instead of only through judicialization.
If the social media doesn't, it can later be held responsible for the post in court. Prior to this, the social media would only be held responsible if it ignored a court order (like X did last year).
Social media must also take caution and may be held responsible for "massive circulation" of content like child pornography, terrorism or preparation for terrorist acts, incitement to racial crimes (or other discriminatory crimes), incitement to suicide, human traffic, attempted coup (abolishment of the democratic state of law).
CakeTester@reddit
The ruling could be a good thing, but it could also be the start of a slippery slope. It would be relatively trivial for lawmakers to ratchet stuff that they disapprove of or that favours their opposition into illegality. Playing with a really sharp double-edged sword there...
FeijoadaAceitavel@reddit
Bullshit. Fascists have never needed and will never need this kind of law. See Trump in the US, where you supposedly have almost limitless rights to free speech, arresting and deporting people over support of Palestine and already talking about revoking citizenship.
notsocharmingprince@reddit
This shows a lack of understanding of the administration’s legal actions around current deportations and the status of non-citizens within the US.
FeijoadaAceitavel@reddit
What legal actions? Courts have told Trump to stop and his administration didn't give a shit.
notsocharmingprince@reddit
That’s not exactly the current state of the legal situations either. Trump has been winning a significant portions of his cases on appeal and has gotten many if not all of the injunctions stayed.
NaturalCard@reddit
Even one case of trump's black masked ICE disobeying a court order is unacceptable.
The courts are the control on the power of the executive. Him going against this sets a very dangerous precedent.
The dumbest thing is that Trumpists don't think about what is going to happen the next time a democrat gets into power. Do they really think these powers aren't going to be used again?
Rukoam-Repeat@reddit
Would you care to explain the reality of the situation so as to inform us?
braiam@reddit
The status is, that law, can be bent to the executive will, if you reinterpret it hard enough.
Awkward_Cheetah_2480@reddit
And Thats not the case of Brazil. the criminal laws here are Very clear, and the executive branch haves zero Power to bend them.
bighak@reddit
The government that censors a lot always says it is for public safety.
Asconcii@reddit
Slippery slope is like the fallacy people use as an example. How are people STILL using.
DustyFalmouth@reddit
bad news is we are already sliding down the slope
cptjeff@reddit
The latter is absolutely what will happen. It's insane that anyone here thinks this is good.
drink_with_me_to_day@reddit
It's not, it's just the government enabling censorship via private institutions by pressuring them with financial penalties
Next step is penalizing internet infrastructure companies as well
glha@reddit
That's not censorship. That's upholding the no right to commit crimes. You can still write shit on the internet, go to the street demanding changes to the very Constitution, you can even say defamation shit about other people that will eventually take you to the court - none of those things are object of this ruling. You guys have free speech wrong, not the rest of the world.
braiam@reddit
Funny, because you can demand that the state that the "offensive" content wasn't offensive under the law, and that's it.
_Allfather0din_@reddit
Social media had what 20 years plus now to figure itself out and it has not, play dumb games win dumb prizes is what i see here. Personally I think at this point it should be as simple as "social media c suites are directly responsible for any and all illegal content ever uploaded to their websites". They'd figure it out real quick, and if social media becomes harder and worse then that's also a net positive for society.
qjxj@reddit
There's the culprit. Simply accuse your main political opponent of subverting democracy^^TM, like in Romania, and then you won't even need a judicial review to remove their online presence.
Moikanyoloko@reddit
In the context of Brazil, there was a significant attempt to overthrow democracy 3 years ago, including plans to assassinate the president-elect, his VP, a supreme court justice, and arrest the rest of the court.
The brazilian Supreme Court is understandably concerned about new attempts and particularly how social media was used to drum up support for the coup attempt beforehand.
qjxj@reddit
Like mentioned before, incitement to violence is already against these platforms' TOS.
Are you saying that everyone protesting the government at the time were trying to do that?
Moikanyoloko@reddit
I am saying that there was a clear and documented social media campaign to drum up support for the coup attempt prior to when it was supposed to happen, with financing for protests (free meals and bus rides for protestors), which social media did nothing to assuage, and whose algorithms inflated due to how they incentivize outrage and doom mongering.
That makes me believe that their TOS is a worthless piece of paper, because they only apply it when they want to do so. Now they'll be forced to police their platforms, even if they do not want to do so.
Are you an idiot? Legitimate question, because where was that said?
qjxj@reddit
You are using the example of an assassination plot planned by a few individuals to demonstrate that the state has a legitimate right to shut down dissenting speech online. To which I replied if you thought that everyone protesting online was in support of that kind of act.
If that's not what you meant, it's a deficiency in the English language on your part, which is understandable considering where you're from, but that remains your problem to fix.
No-Thought-4569@reddit
Said individuals were the then acting president and the military's highest ranking officers using the state apparatus to rile up their supporters in favor of a coup d'etat against the opposing presidential competitor who studies showed was likely to win. This eventually led to a massive dissemination of misinformation and serious effort to play down the gravity of the attempted plot.
unpersoned@reddit
If it's already against their TOS, is it unreasonable that they'd be liable for enforcing those?
Are you really Irish? Because you'd think you understand how insane it is to treat bombings on an airport or a suicide bomber outside the Supreme Court like it's all just regular protesting that doesn't demand fucking Twitter to even pull down the profiles of the who'd been already found guilty in court. Because maybe you don't know it, but those were the people Elon Musk was going to bat for. Those were the people he refused to censure, just because he was mad at a judge.
OsgrobioPrubeta@reddit
Yep, and it's up to them to decide to take it down, or not.
Reddit here is the worst example of that.
You already forgot all those Senate hearings to social media platforms, and how techbros lobbied against regulations.
They want traffic, doesn't matter if it's criminal, it might even boost traffic.
Max____H@reddit
And many places globally have a lot of internet laws that are simply not enforced because it’s lest up to the providers to enforce and they put profit first. Even if a law is passed for social media like is being demanded, the legal teams will simply find the simplest way to show compliance for the lowest cost.
glha@reddit
US have it easy, by never dealing with the aftermath of a successful coup, decades later. The last one we had, was even a direct US fuck up on OUR democracy. So, yes, we don't take those things lightly. You can still protest about shit, demand Constitution changes and so on. You just can't commit crimes. Your take on free speech is just loose and lazy, by not sitting down and thinking about what is reasonable, it's all or nothing. And you are alone on this, nobody wants US' free speech concept.
qjxj@reddit
If you're worried about foreign influence into your politics, you should put restrictions on foreign agents. Banning opposition politicians from Twitter is a long way from doing that.
azriel777@reddit
That is exactly it. They want to control the message and hide their dictatorship actions.
BrazilianTomato@reddit
Only in theory lol. You must be delusional to think they take their own rules seriously. The corporations behind social media platforms greatly profit from the engagement created by hateful and exploitative content. It's time for them to take responsibility for once.
WantonKerfuffle@reddit
All good, except "attempted coup (abolishment of the democratic state of law)"
That one could be used against people who want to improve the system.
angelolidae@reddit
Seems like a good ruling in general, but Brazil has already an history of censoring some speech, so it could become a way for censorship really fast
pham_nuwen_@reddit
Only Brazil? There's certain terrible thing that is happening currently in the world, and if you criticize it you can go to jail in many many countries. That's because certain group of people have lobbied governments to make it illegal to criticise them. Today is these people, tomorrow will be others. This is ripe for abuse in any country.
Fugazzii@reddit
Could you give an example of censoring in Brazil?
angelolidae@reddit
Leo lins got recently got sentecend to 8 years recently due to offensive humour
Fugazzii@reddit
He committed crimes, that's simple.
SineMemoria@reddit
Leo Lins was sentenced to 8 years because racism, pedophilia, and the defense of both are crimes in Brazil. Nowhere in the civilized world can what he does be considered humor.
OsgrobioPrubeta@reddit
Oh, judges backup decisions on laws, but normal citizens know best... /s
Melhor te preicupasses com o que aconteceu em Portugal a propósito do caso Anjos / Joana em que uma parte teve uma presença mediática enorme, e a outra nenhuma. Ver um apoiante da JM, com tanto seguidor, em vários canais e programas a tomar posições claramente benéficas a ele, Ricardo Araújo Pereira um humorista que passa a vida também a cascar nos outros, não te fez confusão nenhuma? Questão retórica para expor a hipocrisia.
angelolidae@reddit
És a favor dos Anjos? Foda-se os anjos ganharem é o pior resultado possível, basicamente mata-se qualquer crítica com humor porque um gajo pode ir lá e alegar que perdeu guito.
OsgrobioPrubeta@reddit
Pois, o importante para ti é a minha opinião e o resultado. O que aconteceu... ignora.
Nem as coisas são como tu descreves ou tentas resumir.
Em muita coisa o Brasil está à frente, nós nem ao fim de 11 anos começamos a julgar Sócrates, em que muitos dos crimes já prescreveram, eles já estão a julgar Bolsonaro.
E, para ver se acabamos com a palhaçada, os ISPs portugueses já são obrigados a bloquear streams piratas, sites piratas ou tendo conteúdos ilegais, sem mandato judicial ou terem de dar justificações. Portanto sendo ilegal o conteúdo, ser entidade da actividade A ou actividade B, tem as mesmas obrigações. A nível da UE até já o tem, o problema é a falta de fiscalização.
angelolidae@reddit
No que é que não são como eu descrevo? O Brasil como exemplo de combater corrupção? Não me faças rir, lá por terem apanhado um não significa nada quando o resto está livre, nós também apanhamos meia dúzia de gatos pingados.
A merda dos ISPs bloquearem sites piratas é horrorosa daqui a nada ficamos que nem a Espanha onde podem derrubar quase tudo em nome da "anti-pirataria"
OsgrobioPrubeta@reddit
Eles até no caso Oi condenaram, nós... niente.
Nós no caso dos submarinos, niente mesmo havendo condenações sobre o mesmo caso na Alemanha.
“percepções" e factos são coisas diferentes, cuidado com o pedestal onde te colocas.
“As leis que eu gosto" /s 👍
ReturnPresent9306@reddit
Fucking based Brazil? Stop allowing asshole to simultaneously be a platform and a publisher. Its beyond tiring watching YT, Meta, Twitter, et al, avoid all liability because they can argue either side in every case. If they're being charged as a platform, nah bro we are totally a publisher! and vice versa.
457424@reddit
So if you go on Twitter and post that everyone should go out next Saturday to protest against a thing, and someone complains to Twitter, Twitter will have to decide whether organizing a protest against a thing is anti-democratic in Brazil.
If it is, they delete all your posts about it so it becomes impossible to notify anyone on Twitter.
Companies generally have a lot of downside to letting something stay up, and basically none to delete something.
Maybe you can get a court to say organizing a protest isn't illegal, but that will take a while, and meanwhile you probably won't be able to organize any protests the government doesn't like except by word of mouth.
Awkward_Cheetah_2480@reddit
Protests are 100% legal on Brazil. Protests for something ilegal are not. Who says what is antidemocratic or ilegal? The law. Anyone who does It, does It knowing so. The criminal laws here are VERY clear and leave small space to interpretation. Even fucking AI can moderate. If the Company wants to operate here they must find a way. Or Just gtfo.
"Protests the government doesnt like" is also not a concept here, the justice is a fully independent Power, as is the legislative(they even have their own budget!). This decision is not about "government". Its the justice fullfilling their job.(Btw 10x1 unanimous decision) The executive branch haves no word about this OR what is a crime or antidemocratic(this is the legislative job), so you can rest easy.
nj0tr@reddit
They already censor posts and ban people according to their corporate policy and agenda. Which means they exercise editorial control and therefore should have the liability too.
unpersoned@reddit
Indeed they do. Disney songs are never allowed, and no one goes to bat for freedom of speech when there's even a snippet of Let it Go in the background. But when someone is shouting slurs, then the task of taking those down is suddenly too difficult, impracticable, and is it even good to take them down?
ReturnPresent9306@reddit
Companies have very little downside from the population to leave things up? However what they can do, is argue they are a platform when its convient to escape culpability, or publisher, depending on what's needed to escape paying. Its downside is the PR/stock market side, which isn't the economy.
These assholes have monopolized "The Town Square" into data harvesting/misinformation hellholes, producing a significant chunk of the problem around various narratives from human trafficking, to violence, to crime, etc in general.
457424@reddit
If they leave something up that is deemed illegal, they have presumably some criminal or civil liability under this ruling. So that is a downside to leaving things up.
If they take something down that's later deemed to have been legal, what is going to happen? Maybe they get ordered to undelete it. No downside to taking things down.
ReturnPresent9306@reddit
Good? We need more Alex Jones Finding Out portions for lying about Sandy Hook. Other fun thing, the Minnesota political assassin? Is an InfoWarrior, Alex claimed the civil war was going hot on June 14th as a response to No Kings Day and TrUe PaTrIoTs need to start arming and attacking Democratic persons. Who was killed in Minnesota? Will Jones face any repercussions for incitement (answer is no). I'm tired of far right and far left dipshits speaking out of both sides of their mouth. They are all huge fucking problems. This post-truth, its all about my feelings and vibes is fucking cancerous.
cptjeff@reddit
This kind of ruling doesn't affect the Alex Joneses of the world at all. It holds the social media site liable for Jones's speech. Under previous law, or the law here in the US, you could always sue Alex Jones for Jones's speech. You couldn't sue Twitter.
All this will do is shut down any social media activity that's remotely controversial. And who decides what's controversial? The government. I'm not sure you'll like where that leads.
Vibhor23@reddit
That is already how Twitter worked since inception. Except it regularly ignored court orders whenever it was ordered to take down something in any country other than USA.
Soepkip43@reddit
As they should be. With their untransparent moderation and algorithmic feeds, they do way more than just provide a platform and are more publishers anyway.
loiolaa@reddit
To give you some context from a Brazilian, by illegal content we are not talking about one random person maybe selling drugs online or something, our politicians are becoming increasingly worried that they can't control the public opinion.
Our current president ( that was arrested for corruption) has been trying to do this for maybe a decade now he has already said he likes the Chinese model, but only now he was able to do it through the supreme court.
Our house of representatives wrote a law saying the opposite, this lawn was approved in 2014 but just know the supreme court decided it was against the constitution. This is all happening in a moment where our supreme court is very active and has been the protagonist in a couple of cases where they censored people without any legal procedure.
Now the supreme court is starting to discuss that the social media algorithms have to be decided by the politicians, I think Brazil is headed to a Chinese model in the coming years. Maybe 5 years ago every Brazilian wouldn't be worried about criticizing politicians online, right now we all know we have to be careful and there are some people that can't be named, largest YouTube channels that host podcasts are very worried and a lot of discussions are suppressed when they start going in a "forbidden" direction.
So if you think this is amazing or something, think again, because we are not the US and our freedom of speech is nowhere close to what you guys have and our constituinte is very "relative".
silencer_ar@reddit
"arrested for corruption". Bullshit, it was lawfare.
loiolaa@reddit
He wasn't arrested for corruption?
unpersoned@reddit
I think it's dishonest to not mention that the judge who judged the case was actively helping the prosecution through private messages, and they still didn't manage to submit enough evidence for a higher court to maintain the decision. Charges don't prescribe if there's an active court case, so you're the one spouting bullshit.
Without a guilty verdict, the man is innocent. That's how it works. If a criminal charge can't be proven, then it's done. Otherwise I could call you a murderer right now who should be in prison, and you'd have to concede that you've never been declared innocent of murder.
I think it's also pretty dishonest to not mention that said judge was immediately announced as Minister of Justice as soon as his decision cancelled Lula's run. The man had a clear personal interest to accelerate the case and to coach the prosecution in the way he did.
HopelessGretel@reddit
Don't spread misinformation, the case prescripted due Lula advanced age after being transfered from Curitiba to Brasilia. He was convicted by the Supreme Court before.
Winderkorffin@reddit
Que corte superior? Ele foi literalmente condenado no Superior Tribunal de Justiça (Ou seja, ele foi condenado 3 vezes no total). A anulação pelo STF sequer levou em consideração a evidência, simplesmente julgou a influência do Moro inconstitucional e acabou com o processo.
Simplesmente não é verdade, por dois motivos:
1.Não é verdade que há uma suspensão em caso de corte ativa, há uma interrupção quando ocorre a denúncia, mas durante o caso o período prescritivo anda normalmente.
2.Além disso, isso sequer se aplica ao caso Lula, porque o que o STF fez foi muito inteligente: Junto a anulação do caso, eles também anularam todo o período interruptivo do caso, fazendo o caso literalmente ir a estaca 0, automaticamente sendo prescrito (já que o caso começou muito antes, com o caso Lava Jato anos antes).
Mas foi provado. Três vezes.
Acho que é justo admitir que, embora o Moro possuísse outras razões além da justiça completamente imparcial, eles ainda tinham evidências o suficiente para provar o caso, como o fizeram, várias vezes. Um homem pode ter segundas intenções e ainda assim fazer o certo. Pessoalmente, eu acredito que o Moro acreditava que se tornaria um herói nacional liderando o Lava Jato, e ele precisava correr com o caso, para poder pegar essa corte maldita de corruptos desprevenidos.
Awkward_Cheetah_2480@reddit
The rest of his opinions show a level of bad faith that its simply not worth It...
qjxj@reddit
Reason more to oppose the bill. There's no guarantee the government won't do the same to future political opponents.
VoriVox@reddit
Telltale sign the OP is a bolsonarista or at the very minimum against Lula and is very biased.
loiolaa@reddit
Not bolsonarismo fuck the guy he tried a coup
Awkward_Cheetah_2480@reddit
Have you made your Pix to your dear leader or prayed to the tire this month my Guy?
Literaly every word this person wrote IS objectly wrong. This kind of opinion only come from a right Wing nutjob despite he "denying".
The Powers here are fully independent, and USUALY in conflict.
Noone IS worried about criticizing politicians online and the government is taking huge hits to popularity, literaly because people CRITICIZE THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT ONLINE (mostly granted criticism.)
People that are "worried" are people that Want to commit crimes, be racist, homophobic, transphobic, nazi simpatizers, weaponize fake news etc. Every single one defined by the law as crime.
empleadoEstatalBot@reddit
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