A decision by magistrate Alexandre de Moraes, responsible for the case at the Supreme Court, granted a request from the Attorney General’s Office, which saw evidence of “criminal conduct” in the face of “abusive and forceful” actions carried out by these platforms against the legislative initiative.
Google and Telegram have published texts in recent weeks against the so-called “fake news bill”, which has been pending in Congress for several years and aims to regulate social networks and increase control over the content circulating in them.
In the case of the search engine, a text was released, in its Brazilian version, entitled “The PL (bill) of ‘fake news’ may increase confusion about what is true or false in Brazil”.
The publication was signed by the Director of Government Relations and Public Policy at Google Brasil, Marcelo Lacerda, and was withdrawn shortly after Lula’s government threatened sanctions if it remained available.
Telegram also attacked the project, in a public message, where it considered it an attempt at “censorship” and an “attack on democracy”, adding that its approval would be the end of the “modern internet”.
This led to a forceful decision by Moraes, who threatened to suspend the platform if he did not publish a rectification in which he recognized that his text, “a flagrant and illicit disinformation, attacks the National Congress, the Judiciary, the rule of law and Brazilian Democracy”.
In this context, the Attorney General’s Office, after a complaint filed by the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, asked the country’s highest court to investigate those responsible for technology companies in Brazil.
According to the indictment, Google and Telegram encouraged their users to pressure parliamentarians to vote against the bill, which was going to be analyzed in the plenary of the lower house last week, but which was brought forward due to the possibility of becoming refused.
The bill penalizes the dissemination of lies on social networks and obliges platforms to eliminate content that they consider inappropriate before a court decision, among other measures.
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