Why is Google stonewalling regulation in Brazil?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
We absolutely need more oversight over big tech and we had had real violence and threats tied to online radicalisation (like all the death threats to our justices, that time Sara Winter fired fireworks at the supreme court building, and the Jan 8th riots) so something has to be done but our Congress is to slow to lead the charge so we end up having to delegate rule making powers to specialized bodies but this time everyone is afraid of how this new internet [something] board will act as it's brand new and unpredictable.
As for why Google and others are stonewalling things, the answer is a mix of money and ideology. Many of those big tech companies come from the US and their approach to freedom of speech is very very different ours so what we see as business as usual they see as an attack on free speech. On the money part, complying with the new law will be very expensive and nobody likes extra costs.
Brazilian here and many if not most of us value freedom of speech and don't see this as business as usual.
> After being accused of misleading advertisement by the justice ministry, it pulled the link
They weren't merely "accused", supreme court judges ordered Google to pull the link or face fines. Literal government censorship. They even ordered police to round up executives for "explanations". As if they owed them explanations over what's essentially a blog post.
Never ceases to amaze me the audacity of these jounalists to accuse others of spreading "fake news" while simultaneously and deliberately distorting the truth to this extent. If I see the words "fake news" anywhere, I assume it's malicious propaganda.
> That’s when big tech started saying there would be no more money to give their journalism programs, similar to what they told YouTube creators.
This must be what she's truly upset about. You're not entitled to Google's money.
They'd have to be stupid to invest in this place anyway. Who wants to invest millions in a near communist country where totalitarian judges can just fuck your shit up on a whim? Did you know the judges are deciding whether to make it illegal to fire people "without fair reason"? Just saw that in the news today. It boggles my mind that Google even employs people here at all.
> The bill aims to achieve this by creating a Council for Transparency and Accountability in the Internet, the objective of which is to inspect the digital platforms and guarantee transparency and accountability of their content. It also establishes the mandatory identification of users in platforms and messaging apps, also the prohibition of creation of fake accounts. In addition, this so-called Fake News Bill requires digital platforms to check the veracity of information that can cause damage to health, public security and economic order, and to delete or immediately suspend profiles that violate the rules of conduct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Congressional_Bill_N...
So we now have government checks for truth. Brazil now gets to mandate, supra-nationally, who can post & under what conditions, and what barriers users everywhere have to get online.
And while Brazil creates it's own system for checking these entities, they demand each platform also abandon safe harbor & independently become responsible for securing all content is safe, and if any content is risky, the creator of the content must be banned.
This bill can go to hell. This is such a key example of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, of puffed up foolery being done by idiotic nations with who have no power & worse no sense. There's no possible way this bill can actually happen. It's implementation is infeasible. And the greater idea here is a joke; there's 195 countries on earth: the idea that any one of them can just come boss around the entire internet is ridiculous.
The submission here is an opinion piece, from a journalist. I don't have any particular grasp on where they're coming from or who they are or what they believe, but they seem intent to cause harm. It's not superb coverage, but I might try suggesting the Guardian's own coverage of this topic, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/03/alphabet-googl...
Brazil's attempt here has been extremely illiberal from the outset. And it's ask has been unreasonable. They want a magic pony. Please, make the internet pure & clean & good, tech companies. Or else we will beat you brutally. We will do nothing to help. Anything potentially bad must be purged. Then their reaction to Google making available their position, telling Google they cannot even advocate for themselves: most low, most gross. You've covered that well. What an absolute disaster this is.
Currently the bill is a clone of EU's Digital Services Act or Germany's NetzDG.
As usual as Brazil like to copy European laws. Brazil also have it's own GDPR (LGPD)
Which brings up an interesting question - should these checks and balances be proportional to power? In that a corporation like Twitter or Google, that has immense power over society, should have the same kind of burdensome regulation?
Maybe but I have more trust in Google than in government. And it's also a lot easier to opt-out from Google than government. In theory governments put big corporations in check but sometimes governments get in bed with corporations to fuck everybody else. In the case of this bill it looks like it will move power from big tech, small media and individuals to old media conglomerates. BTW many politicians in Brazil own local radio stations and newspapers. So it's clear to me that in this case the proposed regulation do more harm than good.
> Governments at least are elected and have a lot of checks and balances imposed on them.
The supreme court in Brazil isn't elected and doesn't have functional checks and balances in place. Recently they ordered the arrest of hundreds, they temporarily suspended an elected governor, they censored Google and Twitter because they dared to stonewall this bill. They can bypass the legislative process by changing the meaning of laws. Felipe Neto, an youtuber with millions of subscribers that is aligned with the government and supports this bill threatened those that opposed the bill that if the bill don't pass the supreme court will legislate in place of congress. This is the new normal, Brazil is slowly becoming a judicial dictatorship. BTW, that abject creature made his career spreading hate and disinformation in the Internet.