Fierce Fake News Regulation Rising From Fear Of Election Manipulation

The globally creeping fear of fake news in the wake of elections resulted in another harsh legislative proposal adopted by the Brazilian “Tribunal Superior Eleitoral” (TSE) earlier this week in Brasilia. The resolution lays out measures on how content must be removed upon notice in 24 hours by platform providers, a Brazilian activist said during one of the many debates on fake news and potential measures against it at the 12th Internet Governance Forum taking place this week in Geneva.

Also under the new regulation, anonymous posting will be made off-limits. Yet the 50-page text, according to observers from Brazil, could still be changed. And the current vice president of the TSE, Luiz Fux, who will take over from Minister Gilmar Mendes for the six months leading up to the election, announced he would go for an even stronger regime, including, observers say, pre-emptive measures in which fake news should not even reach the platforms. This would mean a kind of pre-emptive filtering of content, which would need either a labour intensive work for large teams of “fake news censors” or some kind of intelligent filtering mechanisms. The official synthesis of the resolution can be found here:

http://www.tse.jus.br/imprensa/noticias-tse/2017/Dezembro/eleicoes-2018-tse-tem-ate-5-de-marco-para-alterar-e-publicar-as-normas-que-regerao-o-pleito.

The idea of such automatic filtering was criticised heavily at the IGF during the session of the Dynamic Coalition on Platform Responsibility. Julia Reda, member of the European Parliament (Pirate Party/Greens), called it an irony that states that are afraid of the power of non-transparent algorithms by big platforms are now turning themselves to such algorithms to try to control content. Reda spoke on respective regulatory projects in Europe, including the copyright initiative.

The dynamic coalition (DC) has published an assessment of the trend and recommendations on how to deal with the drive to establish more and more enforcement to private platforms.

In the first place, an acknowledgment of the fact that platforms were made regulators is due, Luca Belli, one of the chairs of DC and senior researcher at the Center for Technology and Society (CTS) of Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School, told Intellectual Property Watch.

Transparency on how the platforms are working, including transparency as far as possible of the respective algorithms, is important, he said. Also the idea of a “special agency” or “board” being established for control, as recently proposed in France, should be discussed.

At least, Belli said, it would allow the different regulatory branches to be brought to one table, from data protection to antitrust, and it would give oversight over the new private regulators some teeth.

 

Image Credits: Monika Ermert