The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) launched a public consultation on the regulation of digital platforms, with the aim of systematizing measures that can help promote a safer and more democratic environment for internet use in the country. The initiative was launched during a seminar promoted by CGI.br this Tuesday (25th) in Brasília. The idea is to involve different sectors of society, including network users themselves, in proposing initiatives that can improve the sector’s legislation. The CGI.br consultation takes place amid the discussion process around Bill 2.630/2020, the so-called Fake News PL, whose urgency request was approved this evening in the Chamber of Deputies. A merit vote is scheduled for next week. “Today we are launching a public consultation aimed at Internet users, Brazilian men and women who have contributions to make on this broad regulatory scope that we need to develop in Brazil, to create rules for the activities of this company. This consultation has a much broader perspective. comprehensive, it is much broader than the debate that is currently being held around PL 2630. We cover aspects of economic regulation, issues involving digital sovereignty, issues of work in the platform environment, from the perspective of decent work, the issue of human rights”, explained Renata Mielli, coordinator of CGI.br. Voting imminent The voting on PL 2630, a project that has been discussed for over three years, has accelerated in recent weeks after episodes of violence and threats against schools, spread mainly on social networks. And also as a result of the coup acts on January 8 of this year. The article, reported by federal deputy Orlando Silva (PCdoB-SP), creates the Brazilian Law on Freedom, Responsibility and Transparency on the Internet. The text sets out rules to combat the spread of false and criminal content on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and on private messaging services such as WhatsApp and Telegram. One of the principles established in the text is the “duty of care” for sensitive content, such as the protection of children and adolescents and issues that may affect the democratic order. For lawyer Estela Aranha, digital rights advisor at the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, the new law should create incentives for platforms to be forced to deal with risk situations. She compared the platforms’ responsibility to that of a hospital receiving patients. “The hospital is not responsible for the deaths that happen there, unless it has not taken care that infections spread”, she exemplified. Regulatory body Even though it does not intend to focus on the specific debate of PL 2630, the consultation launched by CGI.br may still raise discussions about some important aspects of the legislation debated in Congress and which, if approved, will still need to be defined by the federal government in regulation. This is the case, for example, of the plan to create an independent body to promote the regulation of digital platforms in the country. “The discussion about this type of body is global, so several countries have been talking about it. The best path has been this thing of an independent authority that can both be very protected from the lobby of the platforms, and be independent from the current government, to avoid authoritarian swings, which nobody wants. And this body also needs to be able to stimulate debate and visions of the future, because technological changes are very fast, we are seeing the thing of artificial intelligence, for example. Most of the problems we are seeing with the platforms was already announced ten years ago”, analyzes professor Rafael Evangelista, researcher at the Laboratory of Advanced Studies in Journalism at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) and member of CGI.br representing the scientific community. The change in the informational environment over the last decade has created the need for a new regulation for communications, this time focused on the performance of social networks. “We leave an informational environment organized around professional journalism and now have platforms as the center of gravity of public debate. This brings some positive effects, such as the participation of more people, but it also brings some negative effects, because, In a way, we bring user engagement as the main objective of organizing the public sphere”, argued the secretary of Digital Police of the Social Communication Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, João Brant. The public consultation is available on the CGI.br website and seeks to answer questions about what to regulate, how to regulate and who will implement this regulatory system.
Agência Brasil
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