Brazilian democracy will remain under threat if President Lula does not address the challenge of regulating social media

Right at the start of his speech following the election results, the re-elected Brazilian president declared: "We had to overcome interference coming from the outside into our country through digital platforms. And we're going to have to regulate them." After the election, the Brazilian government proposed to the Organization of American States that a debate be opened on foreign interference in information in the region. These initiatives underscore the urgency of the issue and highlight a challenge that goes beyond the priority bills for the Lula administration in Congress, which aim to regulate digital markets and artificial intelligence.

Brazil has been debating this issue for at least five years in Congress, but went through the most recent election cycle without rules that would allow for a systemic approach to addressing the risks posed by these services.

Journalists and media outlets have been targeted by censorship on Meta's platforms. In collaboration with local Brazilian organizations, RSF submitted to the Observatory on Violence Against Journalists and the National Data Protection Agency (ANPD) a list of dozens of media accounts on Instagram that were blocked without any justification. This includes the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, which had 31 posts related to the elections automatically deleted, as well as the accounts of the news outlets Revelando, Cajueira, and Tapajós de Fato, which were suspended.

These abuses have been denounced by United Nations special rapporteurs and are currently under investigation by the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office and the ANPD. Meta, on the other hand, refused to create an emergency channel to address cases of suspended accounts and violent content targeting journalists during the elections.

Furthermore, during the election period, an investigation by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, based on internal Meta communications, revealed that the company's own employees acknowledged the existence of technical restrictions that affected Lula's Instagram accounts, preventing the monetization of content, while the profile of his opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, was promoted by the algorithms and achieved greater visibility, despite Brazilian electoral restrictions regarding the promotion of political candidates.

Meta denied any political interference and attributed the incidents to technical issues that affected various political groups. However, on October 20, its Oversight Board highlighted recurring failures in the enforcement of electoral integrity policies in Brazil. And the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) unanimously ruled that Meta must ensure equal treatment of candidates and avoid any discriminatory restrictions regarding content distribution, recommendations, and the visibility of candidates in search results.

RSF Recommendations

RSF thus reiterates five strategic recommendations, which it has already presented to the government and which it considers urgent for safeguarding the right to information and Brazilian democracy:

1. Ensure transparency in services, recommendation systems, and moderation practices: platforms must clearly communicate their rules, as well as the criteria, parameters, and methods used for content recommendations and the moderation of accounts and posts, and allow users to choose how content is displayed, including the option to use chronological and non-personalized feeds.

2. Promote the integrity of information in the digital environment: encourage the circulation of diverse, accurate, and reliable information in the development and use of artificial intelligence systems and on social media, prioritizing the dissemination of journalistic content produced by sources that adhere to the profession's ethical standards. The JTI standard, developed at the initiative of RSF and cited as a reference in the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) and the Code of Conduct on Disinformation, is a tool that can be used to achieve this objective.

3. Hold platforms accountable for harm caused by their moderation systems and by paid or sponsored content: the dissemination of content on social media is not neutral and is part of these companies' business model. To the extent that they profit from the dissemination of certain content and advertisements, it stands to reason that they should be held jointly liable for any harm that may result from them to the public. The Federal Supreme Court has already paved the way in this direction by reinforcing platforms' liability and advocating for their regulation.

4. Guarantee the right of citizens to appeal platforms' moderation decisions: platforms must notify users when their content is moderated, specifying the specific justification for the action, and provide accessible channels to request a review and challenge their decisions, with defined response deadlines.

5. Compensate the journalism sector for the use of its content in news aggregators and AI systems: the production of quality information-the raw material of journalism-is costly. In a context where the vast majority of media outlets are already suffering from the shift of advertising to the digital environment, it is essential that the tech giants that use journalistic content in their services provide financial compensation to the sector.