The reason I won't be able to sleep tonight is that google and twitter are actively trying to influence the voting of a bill in my country, one regulating the responsibility of the service providers on the spread of misinformation and fake news, impersonation and bot activity.
Google's answer was to pen scare-mongering articles (based on an older version of the bill's text, but they don't say this) and link those in its front page, urging brazilians to contact our senators so they'll vote against the bill. Willful misinformation.
Twitter's answer was suppressing the trending topics related to the bill (PL 2630). Shadowbanning, but on steroids, but you'd expect that from twitter. We generally joke that if twitter was forced to take down all nazi propaganda (yes *that* is on the bill) they'd have very little content left.
I've read the full text of the bill.
(this is when I say I'm not a lawyer, I'm an academical. I know how to read the text and can interpret it, though I can't debate the minutia.)
While there are some areas that could potentially be used as leverage to infringe on personal expression, you have to understand that, legally speaking, freedom of expression in Brazil is not as important as bodily autonomy/freedom from harm (you can have opinions on this, I sure have opinions on laws from other countries, it won't change our constitution or the manner in which judges make their decisions over here.)
Some highlights:
The articles related to enforced demonatization have been scrapped. I mention this because it's all you find when you search about this bill in english.
The obligatory identification of all users (which was in the previous text of the bill) has been exchanged for a possible (the word "may" is used) use of official identification as means to curb impersonation.
Social media providers are expected to not only clearly mark ads, but also inform when someone paid for boosting. In case of political ads, the providers are expected to conform to existing electoral legislation and report the total amount of ad money spent on campaign by each candidate/party (which they were refusing to do. That was already illegal, this has already been to courts, the inclusion in this bill is just so that the commission created in it would receive such reports.)
That said, the bill includes some interesting requirements. Big tech companies would have to keep a portuguese speaking team over here which would be responsible for sending periodical reports to a government commission (mostly over bot activity and account suspensions), and the collected data should be made available to the academic community (!).
But, the way I see it, the important part is that this bill has this:
Capítulo III
(...)
Art. 20. A Administração Pública deverá coibir a destinação de publicidade para sítios eletrônicos e contas em redes sociais que promovam atos de incitação à violência contra pessoa ou grupo, especialmente em razão de sua raça, cor, etnia, sexo, características genéticas, convicções filosóficas, deficiência física, imunológica, sensorial ou mental, por ter cumprido pena ou por qualquer particularidade ou condição.
Translation (mine):
Chapter III (...) Article 20. The Public Administration shall curb the allocation of advertising to electronic sites and accounts on social networks that promote acts of incitement to violence against a person or group, especially due to their race, color, ethnicity, sex, genetic characteristics, philosophical convictions, physical, immunological, sensory or mental disability, for having served time or for any particularity or condition.
This basically means AdSense gets no government money, that Twitter can't serve government ads on hateful profiles. It could mean Twitter can't serve government ads at all as long as there is hate on the ad viewer's TL.
This is why Big Tech is working against this bill.
