“Hasty legislation can make the internet work worse, limit fundamental rights, favor certain groups or sectors of the economy, and create mechanisms that put legitimate speeches and freedom of expression at risk,” says Marcelo Lacerda, Google’s Director of Government Relations and Public Policy at Google Brazil. This was in response to the Brazilian Congressional Bill No. 2630 which instructs search engines and messaging devices to take down fake news content and imposes heavy fines on them if they fail to do so. The Bill was first introduced in 2020 and Google has been pushing back against it saying that it could aggravate the problem of misinformation. Why it matters: The bill, although an attempt to regulate the spread of misinformation, could end up being potentially harmful. According to Amnesty International, the bill contains an ambiguous definition of “fake news” which leaves room for arbitrariness over what information is considered false or harmful, allowing government officials to take down content that they don’t agree with. We have seen a similar situation in India where the government is set to introduce an amendment to IT Amendment Rules 202. Just like Brazil’s misinformation bill, this amendment could also provide government control over what is classified as fake news and what isn’t. There are other methods of preventing misinformation, such as fact-checking and contextualization of information which can be considered when making regulatory decisions. Suffice to say, the right balance between regulatory control and censorship doesn’t seem to have been achieved by either of…
