Presidential campaigns: Brazil’s electoral authority cracks down on disinformation
Brazil’s national electoral authority, The Superior Electoral Court (TSE), has announced moves to crack down harder on online disinformation in a fierce presidential campaign ahead of its election run-off.
The TSE said the measures are intended to curb the “distribution and sharing of knowingly untrue or gravely decontextualized information affecting the electoral process,” according to the resolution.
The tougher stance, defined by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who currently runs the TSE, reflects a more aggressive approach to a tidal wave of dirty campaigning that has engulfed Brazil ahead of the Oct. 30 runoff.
The TSE will levy fines of 100,000 reais ($19,000) per hour for online platforms that fail to take down fraudulent content after two hours, according to the resolution, which will also ban all paid political advertising online in the 48 hours before the vote.
The run-off election is between far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and leftist challenger Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The TSE has already ordered some disinformation videos to be taken down, including ones that say Lula consorts with Satan and Bolsonaro embrace cannibalism.
The campaigns have also been ordered by the court to pull online ads saying the leftist will legalize abortion and the incumbent entertains pedophilia.
The TSE crackdown has raised concerns from both campaigns that it is edging into censorship of legitimate political debate.
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The Bolsonaro camp has complained that the TSE has told it not to run ads calling Lula “corrupt” and a “thief” because bribery convictions that put him in jail were later annulled by the Supreme Court.
Brazilian broadcasters have also said they have been prohibited from using the words “ex-convict,” “thief” or “corrupt” when speaking about Lula.
The broadcaster lobby ABERT protested that such decisions were interfering with freedom of expression.
By contrast, Bolsonaro’s allies complain that the TSE has not stopped opponents from accusing the president of “genocide” for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that killed 680,000 Brazilians.
Zainab Sa’id
