Telegram calls Brazil disinformation law ‘attack on democracy’
Photo: GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP/File
Source: AFP
Messaging app Telegram warned Tuesday that “democracy is below assault in Brazil,” the most contemporary salvo by tech companies in opposition to a bill trying for to stem disinformation online.
“Brazil is able to hump a laws that will cease free speech,” the firm stated in a message despatched to users on Invoice 2630, which has passed the Senate and is anticipating a vote within the lower dwelling of Congress.
It claimed the bill “affords the authorities censorship powers without prior judicial oversight,” calling it “one in every of the most awful pieces of laws ever thought about in Brazil.”
Telegram’s commentary came a week after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s authorities accused Google of “deceitful and abusive propaganda” in opposition to the bill.
The US tech large had displayed a prominent message on its Brazilian homepage warning the laws may “safe your web worse.”
Google removed the message the identical day the Nationwide Shopper Protection Bureau ordered it to also give dwelling to opposing views or face a fine of a million reais ($200,000) an hour.
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Telegram has also confronted correct complications in Brazil.
Last month, a court ruled to suspend the app for refusing to present the authorities requested recordsdata on neo-Nazi groups allegedly fueling college violence through the platform.
The ruling became once overturned on charm two days later.
In March 2022, a Supreme Court docket justice threatened to dam Telegram in Brazil for refusal to appreciate court orders, notably one to suspend the epic of blogger Allan dos Santos, a prominent backer of a long way-merely ex-president Jair Bolsonaro who’s below investigation for spreading disinformation.
Dubbed the “fake news bill” by the media and the “censorship bill” by opponents, the Brazilian laws became once offered three years within the past.
It shot to prominence after Bolsonaro supporters ran riot in Brasilia on January 8, allegedly egged on by social media disinformation claiming their candidate’s 2022 election loss to Lula became once false.
Source: AFP
