Brazil Court Orders, the Election and the Removal of “Fake News”

Brazil Court Orders – Removal of “Fake News”

Recent uptick in Brazilian court order complaints at Lumen reveal removal of alleged ‘Political Propaganda’, ‘Electoral Propaganda’ , and ‘Fake News’ prior to the Brazilian Election

Since the end of September 2022, there has been an increase in Brazilian court order complaints to Google shared with the Lumen Database, complaints that concern the removal of ‘Political Propaganda’, ‘Electoral Propaganda’ , and the ‘Disclosure of Known False News’.

The submitted formal court order complaints are from the Supreme Electoral Court (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, TSE). The TSE is the highest body of Brazilian Electoral Justice, and except for rulings that violate the Constitution or that refuse to grant habeas corpus or writs of mandamus, decisions made by the TSE are final and not subject to appeal.

An example of one such court order can be seen here. The officials named in the petition (among them President Jair Bolsonaro) are accused of spreading false information through their Twitter and YouTube accounts, prompting legal action. The ‘propaganda’ they bring up is allegedly forged audio in which the candidate for the presidency, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, says: “Nobody had the competence and courage to end this guy [Antônio Palocci]”. The aforementioned audio initially circulated on the internet in 2017 and, at the time, was never confirmed to be Lula himself. However, the audio file appears to be making its rounds once more as a result of new information suggesting that Lula can allegedly be heard on the recording after all.

All of the URLs listed for removal in the example court order above are related to the alleged audio recording of Lula. According to the PDF submitted to Google, the judge who ordered the immediate removal of the URLs is Minister Paulo de Tarso Vieira Sanseverino. In 2010, Sanseverino was appointed to the post of Minister of the Superior Court of Justice by former president Lula. Google has delisted only two of the seven URLs submitted for removal.

Two other court orders filed on behalf of Brazilian Senatorial candidate Rayssa Cadena Furlan can be seen here and here. These court orders, issued by Judge Anselmo Goncalvez, accuse Furlan’s opposing candidates David Samuel Alcolumbre Tobelem and Guaracy Batista da Silveira Junior of publishing electoral propaganda on their pages on Instagram and Facebook platforms. It asserts that, in this content, "irregular propaganda of facts untrue, slanderous, defamatory and injurious against Furlan, current candidate for the position of Federal Senator, in order to offend her honor and image, in addition to generating uncertainties as to character, loyalty, honor and morality.” The court order demands the removal of nine unique URLs. All URLs reported in the court orders have been removed from Facebook and Instagram. I determined this by individually examining each of the nine URLs.

Brazilian authorities, facing a deluge of online misinformation before the country's presidential election on October 30th, 2022, took one of the most aggressive actions taken by any country to combat false information by giving the country's top elections official the authority to demand that tech companies remove content such as posts and videos. Elections officials can now demand the immediate removal of content that they believe violates earlier takedown orders under guidelines passed two weeks ago. Within two hours, social networks must comply with such demands or risk having their services in Brazil suspended. The action is the culmination of an aggressive plan by Brazilian election officials to combat the divisive, deceptive, and fraudulent attacks that have inundated the country's presidential contest in recent days, such as allegations that candidates are Satanists, cannibals, and pedophiles. Brazil has become a test case in the growing global debate over how far to go in combating false and misleading information by allowing a single person to decide what may be published online in the lead up to the high-stakes election.