BRAZIL’s superior elections court yesterday adopted rules requiring quicker removal of content deemed false, in a bid to combat disinformation during the final days of the presidential election. 

Disinformation has spread widely in recent weeks, ahead of the October 30 runoff between incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. 

The superior elections court, known as the TSE, ruled that it could require social media companies within two hours to take down content considered false, with a fine of between 100,000 (RM90,769.73) and 150,000 reais for each hour it is left up. 

“Since (the beginning of the campaign for) the second round, there has been a proliferation not only of false information but also of aggressivity in this information, of hate speech,” said TSE chief Alexandre de Moraes.

This causes “a corrosion of democracy. That is why it is necessary that we act more quickly”, he added. 

Moraes met yesterday with officials from both the Lula and Bolsonaro campaigns, having already spoken a day earlier with representatives from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google, TikTok, Telegram and YouTube. 

The TSE also demanded that both campaigns remove a number of internet posts. 

Bolsonaro’s team was required to take down videos linking Lula to pro-abortion movements, drugs or stating that he plans to shut down churches if elected. 

Lula’s camp was forced to remove material linking the far-right president to cannibalism and paedophilia. – AFP, October 21, 2022.