Development: On 7 June, Brazil’s supreme electoral court (TSE) ordered Facebook to remove ‘fake news’ about presidential hopeful Marina Silva from environmental party Rede Sustentabilidade (Rede).
Significance: This is the first time the TSE has flagged up misleading content since it first installed its ‘fake news’ committee this February. Following the ruling, Facebook has 48 hours to get rid of the offensive material and 10 days to find out who posted it. The crackdown on misinformation is an attempt to preserve democracy ahead one of October general eleciton, whcih are seen as one of the most volatile elections in Brazil’s recent history.
- The ‘fake news’ was posted by an anti- Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) group on Facebook (although Silva is not a member of the PT, she was a former minister in the PT government led by Lula da Silva [2003-2011]). They tainted her with the brush of corruption – a believable slur in the age of ‘Operation Car Wash’. However, the information was fabricated and Silva is not the subject of any judicial investigation, the TSE said.
- In the ruling, the judge said the article contained all the elements of ‘fake news’, helping bring greater clarity to a rather nebulous concept. According to the TSE, the hallmarks of ‘fake news’ are: sensationalist tendencies; prevalence of first person narrative; grammatical and structural errors; evidence of judgmental or extreme views. He added that although Brazil's constitution allows for freedom of expression, there is no room for baseless claims.
- This year’s general election could be particularly challenging for democracy so authorities must uphold their responsibility to oversee that they are fair and transparent, the judge added. Others counter that the TSE is overstepping its remit and taking on a mission impossible. ‘Fake news’ is a new name for an old problem, but deceit and malice have infiltrated elections since the beginning of time, say sceptics.
Looking Ahead: Brazilian authorities have offered social media sites like Facebook a chance to recover credibility with users by removing ‘fake news’ following controversy over whether content posted on their platforms influenced the 2016 US presidential election. But removing misleading posts - without straying into censorship - could prove a Herculean task.
