Evolve, not necessarily voluntarily, from technology development companies to communication and advertising companies. This is a possible solution to the devastating moment that digital communication is going through, when thousands, millions, seek refuge in anonymity that so easily allows it to cause harm, great harm to an audience eager for useful information.

The change in the legal system resulted from recent intellectual and especially judicial debates about social networks and the companies that provide them to millions of users around the world. It could be the long-awaited antidote to the absolute irresponsibility with which many Internet users behave, through their hidden profiles, fake identities, memes and the gigantic proliferation of fake news.

‘Fake election news’

Meta is creating a social network to compete with Twitter

The Supreme Judge from Brazil recently presented such a theory, a solution to these “evils”, from his vision, and I listened carefully. Alexandre de Moraes says that the evolution of tech companies monopolizing and facilitating content that most of the time they didn’t produce themselves comes naturally since they currently command the largest amount of advertising money in the world, therefore advertising companies are also responsible for what is passed through they speak.

(…) We are appalled at the ease with which claims are now being made that show no support whatsoever…

Digital manipulation at election time: we consume news without opposition or verification

De Moraes speaks from experience, although this, I understand, does not guarantee fairness: he is the judge presiding over the case of far-right communicators who launched fake news in his country in favor of President Jair Bolsonaro, and also expresses his belief that constitutions like Brazil’s, like many in the Western world, they are not permeable to freedom of expression that includes freedom of aggression or incitement to hatred. Also in charge of sanctioning the riots that took place in Brasilia in January this year, from the opponents of the new government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, he remembers that he issued a court order for digital platforms to monitor the content that was the main protagonist of the politician’s event, and he got only a response from TikTok assuring him that they had canceled the 10,442 crammed videos of fake news and incitement to violence.

But as high as the Brazilian judge and his thoughtful proposal, the risk is that indiscriminate, self-interested and even possibly paid censorship will be installed in this transformation, on platforms that are now for mass consumption, especially among the youngest. Make the cure worse than the disease in terms of manipulation, misrepresentation and bias.

Those of us who have dedicated our lives to communication are amazed at the ease with which statements are now made that show no support, that do not measure the immediate or indirect effects that the power of those words can produce, whose power is measured in the size and loyalty of an audience of incalculable proportions. times.

The good news in all these scenarios is that there is a growing debate about the liability of the spoken word, now in the form of electronic data. And this freedom, not because it is free, gives itself lewd licenses. (OR)