2023-07-17 21:14:32
Many are gearing up. “Regulation”, with less drastic resonance than “control”, is an increasingly reiterated word when talking about information on digital platforms, exchange on networks, or the technological innovation in vogue: artificial intelligence with its chatbots who “speak” according to data collected on a gigantic hard drive, but without the feeling and responsibility that attend humans.
With different nuances but a similar perception about the need to protect citizens from what is harmful, concern about the influence generated by lying content, hate language and even incitement to disorder through social networks is heard —or read— frequently, especially in Europe and some Latin American nations, without forgetting the UN, which is also on the subject and has urged to take care of the dissemination of racist and discriminatory speech in digital spaces, while developing a Code of Conduct to ensure for the integrity of the information on the platforms.
In France, for example, some have spoken of the advisability of regulating access to the networks in moments of instability after the protests that shook the country a few weeks ago, and in which digital messages are said to have played a mobilizing role. The rejection of the murder of a young son of immigrants resulted in the overflow of a glass of dissatisfaction saturated by the previous imposition of the pension reform.
Although it might be thought that developed countries are the least concerned about a phenomenon with broad social repercussions, such as the mishandling and dissemination of unverified news during crises or in the midst of pandemics such as Covid-19, it is not turning out that way.
The European Union, which brings together nations with older civilizations and cultures and could therefore be thought to be more solid, has been the first bloc of countries —and the pioneer, in a general sense— to protect itself. The regulation to control the contents online through the Digital Services Law it is already a fact and it has earned him not a few dalliances with giants like Amazon.
Given the very recent claim of that company for having been included among the platforms that must comply with EU regulations, a representative of the European Commission reminded his managers that “The scope of the Digital Services Law is very clear and is defined to cover all platforms that expose their users to content, including the sale of products or services, that may be illegal.”
As described, the legislation is intended to strengthen the protection of users’ rights online, as well as provide greater transparency and accountability, and first and foremost speaks out against the spread of illegal content.
Its rules apply to all digital services that connect consumers with goods, services or content; creates comprehensive new obligations for online platforms to reduce harm and counteract online risks, introduces the protection of users’ rights, and places digital platforms in a single new framework of transparency and accountability.
Meanwhile, the EU is already ready and complies with the rigorous procedures to establish other regulations with a view to the use of artificial intelligence. The project identifies four levels of risk and will entail obligations for companies that put their users in such situations.
But the spread of fakenews and, in general, misinformation, has a very important political role. Fake news is today an instrument of media manipulation that is, in turn, one of the main weapons of subversion and undeclared coups against governments that are not to the liking of those who, on a global scale, exercise power.
If the lie played an essential role during the first samples of what have been called color revolutions, the spread and use of social networks has made that role more expeditious.
His hand continues to execute the judicialization of politics -the lawfare— to bury left-wing leaders politically, votes are twisted in electoral processes and even coups are implemented, such as the one carried out against Evo Morales in 2019 with the help of the OAS, under the lie that there was fraud in his re-election.
But we have very close examples of manipulation on a large scale. Venezuela and Cuba are victims of a commercial, economic and financial siege that tries to justify itself through lies spread internationally; among the most recent, that we are failed states, going through the fallacy of “terrorism” and, fresher still, the lie that there is a Chinese military base in Cuba. This is how they try to argue that we are an enemy, and discredit our models and our life.
Freedom of expression, another hackneyed concept
Although it might seem paradoxical, trying to regulate the broadcast of false news is proving more difficult in some Latin American countries where their citizens have been preferential victims of manipulation at the hands of the local right, to shape their regimes.
Two of the most recent cases are those of Brazil and Chile. In the South American giant, the right wing in Congress has stranded the interest of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s executive in approving legislation against fake news heated by the role of the networks in the attempted coup against the leader of the Workers’ Party in January, just a few days after he came to power.
Delving into the Brazilian events, it can be verified, however, that it is not the first purpose of regulating false news in that country. Other bills in this sense were presented even during the term of Jair Bolsonaro, obviously under his threat to veto them if they were approved by the legislature.
Of course, the bogging down of the new text has not inhibited the electoral system, with a transparent performance under the leadership of Alexandre de Moraes, from punishing, in some way, the lies through which Bolsonaro largely held power.
Although the eight-year disqualification from holding public office that has just been handed down against Bolsonaro responds to charges of abuse of power and fraudulent use of resources, the TSE issued the ruling in response to the meeting held in July last year when, on the eve of the elections that gave Lula victory, his predecessor gathered dozens of foreign ambassadors to persuade them, without evidence, of the alleged deficiencies of the Brazilian electoral system and electronic ballot boxes. It was the beginning of the great fake news that a few months later led the Bolsonaro hosts to assault the headquarters of the three powers in Brasilia.
Neither in Chile has the desire of the government of Gabriel Boric to have regulations that make it possible to deal with disinformation successful, nor has it been the first time that this concern has emerged there.
At least 12 projects that have to do with fake news, promoted by authorities or parties and even related, some of them, with messages issued by the authorities or that affect citizens in some way, have entered the Senate since 2018; but they all remain “in process”.
The pressure exerted by the right is not little, under the discourse that they are trying to curtail a term as beaten as, unfortunately, the truth is frequently mocked. Defending freedom of expression, which would presumably be seized by the rules that are approved, is the main argument of those who oppose them.
…Or arguing that the purpose of the regulations is “political” when political is, in the first instance, the desire to manipulate reality, as happened to “urge” the Chilean electorate to disapprove the first draft of a new Constitution submitted to a referendum in September 2022. Its failure was the first blow to Boric’s mandate and has left the responsibility of drafting the new magna carta in the hands of experts and constitutionalists chosen from outside the Chilean circles below.
Criticism is now raining down on the establishment of an Advisory Commission against Disinformation established by executive decision and whose primary purpose, say the competent authorities, is to establish the debate and socialize the matter.
However, despite the fact that the minister in charge of the government’s general secretariat and her spokesperson, Camila Vallejo, repeats ad nauseam and has gone to the UN to explain that “disinformation is a phenomenon that is seriously threatening democracies in the world” and “it needs to be addressed seriously and collectively, because it is ultimately generating negative effects on people’s lives” —this is how she described it on Twitter—, critics continue and have even gained the sympathy of the IAPA (the so-called Inter-American Press Association), an organization that historically has never been associated with the best causes in Latin America, daughter as it is of owners and editors of large media outlets in the region and defender of their interests under the sieve that they safeguard press freedom.
And one wonders: if the powerful take precautions against the malicious media avalanche, why would the nations that are the main victims of the maneuvers to manipulate them, twist their course or gag them, not do so?
Cover photo: Taken from Latin Press
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