Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, Instagram, Threads, and Facebook, has announced the termination of its fact-checking program in the United States, which will be replaced by a "Community Ratings" system.
With this, and similar to Elon Musk's Platform X, the tech giant assigns responsibility for fact-checking content to users, who must evaluate posts, flag false information, and make corrections.
The change in the verification protocol, which, since 2006, had been conducted by professional agencies, was justified by the company in an official statement on Tuesday (7).
According to Patricia Peck, CEO of Peck Advogados, a leading firm in Digital Law in Brazil for 20 years, the "return to roots" advocated by Mark Zuckerberg cannot be devoid of any responsibility.
“Besides demonstrating alignment with the new US administration, the statement presented by Zuckerberg makes it clear that this same understanding should resonate in other countries. Care must be taken to avoid political pressure contradicting existing laws and compromising the sovereignty of other states,” he says.
In Brazil, for example, the right to freedom of expression is constitutionally guaranteed, but it must be balanced with other rights, such as national sovereignty, privacy, and civil and criminal liability for any excesses. In this sense, Peck points to the risks of increased polarization and the spread of prejudiced and criminal content.
“Furthermore, there is a risk that community ratings could be used artificially to benefit or harm any political, ideological, or other stance,” he explains.
With the resumption of the trial regarding the Civil Rights Framework for the Internet, scheduled for the first half of 2025, the topic may be discussed by the justices of the Supreme Federal Court (STF).
“As a rule, companies must comply with current Brazilian laws and court orders, regardless of the model adopted by corporations in their countries of origin. If we consider that there is a large volume of content that will no longer be proactively removed from the networks, we tend to see an increase in lawsuits for content removal,” Peck concludes.
