“They cannot harm the sovereignty of a nation”, says Lula after Meta suspends checks

The president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) stated that he will hold a meeting this Thursday (9) to discuss the decision by Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp – to end fact checking on its platforms in the United States.

According to the Chief Executive, the government defends that each country has its sovereignty.

“I think it is extremely serious that people want digital communication to not have the same responsibility as a guy who commits a crime in the written press,” Lula told reporters.

“It’s as if a citizen could be punished because they do something in real life and could not be punished because they do the same thing digitally.”

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The statement by the AGU minister, Jorge Messias, highlighted that Meta’s decision will increase misinformation on social networks which, according to him, already face problems with fake news and hate speech

Lula said that what he wants, “in reality, is for each country to have its sovereignty protected”. “One citizen, two citizens, three citizens cannot think they can harm the sovereignty of a nation”, stated the president.

On Tuesday (7), Meta announced profound changes to its content moderation practices. In practice, they end the fact-checking program, a policy instituted to reduce the spread of misinformation on the social network.

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“Democracy is an achievement of civilization and we cannot allow abuse of economic power and very strong economic structures to harm society as a whole,” said Alckmin

Now, instead of relying on independent information-checking organizations, Meta will rely on users themselves to add corrections to posts that may contain false or misleading information.

(With Estadão Content)