Anyone can inform the Electoral Court of the circulation of false news about the elections
The president of the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), Minister Edson Fachin, launched on Tuesday (21.jun.2022) the Disinformation Alert System Against Elections. Through the tool, anyone can report the circulation of false, manipulated or out of context news about the Brazilian electoral process.
“From now on, anyone will be able to access this system, which is already available on the Superior Electoral Court website, and report episodes involving the circulation of false news, bearing untruths about the Brazilian electoral system, which violate the security image and integrity of the voting process and that may affect the normality of the electoral process”, announced the minister.
Complaints can be made on the website. tse.jus.brclicking on “submit your suspicious content”. The Court released a video about the initiative. Watch (1min4):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzosCy-pYPw
In the last municipal elections, in 2020, the Electoral Justice channel on WhatsApp received more than 5,229 irregularities alerts. As a result, 1,042 accounts that made mass shootings were banned.
“If in 2020 the partnership was with just one platform and we obtained such expressive results, we cannot fail to highlight the important advance represented by the creation of this system, which has all the partner platforms of the Electoral Justice in the fight against misinformation.”, said the president of the TSE.
Today, in addition to WhatsApp, the Court has cooperation agreements with Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Kwai, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter and Spotify.
“The Electoral Justice is prepared to conduct the 2022 Elections in a clean and transparent way, as it has done for the last 90 years”, concluded the minister.
FIGHTING DISINFORMATION
According to the court, the purpose of the new functionality is to speed up the fight against the effects of the propagation of fake news on elections or on the electronic voting system, which negatively impact the country’s democracy.
The alerts will be passed on to digital platforms and verification agencies to quickly contain the impact caused by the dissemination of this type of content on the internet.
Depending on the seriousness of the case, the reports may be forwarded to the MPE (Public Electoral Ministry) and other authorities for the adoption of legal measures.
WHAT CAN BE COMMUNICATED
In the Misinformation Alert System, the electorate may report incorrect information about participation in the October elections, such as distortion of times, places and documents required during voting, for example.
It will also be possible to communicate fake accounts that use the image of the Electoral Justice to share misleading materials related to the election, posts with hate speech and any type of incitement to violence that could compromise electoral integrity and the public agents involved in the process.
The tool will also receive communications of threats to polling stations, registry offices or Electoral Justice buildings and of unverified information about alleged fraud, tampering and vote counting or certification of election results.
When registering, users will have to describe the situation, indicate the platform on which the message was circulated and, if any, provide the link to the publication.
WHAT CANNOT BE COMMUNICATED
Candidate misconduct should not be done in this system. In these cases, the communication must be made through the Pardal application, available for download on Google Play and on Apple Store.
With information from Superior Electoral Court.
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