Digital image made by Giovana Fleck, used with permission.

This story is part of Data Narratives, a Civic Media Observatory project that aims to identify and understand the discourse on data used for governance, control, and policy in El Salvador, Brazil, Turkey, Sudan, and India. Read more about the project here and see our public dataset for the full analysis covered in the text below. 

In 1959, Brazilian writer Jorge Amado wrote a book called “A Morte e a Morte de Quincas Berro d'Água” (“The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell”). It tells the story of the presumed first and second deaths of Quincas, a bum who had been a respected civil servant but walked out on his family. After his body is found, his death ignites a dispute over Quincas's memory between his “decent” family and his drunken friends. During the funeral, organized by a secretly relieved family, his friends seem to believe he is still alive and steal his corpse for one last bender out on the town, which only ends with his second death. I know this doesn't seem to have much to do with the debate on platform regulation but bear with me here.

Growing up in Brazil, Amado's books were always good companions, and, being a millennial, so was the internet. As I got older, I decided to pursue a legal career working with human rights online, with the foolish idea that lawyers could help fix the world. For this reason, the debate on Big Tech regulation was always close to my heart. When Brazil, in 2020, started discussing a bill aimed at regulating Big Tech power — Bill 2630/2020 — I followed the discussions closely.

Brazil's political scenario over the last few years has been hectic. In 2018, then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was arrested under corruption charges and forbidden from running for a new term, despite leading vote intention polls. Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right former military officer and Congressman for almost three decades, was elected. His management of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 led Brazil to register over 700,000 deaths. In 2022, with previous charges overturned, Lula was elected for a third term and faced attacks and a coup attempt a week after his inauguration. Amidst all this, the increasing role and power of social networks in Brazil has become unavoidable.

Bill 2630/2020, sometimes dubbed “Fake News Bill” by Brazilian mainstream media or the “Censorship Bill” by Brazilian right-wing media, emerged as part of this scenario. International news has also compared it to a “Brazilian DSA” (a reference to the EU platform regulation effort, the Digital Services Act). Its real name, “Brazilian Law on Freedom, Responsibility and Transparency on the Internet,” better showcases its aim: to regulate Big Tech here just as much as the Digital Services Act expects to do in Europe.

Read more: The Brazilian and Indian dilemma: How to regulate AI and Big Tech?

The law was proposed in the Senate in May 2020 and approved in two months, despite intense debates. Following Brazil's legal processing, it went on to be voted by the Chamber of Deputies, where three years of intense negotiations and clashes ensued. The various stakeholders involved — platforms, civil society organizations, artists and rights holders, media conglomerates, government, and more — disagreed on sensitive subjects such as payment for content, moderation, and platform liability. At first, the law contained several very worrying provisions for people's rights online, such as a requirement to register an identity document to browse the web and attacks on peer-to-peer encryption, which would likely shatter users’ privacy in messaging apps.

After several public hearings and through intense contact with civil society and other interested stakeholders, the text has been improved to the point when its approval was defended by the Coalition for Internet Rights (Coalizão Direitos na Rede, or CDR), a group that gathers more than 50 organizations from academia and civil society committed to defending fundamental rights online. The bill, although not perfect, reached a point where it could improve the scenario for “Freedom, Responsibility and Transparency on the Internet” in Brazil, according to the CDR.

In April 2023, after great articulation by the bill's rapporteur, leftist Congressman Orlando Silva, it was approved as urgent and would be fast-tracked, facilitating its vote in days. The urgency was influenced by a series of fatal attacks in schools throughout the country, allegedly organized online with the leniency of social media platforms. The rapporteur had contacted various players and believed to have the votes needed for approval. On May 27, 2023, he delivered the text's final version to be voted on at the Chamber’s Plenary.

Read more: Opacity and a lack of debate mark Brazil's ratification of the Budapest Convention

At the end of the week, however, an articulated campaign brought together heavy lobbying by Big Tech and far-right politicians and influencers, including those linked to former president Bolsonaro and evangelical extremists. Google even changed its homepage and took out a full-page advertisement in one of Brazil’s main newspapers, Folha de S. Paulo, to sway public opinion — it was later sanctioned for it by Brazil's government. The same group also launched a disinformation campaign on social networks with the narrative that the bill's approval would cause Bible verses to be censored, which had widespread reach, as showcased by Global Voices’ Civic Media Observatory's research. In just a few days, at least 33 congressman and women changed their votes and positioned themselves as against the bill. The tide turned. On June 2, 2023, the bill was withdrawn from the voting agenda.

People fighting for the approval of the law, such as members of the government and representatives of the CDR, then gathered to lick their wounds and develop new strategies, myself included. Even though we've been working in the area for years, we were shocked by the sheer force shown by the Big Tech lobby, which even hired former president Michel Temer (2016–2018), Bolsonaro's predecessor, as a lobbyist.

At the beginning of 2024, we had a spark of hope: new conversations began to take place inside the government, and there seemed to be room for the approval of an adjusted version of the bill. However, by April 2024, the bill received a new major — and likely final — blow.

A new character emerged in the mix and thrust the platform regulation agenda back into the spotlight: Elon Musk, the controversial billionaire who owns X (formerly Twitter). In a series of tweets, he accused Brazil's Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes of being a censoring “dictator” who has acted in favor of Lula to get him elected as president, echoing conspiracy theories. Global Voices Brazil wrote a story about the case, showcasing how Elon Musk pushed a campaign against Justice Alexandre after he started investigating the Bolsonarista coup attempt and related disinformation. This frontal attack made public opinion turn its attention to the Fake News Bill once again, with the expectation that this law, if approved, would serve to deal with events like this.

Read more: Brazil Introduces Tougher Regulations on ‘Fake News’ Ahead of 2018 Elections

As a result, the bill was abruptly buried by the House Speaker of the Lower Chamber, Arthur Lira, a skilled right-wing politician who has a nebulous track record with the Big Tech lobby. As shown in a piece published by The Intercept Brasil, Lira constantly negotiates with representatives of these companies and received an award for his “defense of the digital transformation” from the members of the Frente Digital, a parliamentary group that defends the interests of companies in the sector. He claimed that the bill was controversial and “doomed to go nowhere,” announcing the creation of a working group to discuss a new law to replace the bill from scratch. Activists, such as myself, felt four years of hard work slip through our fingers at the stroke of a pen.

The House Speaker finally established the working group on June 5, 2024, 57 days after announcing it. The group will have 90 days to present a new bill and has 20 deputies — most of whom are part of the far-right group that opposes regulating social networks and believes that platform regulation is part of the “leftist agenda,” as showcased by the Civic Media Observatory research. Among civil society, this was read as handing the new bill over to the platforms. Nevertheless, Orlando Silva, the original bill's rapporteur, is also part of the working group and has already stated publicly that he will continue to fight for platform regulation.

Could it be the death of the “Brazilian DSA?” And more: does it mean the death of any possible democratic platform regulation law in Brazil? In Amado's book, one possible meaning of the two deaths in the title is that the protagonist could still be alive after his “first” death. In fiction, death is not always the end; it may be an Oxford comma, not a period. Like Quincas, for now, the Brazilian DSA may seem dead. However, it may still be up for another stroll around town and — who knows? — even surprise one respected citizen or another and serve as a basis for a new law to protect the fundamental rights of Brazilians on the internet.