Poder, soberania e big techs: tensões entre o público e o privado no Projeto de Lei nº 2.630/2020 (PL das fake news)

Abstract

The state, as classically conceived, is a sovereign political entity that has a monopoly on coercive power in a given territory. To qualify as such, it solidifies the law, depicted as a coercive order and a tool for upholding public order. On the other hand, the global phenomenon of accelerating economic and social integration, intensified by the IT revolution, has led to the emergence of new actors in global governance, beyond the typical state actors, which subvert the very notion of sovereignty of nation states, when they accumulate economic, social and political power capable of shaping institutional practice and decision-making processes, asserting increasingly larger realms of autonomy and intervention. Moreover, the current technological landscape has given rise to monopoly platforms, which, by directing digital architecture and having the collection, storage and manipulation of data at their disposal, exercise intense power of control over the social body, steering the public arena itself and the rights of freedom and personality of the users of the virtual environments they host, manifesting a potential for standardization as much as the law. Within this context, recent political and communication conflicts, intensified by electoral disputes, have brought into current discussion the use of online platforms for hyper-partisan purposes through the propagation of factoids, the debate on which has been elevated to the parliamentary level by Bill 2.630/2020, commonly referred to as the Fake News Bill. Against the wording given to the parliamentary proposal, however, which increases the burden on platforms, the Big Techs have waged a broad opposition campaign, using their power of empire over cyberspace to do so, by boosting editorials - without the proper insertion of political content labels - and reducing the reach of materials favorable to the text, in an attempt to maintain privileges by manipulating public perception Given this, the question arises: to what extent do Big Techs impact and override the normative monopoly of the Brazilian state, especially in the highlighted episode of the campaign against Bill 2.630/2020? This research seeks, based on this question, to undertake an analysis of the tension between technology companies and the sovereignty of the Brazilian state in the episode of the digital campaign driven by digital platforms against Bill nº 2,630/2020, to discuss the relativization of state authority in the face of the rise of Big Tech's power. The paper first explores the fragmentation of state authority in the face of the rise of Big Tech, while secondly analyzing the responses of Brazilian law to digital conflicts, including the Fake News bill. It will use the deductive approach and the historical, functionalist and monographic procedural methods to establish a timeline, scrutinize the business model operated by Big Techs and analyze the legislative project. We can see, in advance, the emergence of new centers of autonomous power, manifested in national and international contexts, disrupting the prominent role of the state in the formulation and application of law, resulting in a dispute over the normative monopoly.