Moderação das redes sociais como meio para combater a desinformação: a aplicação da liberdade de expressão na relação entre usuário e plataforma

Abstract

Exercising free speech became a fundamental condition to maintain a Democratic Rule of Law. With the growth of internet and the digitalization of society, free speech has achieved unprecedent status, in a way that, through social media, society has seen a speech’s capacity to reach very significative levels. From this reality, the people don’t receive information passively anymore, but, on the contrary, actively participate on these contents’ production and circulation. The oncoming problem is the risk of amplifying the disinformation process, which is not new, but is strongly enhanced due to social media. What has been seen is the usage of content moderation on social media as a tool to fight the disinformation process, arising, from this, the research’s problem: when moderating the content on social media aiming to combat disinformation, must the digital platforms observe the constitutional provisions about protection of free speech? The following work, done through the inductive approach method, by bibliographical and documental survey, aims to understand the origin and development of free speech, and to identify how this right is established in Brazil’s legal system. The study also investigates the phenomenon of disinformation and how it happens on the internet. The main aspects about social media moderation are analyzed as well, this being a tool that can be used to fight disinformation. Following, the horizontal effectiveness of fundamental rights is conceptualized, in order to understand if the right to free speech must be observed in the relation between the user and the digital platform. Thus, as a result, it was concluded that disinformation is a problem that affects the society, with consequences reflecting over various areas of the community. Besides, it was unders tood that this phenomenon is enhanced by the use of social media, and that content moderation can be a useful tool to minimize its negative effects. However, it was concluded that, as a general rule, fundamental rights beam their effects all over the legal order, even in private relations. Therefore, digital platforms, when implementing and executing mechanisms of moderation of digital spaces, must, somehow, observe the constitutional provisions regarding free speech.