Brazil: a judge orders the blocking of Telegram messaging, a blow for Bolsonaro
A judge of the Supreme Court of Brazil blocked this Friday March 18 the popular online messaging service Telegram, the application being widely used by far-right president Jari Bolsonaro.
AP - Eraldo Peres
Text by: RFI Follow
4 mins
A judge of the Supreme Court of Brazil blocked this Friday March 18 the popular online messenger Telegram.
The application is widely used by Brazilians, starting with far-right President Jair Bolsonaro who denounced a decision endangering the "freedom" of Brazilians.
In a country plagued by misinformation, this measure came seven months before the presidential election.
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On several occasions,
Telegram
"
did not comply with judicial orders
", wrote Judge Alexandre de Moraes in his judgment published on the official website of the Supreme Court, which orders "
the complete and integral suspension of the operation in Brazil of Telegram
», downloaded on 53% of mobile phones.
The decision "
is inadmissible
", reacted
President Bolsonaro
.
The judge “
has not acted against the two or three people who he thinks should be blocked, so he decides to affect 70 million people (...).
What is at stake is our freedom
,” the president said.
This encrypted online messaging was a keystone of Jair Bolsonaro
's campaign strategy
, which aims for presidential re-election in October and defends freedom of expression without limits.
Earlier, Justice and Security Minister Anderson Torres tweeted that millions of Brazilians were "
wronged by an individual decision
" and added that his ministry was studying "
a solution to restore the people's right to use the social network
”, without specifying what measure he intended to adopt.
24 hours to block access to the platform
Pavel Durov
, the Russian founder of Telegram headquartered in Dubai, apologized to Brazil's Supreme Court on Friday and claimed it was a "
communication problem
".
“
It seems that we had an issue with emails between our corporate telegram.org addresses and the Supreme Court of Brazil.
As a result of this communication problem, the court ordered to block Telegram, because we did not respond
, ”wrote Pavel Durov on his platform, asking for a new delay to meet the demands of Brazilian justice.
Unlike other platforms, on Telegram there is practically no content moderation of messages and groups can gather up to 200,000 members, which greatly increases the viral potential of false information.
This has earned Telegram sanctions in some countries, from the temporary or permanent suspension of its services to the targeted blocking of certain accounts or groups of users.
The Supreme Court judge cites Telegram's refusal to block the account of Allan dos Santos, a Bolsonarist blogger under investigation for disinformation, at the request of Brazilian justice.
The magistrate also mentioned the platform's lack of cooperation in child pornography cases.
He gave 24 hours to the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) to enforce his decision and block access to the platform throughout the territory, until Telegram "
applies the judicial orders
" imposed on him .
.
The presidential election in sight
On February 15, Telegram was conspicuously absent from an agreement signed by the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) with eight digital platforms (Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, Google, Instagram, YouTube and Kwai) which pledged to fight the disinformation in view of the October presidential election.
TSE President Luis Roberto Barroso claimed in December that "
a lot of conspiracy theories and false information
" were being disseminated "
without any control
" on Telegram.
At the time, he had already threatened the application with an “
outright suspension in Brazil
”.
“
After the illegal investigations and imprisonments, as well as the censorship of social networks, Brazil is officially a judicial dictatorship
!
“Reacted Bolsonarist MP Carlos Jordy on Twitter, an allusion to the arrest of Youtubers as part of a Supreme Court investigation into disinformation.
President Bolsonaro tried last year to limit moderation on social networks by decree, in the name of freedom of expression.
Decree subsequently canceled by the Senate
.
The election of the far-right president in 2018 was marred by the massive dissemination of false information, particularly on WhatsApp, Telegram's main competitor.
►
To read also
: in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro joins the Liberal Party, his re-election in mind
(and with
AFP
)
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