Last Monday (27), Youtube suspended for seven days the channel of the Legislative Assembly of the State of São Paulo (Alesp) for violating company guidelines. The measure took place after Deputy Douglas Garcia (Republicans) showed, during parliamentary activity, the documentary “Lockdown, a history of disinformation and power”.
The documentary denies the pandemic and claims that the spread of the coronavirus served a desire by the pharmaceutical industry to profit. Therefore, the production criticizes the use of masks and the lockdown, adopted in Brazil as a measure to contain the advance of Covid-19.
For Youtube, the production shown by the Bolsonaro deputy propagates “incorrect medical information” and, therefore, the channel was suspended. With the measure, Alesp was prevented from publishing new videos on the platform and from broadcasting live public hearings, committee meetings and plenary sessions.
An example took place last Wednesday (29), when Alesp could not broadcast on its channel the session that culminated in the approval of PL 277/2022, known as “PL da Grilagem”, which in practice hands over public lands to agribusiness. . This is because it institutes the State Land Regularization Program, authorizing the state government to regularize public lands occupied by more than 15 modules.
On social media, Garcia criticized the platform. “The São Paulo legislature cannot get on its knees in the face of this attack on democracy promoted by YouTube! They simply censored the channel of the largest Legislative Assembly in Latin America.”
In a note, Alesp reported that it asked Youtube to reconsider the measure. Google, which owns the platform, stated that “all content must follow our Community Guidelines. In addition to a combination of machine intelligence and human reviewers, we also rely on user reports to identify materials with suspicious content and maintain the platform’s community.” safe”.
Editing: Nicolau Soares
