Facebook condemns Brazil's apex court's order to block Bolsonaro allies' handles globally

Facebook on August 1 condemned the Supreme Court of Brazil after it asked the social media giant to block 12 handles of allies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro even outside the country and also imposed heavy fines on the company. Facebook has said that it would appeal the decision as it feels that the order is 'extreme' and violates 'freedom of expression' where the Brazilian Supreme Court doesn't have jurisdiction. The court is overseeing an investigation into allegations that supporters of Bolsonaro ran a campaign on social media in 2018 to discredit the court and character assassinate and threaten its judges.

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The Supreme Court of Brazil in May asked Facebook and Twitter to block 12 and 16 handles respectively from their platforms. However, on July 30, the court summoned both the companies and said that they failed to comply with its orders as they did not block the handles globally and people were able to access it with foreign IP. The court on July 31 slapped a fine on Facebook of $3,67,710 and asked it to ban the handles globally or face daily fines of 1,00,000 reais. It is not clear if the court imposed similar fines on Twitter.

According to reports, members of far-right who are being investigated for spreading fake news during Brazil's 2018 election are also accused of violating laws of hate speech. 

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Facebook to pay $650 million in US

Facebook has agreed to pay $650 million as a settlement in a class-lawsuit action filed against the company related to a breach of privacy of Illinois users. According to reports, users from Illinois, United States filed a case against the social media giant after the company violated the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act when it collected pictures of local residents without their consent for its automatic photo recognition technology that allowed Facebook to automatically tag someone by recognizing their face in the image posted by another user.

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