Brazil orders Google to halt campaign against speech bill

By CARLA BRIDI and ELÉONORE HUGHES
Associated Press

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazil’s Justice Ministry has ordered Google to stop conducting what it calls a propaganda campaign against Brazilian legislation aimed at curbing misinformation, or face about $200,000 per hour in fines. The company on Tuesday took down an article that the ministry had labeled propaganda, but it was not immediately clear if the big tech giant was in complete compliance with the agency’s order. Google said in a statement that it was committed to communicating its concerns about the bill “in a public and transparent way” and denied manually altering search results to favor its position. The legislation would establish fines and deadlines for removing misinformation and hate speech from social media and messaging apps, and require tech companies to file reports on transparency.