And it just got worse. Telegram sent all brazilian users a message this week about the Fake News law explaining how dangerous it is and how people should fight it.
Alexandre de Moraes and most of the Brazilian establishment just shat themselves in rage over it. Moraes demanded the messages be deleted and a retraction issued where Telegram would pretty much say "it was all a lie guys actually the law is awesome" in 3 days or else they would be charged 100k BRL A HOUR as a fine (about 20k USD). Naturally there is nothing illegal about this and this follows no real law.
Telegram decided to comply. But they sent the message with their own preface explaining they were forced to do it:
We received an order from the Supreme Court of Brazil that binds Telegram to remove our previous message about
PL 2630/2020 and to send a new message to users, which is included below.
"Por determinação do SUPREMO TRIBUNAL FEDERAL, a empresa Telegram comunica: A mensagem anterior do Telegram caracterizou FLAGRANTE e ILÍCITA DESINFORMAÇÃO atentatória ao Congresso Nacional, ao Poder Judiciário, ao Estado de Direito e à Democracia Brasileira, pois, fraudulentamente, distorceu a discussão e os debates sobre a regulação dos provedores de redes sociais e de serviços de mensageria privada (PL 2630), na tentativa de induzir e instigar os usuários à coagir os parlamentares."
As I said," flagrant and illicit disinformation" is not a crime nor is it predicted as a crime. It is censorship.