Distancing minors from social networks can bar access to free information

Qit makes sense for Portugal to legislate on the restriction of minors to social networks when the European Commission has already said that it intends to present a proposal to limit access according to age after summer, Carlos Eugênio is permanent: “In our view it makes no sense”.

“ Even because the way the bill is drawn up has no point where to pick it up, that is, in a cross-sectional way it can even get to the point of barring access to free and exempt information both on social networks and on the own media content distribution platforms in our case ", adds the executive director of the collective management of press author rights in Portugal.

Moreover, “if we have a legitimate will on the part of the European Commission, it is completely extemporaneous that we are legislating in Portugal to look at the problem later on from another point of view, certainly, which is the European point of view and we are somehow overtaken by what European legislation will be,” continues Carlos Eugênio.

The Executive Director points out that, looking at the diploma itself, “there are definitions that do not marry what are definitions of European directives, i.e., they are adventures of the Portuguese legislator, of whom that law was proposed”.

Therefore, “in my view, besides being poorly constructed”, does not take into account where Portugal is inserted.

“ We are in Europe, we are not living alone and, somehow, we are trying to do something that is so disruptive and that can create so many barriers to the consumption of content and that can negatively influence everything that is – and I am not afraid to say it – the financial issue, which is always underlying what the trade in cultural content is, is blatant how that barrier is being imposed”, he criticizes.

In addition, “use mechanisms for access to content through the Digital Mobile Key supervised by parents is eventually creating parallel markets that will distort everything that eventually good the legislator thought about when he created, but that will impact everyone and that will contribute, in my view, to the eventual increase of misinformation”, continues Carlos Eugênio, addressing details of the diploma.

Nowadays, “whether you like it or not, the information is in the digital, it is also in the paper, but much of the information consumption is in the digital, and creating consumer habits in the digital is important”.

In this sense, “to bar users to digital access is to kill a habit of consumption that will then hardly be created, especially in the right way,” warns Carlos Eugênio, alluding to the PSD proposal to restrict access to social networks for minors.

“The problem here is, today, children educated in a coherent and correct way have the possibility to access websites with validated, certified information and correct information that exercises the contradictory [...] of the misinformation they find on the Internet”.

Now, “to somehow bar access to these websites, leaving others potentially available for consumption, will create a confusion such that the habit of later consumption may not be the one you want” and, admits the Visapress Executive Director, “can create a significant problem here in what democracy is at the end of the day.”.