The Spanish government has approved a plan to make it mandatory for influencers with thousands of followers on social media to publish a correction, just like the media, when they spread false or inaccurate information that harms private citizens.
This measure is part of a strategy to “strengthen transparency, pluralism and the right to information” promoted by the Spanish executive headed by the socialist Pedro Sánchez.
It was one of the president's commitments when, at the end of April and after five days of “reflection” in which there was speculation about his resignation, he announced that he would continue to lead the government despite the “harassment” suffered by his wife, Begoña Gómez, who has ended up being investigated in court as a victim of “deliberate hoaxes”, according to Sánchez, who then promised to “work tirelessly” for “the pending regeneration” of Spanish democracy.
Specifically, the Spanish government proposes updating the law that regulates the right of rectification, in force since 1984, to extend it to the media of "social communication" and to "users of special relevance of online platforms", as it considers those who have more than 100,000 followers on a single platform or 200,000 on different social networks.
'Influencers' whose content has a reach, admits the government of Pedro Sánchez, "greater than that of traditional media", which Spanish legislation has obliged for 40 years to rectify false or incomplete information.
"There are professionals of hoaxes and lies who every day muddy our public debate with lies and falsehoods," stressed the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, in a press conference.
On social networks, some of these professionals have not been slow to take notice. “The government imposes censorship against Twitter users,” wrote Javier Negre on the social network X, where he has more than 300,000 followers.
Director of the controversial platform 'Estado de Alarma', Negre has accumulated sentences against him for spreading hoaxes and is one of the prominent voices of the so-called “fascist sphere”, a term imported from France that President Pedro Sánchez has used in parliament to refer to right-wing agitators with a prominent presence on social networks who are dedicated to “politicizing, insulting and generating distrust” against the left-wing Spanish government.
Agitators such as Alvise Pérez, the great political surprise of the year in Spain after collecting more than 800,000 votes and three MEPs last June in the European elections with his candidacy ‘The party is over’, which became popular on social media after the pandemic for spreading conspiracy theories and 'fake news': his Telegram channel is presented as “a means of communication” followed by more than 700,000 people and in which even “mercenary” journalists are harassed, in the words of Alvise, who also accumulates judicial sentences for his publications.
"We will have situations of great legal uncertainty"
The proposed reform of the right of rectification proposed by the Spanish government will also "speed up" the judicial procedure when the right of rectification is not respected, "in such a way that the judicial sentence can be much faster," according to the Minister of Justice.
In the absence of knowing the details of the project, the professor of Information Law at the Complutense University of Madrid, Sabela Serrano, warns that this reform equates journalists with 'influencers', something that she describes as "dangerous" for information professionals.
"The basis of the right to rectification is that journalists can make mistakes acting in good faith, and now they want to include information made in bad faith. If we equate 'influencers' with journalists, who are professionals trained to investigate and contrast information, we are distorting the right to rectification," says this professor, who suggests the inclusion of precise definitions of what is a hoax, disinformation or pseudo-media in the new law.
"Because if not, we will have situations of great legal uncertainty," adds Sabela Serrano, who is in favor of responsibility for the dissemination of fake news falling on those responsible for the platforms and social networks.
"In any case, the right to rectification affects data and facts, not opinions. "You can never claim to have corrected someone's opinion," adds this university professor.
RTV / listin diario
