The Brazilian National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (“CONANDA”) has recently issued Resolution No. 245, introducing guidelines to protect minors’ online. Effective as of April 5, 2024, the Resolution establishes new rules towards ensuring a safer digital environment for minors and creates relevant requirements for internet service providers.

The Resolution establishes principles and rules for ensuring and enforcing children and adolescents’ rights. Its objectives include increasing safety, fostering digital literacy and awareness, promoting privacy protection, enhancing content moderation, and empowering parents through parental control tools.

The Resolution imposes various obligations on internet service providers, which may now be required to:

·       Refrain from processing children’s personal data for commercial purposes — such as creating and defining profiles of behavior, consumption, and market segmentation — as well for advertising targeting or broadening the reach of ads;

·       Adopt effective age verification mechanisms to prevent minors from accessing platforms, products, services, and content that are illicit or incompatible with their age;

·       Make available and widely publicize the existence of channels for receiving reports on harmful or illicit content. Such channels must be easily accessible by children;

·       Identify, measure, evaluate, and diligently mitigate real or foreseeable risks to the rights and best interests of children and adolescents related to the functionalities, design, management, and operation of services and systems;

·       Take preventive measures against the radicalization of minors, as well as their recruitment for crime, extremism, and violent behavior and speech against others or themselves, thus promoting a culture of peace, democratic coexistence, and respect for differences;

·       Take down illegal or harmful content involving or targeted at children and adolescents as soon as such content is discovered, regardless of a court order; and

·       Publish, at least annually, reports on (i) transparency, (ii) assessment of risks on the rights and best interests of minors; and (iii) independent auditing.

The Resolution establishes significant new requirements for internet service providers, who must carefully assess the new rules and evaluate how to comply with them.

Our team at Bhering Advogados is closely monitoring all developments regarding internet and social media regulations in Brazil. For further information or assistance, please contact us at [email protected].

 

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