Representative Beto Preto has until Monday (17th) to reach a settlement in impropriety case
Former Paraná Health Secretary negotiates with prosecutors, potentially avoiding conviction impacting political rights.
Tempo previsto
16/4/2025
Global outage on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp highlights media's vulnerability to Big Tech monopolies.
On the afternoon of last Monday (4th), three communication applications went offline worldwide. It’s unlikely that anyone missed it. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which reached the second, third, and fourth places, respectively, among the most downloaded globally in April of this year, suddenly stopped working – and took about seven hours to come back online.
The news – even on television – offered a technical explanation, which represents part of the problem. When reporters wrote or spoke about "DNS", they offered the public an engineering justification for the outage. We ask whether such information could effectively contribute to an individual's understanding of how the network functions.
Although the issue of "DNS", the digital address, summarizes, perhaps hastily, the reason for the problem, it is pertinent that the press discuss the aspect of big tech's responsibility in daily life. To what extent have individuals and companies become dependent on digital services for personal relationships and business practices?
Some headlines highlighted the decline in Mark Zuckerberg's fortune in the face of the access problem. Such fortune could be put to the test given the intention of compensation claims. For lawyer Kaique Yohan Kondraski Servo, however, "it would be difficult to prevail against Facebook, given the condition of fortuitous event or force majeure, which is what the platform defect resembles."
For some, being without these programs meant being "without Internet". With the Facebook failure, there was an increase in the number of complaints against telephone and internet providers. Some people even fiddled with their routers, trying to regain lost access.
In some phone plans, access to certain platforms is not charged. Even if the customer has no credit, they can continue browsing. This is "zero-rating", which has contributed to the idea of "walled gardens".
For the lead researcher of the Research Group on Political Communication and Digital Democracy (Compadd) at UFPR, Rafael Sampaio, "a change began to be felt starting with Web 2.0, when platforms started creating digital walls. People spend most of their time within these platforms. So, if that specific network stops working, the Internet as a whole also stops, in the user's experience".
What risks does this perception raise? How much do we, in the communications industry, contribute to the maintenance and even strengthening of these "walled gardens"?
Leia insights sobre a interação de humanos com modelos de linguagem de IA, e sobre os ODS no Brasil. Lab Educação 2050 Ltda, que mantém este site, é signatária do Pacto Global das Nações Unidas.
Failures expose online frailty, demanding inclusive tech solutions.
Resilient infrastructure boosts digital access, drives sustainable growth.
Former Paraná Health Secretary negotiates with prosecutors, potentially avoiding conviction impacting political rights.
Federal Congressman for Paraná, Beto Preto (PSD), has until Monday (17th) to accept or reject a deal with the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP). The summons was ordered by the 1st Court of Public Finance of Apucarana (PR), relating to a case of administrative impropriety.
As a condition for closing the case, the MP proposes that Preto compensate for damages and pay a fine of R$ 25,000. In the lawsuit, the prosecution points to losses to public funds caused by a fraudulent bidding process in 2013, amounting to R$ 127,194.43.
Beto Preto headed the Health Department in Paraná during the pandemic. It was then that he made a name for himself in the election that took him to Brasília. He is currently on Governor Ratinho Júnior's shortlist for succession to the Iguaçu Palace. If convicted of an act of impropriety, he could have his political rights suspended.
According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, Beto Preto, then president of the Intermunicipal Consortium of the Ivaí Valley (Cisvir), contributed to a bid-rigging scheme by assisting a criminal organization led by the deceased businessman Marcelo Cernescu.
The then-president approved a bidding procedure without considering several irregularities. The scheme involved, according to the MP, shell companies and the contracting of services considered unnecessary because they should have been provided directly by the public administration.
In the initial petition, the prosecution describes illegalities in the bidding process for the contracting of an object described as "unnecessary, costly, and flagrantly illegal".
Furthermore, the elements gathered in the investigation indicate that, to achieve the illicit objectives, regardless of the contracting municipality, a similar modus operandi was employed, consisting of a joint effort between public officials and businessmen of the group to "assemble" bidding processes for the contracting of an unnecessary, costly, and flagrantly illegal object, whose acts bear clear indications of concealment.
—Initial petition of the Public Prosecutor's Office.
For the MP, the items in the bidding process do not justify hiring a private company, and it is a mere artifice "unequivocally created for the diversion of money from public coffers".
Congressman Beto Preto even had his assets frozen, along with the other defendants. Due to a change in the Administrative Improbity Law approved in 2021, the judge in the case ordered the unfreezing of the assets.
Micro-doc reveals Jenin camp reality, a symbol of Palestinian resistance in the West Bank.
Ten Palestinians were killed and one hundred injured by Israeli military forces in one of the largest operations against Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp in years.
Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank, where Jenin is located, since 1967. This represents 56 years of illegal occupation, violating international law.
Palestinians are the largest refugee group in the world. They have lived in refugee status for 75 years, both abroad and within Palestine itself, without the right to return to their regions of origin or even to move freely within their own country.
Palestinians have the right to resist the illegal occupation, the expulsion from their homes, and the chronic violence to which they are subjected.
We, writer and journalist Cassiana Pizaia, and analyst and journalist Vinícius Sgarbe, produced a micro-documentary about Jenin over a year ago, following two trips to the Middle East.
