In the document published today, we offer considerations about the dynamics of functioning of what we call “knowledge platforms”, such as Wikipedia, the Internet Archive and GitHub. They are platforms that are part of a broader movement of a collective construction of knowledge, and is permeated by a participatory culture in which all users can contribute, without tangible material benefits. They are not for profit and, therefore, their maintenance depends to a large extent on donations and voluntary work. Still, they have other particularities that have impacts on their architecture and operation.

It is common for the regulatory discussion to be centered on what we call commercial platforms – and it is no different in the debate surrounding the project entitled the “Brazilian Law on Freedom, Responsibility and Transparency on the Internet”, at this moment. But the internet is made up of a diverse ecosystem, and if this diversity is not taken into account, there is a risk of a certain standard, designed for one context, to be applied in another, with unpredictable and unwanted consequences. Here, we point out particularities of these platforms that show that the debate has not been carried out with them in mind – and that, in order to preserve their existence and power, they should be explicitly excluded from the scope of this regulation. We also point out how a similar discussion took place around the European Union’s Copyright Directive – which culminated in the exclusion of these platforms from the scope of that standard.

With this, it is intended to emphasize that the internet is a plural and complex ecosystem and, therefore, solutions designed for half a dozen platforms may not work for spaces of another nature. Worse than that, they can make the existence of these spaces with such an important mission impossible in making knowledge accessible to all. This debate refers to the bill in question, but there are many other regulatory discussions that need to consider this diversity.

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Key points

• As they are not concerned with measurements of engagement, knowledge platforms generally lack mechanisms that allow users to re-share content or express agreement or other feelings about viewed content.
• They have a decentralized organization, characterized by horizontal structures and the formation of relatively autonomous coordination centers
• Build internal “bottom-up” standards, reflecting their users’ social practices
• In them, the moderation of content (such as the application of measures to remove content and ban users) is communitarian, that is, users voluntarily assume administrative functions and make the most difficult / complex decisions collectively, through debate and discussion with consensus building.

This set of particular characteristics imposes a challenge to regulation, especially considering the value of such platforms for the production of culture and knowledge, the preservation of memory and the promotion of alternative and non-business arrangements in the use of the internet. In this way, our work offers five recommendations, applicable to any legislative or regulatory debate, with the aim of preserving the positives they bring:

1. Generic obligations to collect personal data through technical devices and / or compulsory registration may make the operation of these platforms unfeasible, and so it is essential that the user can choose to use a pseudonym when contributing 
2. The obligation to designate a representative or to have a headquarters in the national territory represents a significant burden for the operation of these platforms in Brazil, considering that they are not for profit and depend on voluntary work 
3. The compulsory prior licensing and the adoption of content filters could discourage users from making contributions thereby bureaucratizing the process, in addition to imposing the adoption of high cost technologies, unfeasible for smaller and / or non-commercial platforms 
4. Transparency obligations designed for large commercial platforms are not compatible with the functioning of knowledge platforms, since content is built collaboratively on them, with constant editions and updates; moreover, the frequent publication of reports presupposes considerable infrastructure for the collection and organization of this information, which is not common for platforms of this type 
5. The introduction of measures such as guaranteeing appeals in content moderation processes and setting deadlines for responding to user complaints could create a series of difficulties for these platforms, necessitating the professionalization of content management, which would put the democratic model of communitarian moderation adopted by them at risk.