Angola’s ‘Fake News’ Law Risks Criminalising the Internet

Angola’s proposed law against “false information on the internet” is a deeply flawed piece of legislation. It is presented as a response to disinformation, yet it reads more like a blueprint for state control of digital speech. In a country where civil liberties are legally established on paper but routinely constrained in practice, this bill accelerates an already dangerous trend: eroding legally established civil liberties through expansive enforcement powers, vague standards and punitive sanctions.

The government claims existing legal tools are insufficient. But if gaps existed, they could be addressed by amending current offences to cover online conduct, preserving proportionality and legal certainty. Instead, the executive proposes a sweeping new regime that treats the internet less as a space for civic life and more as a zone to be policed.

One of the bill’s most striking defects is its extraterritorial reach. It does not limit itself to entities physically operating in Angola. Any platform serving Angolan users, or hosting content deemed to have “impact” in the country, could fall under its scope. This is not a technical detail — it is the core of the bill’s ambition: to claim jurisdiction over global platforms and foreign-based publishers simply because Angolans can read them.

That ambition becomes absurd when applied to everyday reality. Consider the services that shape public communication in Angola: Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube. Under the proposed model, they would be expected to comply with highly specific Angola-only obligations — in Portuguese, in open formats, at high frequency — including reporting on user numbers, takedowns, bots, moderation decisions, even response times to complaints, updated on a near-continuous basis.

Does the government seriously expect WhatsApp — an encrypted messaging service — to meet extensive monitoring and reporting requirements without undermining the very privacy architecture that makes it secure? If not, what is the intended endgame: selective enforcement, intimidation, or the implicit threat of blocking platforms until they submit? Either scenario is corrosive.

The bill’s operational logic also collides with basic distinctions essential to free expression. It purports to prohibit disinformation accounts while claiming to protect parody and satire — yet, in practice, it forces platforms to decide at scale which is which, under threat of severe penalties. A parody page mocking a public official, a satirical video, a meme that exaggerates a real scandal: are these protected speech, or “false information”? In environments where criticism is often treated as hostility, ambiguity is not neutral. It becomes a weapon.

For Angola’s independent media, the risk is existential. Much of the country’s critical journalism survives online — through investigative websites, digital outlets, and diaspora-based platforms that publish from outside Angola precisely because domestic pressures are so intense. In practical terms, these websites and platforms have become the last frontier of press freedom: the space where abuses can still be documented when traditional broadcasting and large segments of the media ecosystem remain politically aligned or structurally dependent.

This proposed law targets that frontier indirectly but effectively. Its broad jurisdictional claims and punitive framework can be applied to any outlet “destined” for the Angolan public, or any operation deemed to have “impact” in the country — even if it is based abroad. It is not difficult to see how that could be used to threaten hosting providers, demand takedowns, intimidate editors, or trigger legal harassment through cross-border pressure — not necessarily with dramatic “raids”, but through the quieter machinery of coercion: compliance demands, prosecution threats, and deterrent penalties.

The sanctions regime makes that coercion credible. It combines administrative fines, civil liability and criminal exposure — not only for companies but also for individual executives and managers, who could face prison sentences. In extreme cases, operations may be suspended or forcibly shut down. This is not regulation; it is a chilling architecture.

The predictable result is not a healthier public sphere. It is a fearful one. Platforms may over-remove content to avoid risk. Critical websites may self-censor. Ordinary users may retreat from sharing legitimate information — especially when the line between “false information” and “uncomfortable truth” is left deliberately blurred.

Disinformation is a real challenge. But democracies do not defeat it by building laws that can be used to criminalise speech, outsource censorship under threat, or extend state power beyond borders in the name of “impact”. The more effective answer is to strengthen the conditions that disinformation thrives on: weak institutional transparency, lack of media pluralism, and the dominance of state-aligned narratives.

Angola should combat disinformation — but not by turning the internet into a controlled zone. This law offers the wrong remedy, and it risks undermining the very constitutional values it claims to defend.

By Maka.