Bolsonaro vs. Bolsonaro Lula: a referendum on democracy in Brazil
Some of the main narratives circulating in Brazil ahead of the first vote on Oct. 2 include explicit allegations of fraud, messages attacking the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and false calls to “inspectors” at the polls, according to Brazilian and leftist researchers. Viral audio and video on Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook and TikTok alleged that ballot boxes were prefilled with votes for former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Disinformation has also passed through the left. The messages involve false accusations that Bolsonaro confessed to cannibalism and pedophilia.
Major social media corporations allowed Stop the Steal’s content to spread virtually unchecked until the violent fallout from the rhetoric became transparent on January 6, 2021. Researchers found that Facebook teams in particular were the main car organizers before Stop the Steal. Capitol, and that Facebook’s own software algorithms have played a role in helping those teams gain members.
Since then, the corporations that added Meta and, to a lesser extent, TikTok have vowed to do better, adding a crackdown on election-related content that can lead to violence. But the latest evidence shows that corporations are not delivering on their promises, especially outside the doorstep of the U. S.
“What we’re seeing is that Meta and Google are taking the protective Brazilian electorate less seriously than their U. S. counterparts,” said Nell Greenberg, deputy director at Avaaz. Before the U. S. midterm elections, get rid of content that incites violence and spreads false facts about the election.
“There are still very important moves you can take to help secure Election Day and avoid a possible ‘January 6’ in Brazil,” he wrote in an email. “The question is, will they do one of them?”
Meta spokesman Tom Reynolds said the company has updated its search team in recent weeks before the election. He said that since Oct. 2, smarter search effects for election-related terms have directed users to real Brazilian government data.
“We work to remove various keyword recommendations that can lead to incorrect information and implement tags in election-related posts in any of the apps,” he said. “About 30 million other people in Brazil clicked on those election tags on Facebook and were directed to the electoral justice website. “
Out and leading the polls, Lula comes on a full political comeback
TikTok spokeswoman Jamie Favazza said the company invested in protecting the striker from Brazil’s elections.
“We assume our duty to the integrity of our platform and elections with the utmost seriousness and welcome feedback from NGOs, academics and other experts,” he said in an email. “We continue to invest in our policy, safety and security groups to fight election data, as we also provide access to authoritative data through our election guide. “
Brazilian think tank NetLab found that Meta and Google allowed political candidates to run classified ads on their platforms in the first round of voting on Oct. 2, even though such advertising is prohibited by Brazilian law in that period. The organization also uncovered evidence of paid advertising encouraging military interventions in elections while voters went to the polls.
A check of Meta and YouTube’s advertising systems through the human rights organization Global Witness found that corporations approved a large number of misleading classified ads, adding ads encouraging others not to vote or giving false dates for poll posts. YouTube said it had “reviewed classified classified ads in consultation and got rid of those that violated our policies,” the Global Witness report showed that all classified ads submitted had been approved through the Google-owned site.
Bolsonaro is as divided over him as the rest of Brazil
To examine how platforms pushed other people toward misinformation, SumOfUs researchers created fake accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. They then typed the terms “vote,” “interventions,” and “fraud” into the search bars of those social networks and counted the results.
They found that five of the seven teams advised via Facebook on searches for the term “intervention” lobbied for military intervention in Brazil’s elections, while five of the seven teams advised under the search term “fraud” encouraged others to sign up for teams that questioned the integrity of the election. The teams have names like “Intervention to save Brazil” and “Already intervention of the army”.
Overall, the organization found that 60% of all content through Facebook and Instagram spread false facts about the election process.