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YouTube Fascism in Brazil

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COMMENT: In recent pro­grams, we have exam­ined the pro­found role of online tech­nol­o­gy in the pro­mo­tion of fas­cism, as well as over­lap­ping areas of intel­li­gence activ­i­ty. In that con­text, it is vital to remem­ber that the Inter­net was devel­oped as a weapon, with the focus of the tech­nol­o­gy being coun­terin­sur­gency. In Brazil, the rise of Jair Bol­sonaro’s fas­cist gov­ern­ment received deci­sive momen­tum from YouTube, which is trans­form­ing the polit­i­cal land­scape in Brazil, as it is in this coun­try.

 “How YouTube Rad­i­cal­ized Brazil” by Max Fish­er and Aman­da Taub; The New York Times; 8/11/2019.

When Matheus Dominguez was 16, YouTube rec­om­mend­ed a video that changed his life.

He was in a band in Niterói, a beach-ringed city in Brazil, and prac­ticed gui­tar by watch­ing tuto­ri­als online.

YouTube had recent­ly installed a pow­er­ful new arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence sys­tem that learned from user behav­ior and paired videos with rec­om­men­da­tions for oth­ers. One day, it direct­ed him to an ama­teur gui­tar teacher named Nan­do Moura, who had gained a wide fol­low­ing by post­ing videos about heavy met­al, video games and, most of all, pol­i­tics.

In col­or­ful and para­noid far-right rants, Mr. Moura accused fem­i­nists, teach­ers and main­stream politi­cians of wag­ing vast con­spir­a­cies. Mr. Dominguez was hooked.

As his time on the site grew, YouTube rec­om­mend­ed videos from oth­er far-right fig­ures. One was a law­mak­er named Jair Bol­sonaro, then a mar­gin­al fig­ure in nation­al pol­i­tics — but a star in YouTube’s far-right com­mu­ni­ty in Brazil, where the plat­form has become more wide­ly watched than all but one TV chan­nel.

Last year, he became Pres­i­dent Bol­sonaro.

“YouTube became the social media plat­form of the Brazil­ian right,” said Mr. Dominguez, now a lanky 17-year-old who says he, too, plans to seek polit­i­cal office.

Mem­bers of the nation’s new­ly empow­ered far right — from grass-roots orga­niz­ers to fed­er­al law­mak­ers — say their move­ment would not have risen so far, so fast, with­out YouTube’s rec­om­men­da­tion engine.

New research has found they may be cor­rect. YouTube’s search and rec­om­men­da­tion sys­tem appears to have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly divert­ed users to far-right and con­spir­a­cy chan­nels in Brazil.

A New York Times inves­ti­ga­tion in Brazil found that, time and again, videos pro­mot­ed by the site have upend­ed cen­tral ele­ments of dai­ly life.

Teach­ers describe class­rooms made unruly by stu­dents who quote from YouTube con­spir­a­cy videos or who, encour­aged by right-wing YouTube stars, secret­ly record their instruc­tors. . . .

. . . . And in pol­i­tics, a wave of right-wing YouTube stars ran for office along­side Mr. Bol­sonaro, some win­ning by his­toric mar­gins. Most still use the plat­form, gov­ern­ing the world’s fourth-largest democ­ra­cy through inter­net-honed trolling and provo­ca­tion. . . .

. . . . But the emo­tions that draw peo­ple in — like fear, doubt and anger — are often cen­tral fea­tures of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, and in par­tic­u­lar, experts say, of right-wing extrem­ism.

As the sys­tem sug­gests more provoca­tive videos to keep users watch­ing, it can direct them toward extreme con­tent they might oth­er­wise nev­er find. And it is designed to lead users to new top­ics to pique new inter­est — a boon for chan­nels like Mr. Moura’s that use pop cul­ture as a gate­way to far-right ideas.

The sys­tem now dri­ves 70 per­cent of total time on the plat­form, the com­pa­ny says. As view­er­ship sky­rock­ets glob­al­ly, YouTube is bring­ing in over $1 bil­lion a month, some ana­lysts believe.

Zeynep Tufek­ci, a social media schol­ar, has called it “one of the most pow­er­ful rad­i­cal­iz­ing instru­ments of the 21st cen­tu­ry.”

Com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives dis­put­ed the stud­ies’ method­ol­o­gy and said that the platform’s sys­tems do not priv­i­lege any one view­point or direct users toward extrem­ism. How­ev­er, com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­ced­ed some of the find­ings and promised to make changes.

Far­shad Shad­loo, a spokesman, said that YouTube has “invest­ed heav­i­ly in the poli­cies, resources and prod­ucts” to reduce the spread of harm­ful mis­in­for­ma­tion, adding, “we’ve seen that author­i­ta­tive con­tent is thriv­ing in Brazil and is some of the most rec­om­mend­ed con­tent on the site.”

Danah Boyd, founder of the think tank Data & Soci­ety, attrib­uted the dis­rup­tion in Brazil to YouTube’s unre­lent­ing push for view­er engage­ment, and the rev­enues it gen­er­ates.

Though cor­rup­tion scan­dals and a deep reces­sion had already dev­as­tat­ed Brazil’s polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment and left many Brazil­ians ready for a break with the sta­tus quo, Ms. Boyd called YouTube’s impact a wor­ry­ing indi­ca­tion of the platform’s grow­ing impact on democ­ra­cies world­wide.

“This is hap­pen­ing every­where,” she said.

The Par­ty of YouTube

Mau­rí­cio Mar­tins, the local vice pres­i­dent of Mr. Bolsonaro’s par­ty in Niterói, cred­it­ed “most” of the party’s recruit­ment to YouTube — includ­ing his own.

He was killing time on the site one day, he recalled, when the plat­form showed him a video by a right-wing blog­ger. He watched out of curios­i­ty. It showed him anoth­er, and then anoth­er.

“Before that, I didn’t have an ide­o­log­i­cal polit­i­cal back­ground,” Mr. Mar­tins said. YouTube’s auto-play­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, he declared, were “my polit­i­cal edu­ca­tion.”

“It was like that with every­one,” he said.

The platform’s polit­i­cal influ­ence is increas­ing­ly felt in Brazil­ian schools.

“Some­times I’m watch­ing videos about a game, and all of a sud­den it’s a Bol­sonaro video,” said Inza­ghi D., a 17-year-old high school­er in Niterói.

More and more, his fel­low stu­dents are mak­ing extrem­ist claims, often cit­ing as evi­dence YouTube stars like Mr. Moura, the gui­tarist-turned-con­spir­acist.

“It’s the main source that kids have to get infor­ma­tion,” he said.

Few illus­trate YouTube’s influ­ence bet­ter than Car­los Jordy.

Mus­cle­bound and heav­i­ly tat­tooed — his left hand bears a flam­ing skull with dia­mond eyes — he joined the City Coun­cil in 2017 with few prospects of ris­ing through tra­di­tion­al pol­i­tics. So Mr. Jordy took inspi­ra­tion from blog­gers like Mr. Moura and his polit­i­cal men­tor, Mr. Bol­sonaro, turn­ing his focus to YouTube.

He post­ed videos accus­ing local teach­ers of con­spir­ing to indoc­tri­nate stu­dents into com­mu­nism. The videos won him a “nation­al audi­ence,” he said, and pro­pelled his stun­ning rise, only two years lat­er, to the fed­er­al leg­is­la­ture.

“If social media didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “Jair Bol­sonaro wouldn’t be pres­i­dent.”

Down The Rab­bit Hole

A few hun­dred miles away from Niterói, a team of researchers led by Vir­gilio Almei­da at the Fed­er­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Minas Gerais hunched over com­put­ers, try­ing under­stand how YouTube shapes its users’ real­i­ty.

The team ana­lyzed tran­scripts from thou­sands of videos, as well as the com­ments beneath them. Right-wing chan­nels in Brazil, they found, had seen their audi­ences expand far faster than oth­ers did, and seemed to be tilt­ing the site’s over­all polit­i­cal con­tent.

In the months after YouTube changed its algo­rithm, pos­i­tive men­tions of Mr. Bol­sonaro bal­looned. So did men­tions of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that he had float­ed. This began as polls still showed him to be deeply unpop­u­lar, sug­gest­ing that the plat­form was doing more than mere­ly reflect­ing polit­i­cal trends.

A team at Harvard’s Berk­man Klein Cen­ter set out to test whether the Brazil­ian far right’s mete­oric rise on the plat­form had been boost­ed by YouTube’s rec­om­men­da­tion engine.

Jonas Kaiser and Yaso­dara Cór­do­va, with Adri­an Rauch­fleisch of Nation­al Tai­wan Uni­ver­si­ty, pro­grammed a Brazil-based serv­er to enter a pop­u­lar chan­nel or search term, then open YouTube’s top rec­om­men­da­tions, then fol­low the rec­om­men­da­tions on each of those, and so on.

By repeat­ing this thou­sands of times, the researchers tracked how the plat­form moved users from one video to the next. They found that after users watched a video about pol­i­tics or even enter­tain­ment, YouTube’s rec­om­men­da­tions often favored right-wing, con­spir­a­cy-filled chan­nels like Mr. Moura’s.

Cru­cial­ly, users who watched one far-right chan­nel would often be shown many more.

The algo­rithm had unit­ed once-mar­gin­al chan­nels — and then built an audi­ence for them, the researchers con­clud­ed.

One of those chan­nels belonged to Mr. Bol­sonaro, who had long used the plat­form to post hoax­es and con­spir­a­cies. Though a YouTube ear­ly adopter, his online fol­low­ing had done lit­tle to expand his polit­i­cal base, which bare­ly exist­ed on a nation­al lev­el.

Then Brazil’s polit­i­cal sys­tem col­lapsed just as YouTube’s pop­u­lar­i­ty there soared. Mr. Bolsonaro’s views had not changed. But YouTube’s far-right, where he was a major fig­ure, saw its audi­ence explode, help­ing to prime large num­bers of Brazil­ians for his mes­sage at a time when the coun­try was ripe for a polit­i­cal shift.

YouTube chal­lenged the researchers’ method­ol­o­gy and said its inter­nal data con­tra­dict­ed their find­ings. But the com­pa­ny declined the Times’ requests for that data, as well as requests for cer­tain sta­tis­tics that would reveal whether or not the researchers’ find­ings were accu­rate.

‘Dr. YouTube’

The con­spir­a­cies were not lim­it­ed to pol­i­tics. Many Brazil­ians search­ing YouTube for health care infor­ma­tion found videos that ter­ri­fied them: some said Zika was being spread by vac­cines, or by the insec­ti­cides meant to curb the spread of the mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease that has rav­aged north­east­ern Brazil.

The videos appeared to rise on the plat­form in much the same way as extrem­ist polit­i­cal con­tent: by mak­ing alarm­ing claims and promis­ing for­bid­den truths that kept users glued to their screens.

Doc­tors, social work­ers and for­mer gov­ern­ment offi­cials said the videos had cre­at­ed the foun­da­tion of a pub­lic health cri­sis as fright­ened patients refused vac­cines and even anti-Zika insec­ti­cides.

The con­se­quences have been pro­nounced in poor­er com­mu­ni­ties like Maceió, a city in Brazil’s north­east that was among the hard­est hit by Zika. . . .

When Zika first spread in 2015, health work­ers dis­trib­uted lar­vi­cides that killed the mos­qui­toes that spread the dis­ease.

Not long after YouTube installed its new rec­om­men­da­tion engine, Dr. Santana’s patients began telling him that they’d seen videos blam­ing Zika on vac­cines — and, lat­er, on lar­vi­cides. Many refused both.

Dr. Auriene Oliviera, an infec­tious dis­ease spe­cial­ist at the same hos­pi­tal, said patients increas­ing­ly defied her advice, includ­ing on pro­ce­dures cru­cial to their child’s sur­vival.

“They say, ‘No, I’ve researched it on Google, I’ve seen it on YouTube,” she said.

Med­ical providers, she said, were com­pet­ing “every sin­gle day” against “Dr. Google and Dr. YouTube” — and they were los­ing.

Mard­jane Nunes, a Zika expert who recent­ly left a senior role in the health min­istry, said that health work­ers across Brazil have been report­ing sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences. As more com­mu­ni­ties refuse the anti-Zika lar­vi­cide, she added, the dis­ease is see­ing a small resur­gence.

“Social media is win­ning,” she said.

Brazil’s med­ical com­mu­ni­ty had rea­son to feel out­matched. The Har­vard researchers found that YouTube’s sys­tems fre­quent­ly direct­ed users who searched for infor­ma­tion on Zika, or even those who watched a rep­utable video on health issues, toward con­spir­a­cy chan­nels.

A spokesman for YouTube con­firmed the Times’ find­ings, call­ing them unin­tend­ed, and said the com­pa­ny would change how its search tool sur­faced videos relat­ed to Zika.

An ‘Ecosys­tem of Hate’

As the far right rose, many of its lead­ing voic­es had learned to weaponize the con­spir­a­cy videos, offer­ing their vast audi­ences a tar­get: peo­ple to blame. Even­tu­al­ly, the YouTube con­spir­acists turned their spot­light on Deb­o­ra Diniz, a women’s rights activist whose abor­tion advo­ca­cy had long made her a tar­get of the far right.

Bernar­do Küster, a YouTube star whose home­made rants had won him 750,000 sub­scribers and an endorse­ment from Mr. Bol­sonaro, accused her of involve­ment in the sup­posed Zika plots.

The very peo­ple work­ing to help fam­i­lies affect­ed by Zika, their videos implied, were behind the dis­ease. Backed by shad­owy for­eign­ers, their goal was to abol­ish Brazil’s abor­tion ban — or even make abor­tions manda­to­ry.

As far-right and con­spir­a­cy chan­nels began cit­ing one anoth­er, YouTube’s rec­om­men­da­tion sys­tem learned to string their videos togeth­er. How­ev­er implau­si­ble any indi­vid­ual rumor might be on its own, joined togeth­er, they cre­at­ed the impres­sion that dozens of dis­parate sources were reveal­ing the same ter­ri­fy­ing truth.

“It feels like the con­nec­tion is made by the view­er, but the con­nec­tion is made by the sys­tem,” Ms. Diniz said.

Threats of rape and tor­ture filled Ms. Diniz’s phone and email. Some cit­ed her dai­ly rou­tines. Many echoed claims from Mr. Küster’s videos, she said.

Mr. Küster glee­ful­ly men­tioned, though nev­er explic­it­ly endorsed, the threats. That kept him just with­in YouTube’s rules.

When the uni­ver­si­ty where Ms. Diniz taught received a warn­ing that a gun­man would shoot her and her stu­dents, and the police said they could no longer guar­an­tee her safe­ty, she left Brazil.

“The YouTube sys­tem of rec­om­mend­ing the next video and the next video,” she said, had cre­at­ed “an ecosys­tem of hate.”

“‘I heard here that she’s an ene­my of Brazil. I hear in the next one that fem­i­nists are chang­ing fam­i­ly val­ues. And the next one I hear that they receive mon­ey from abroad” she said. “That loop is what leads some­one to say ‘I will do what has to be done.’”

“We need the com­pa­nies to face their role,” Ms. Diniz said. “Eth­i­cal­ly, they are respon­si­ble.”

As con­spir­a­cies spread on YouTube, video mak­ers tar­get­ed aid groups whose work touch­es on con­tro­ver­sial issues like abor­tion. Even some fam­i­lies that had long relied on such groups came to won­der if the videos might be true, and began to avoid them.

In Brazil, this is a grow­ing online prac­tice known as “lin­chamen­to” — lynch­ing. Mr. Bol­sonaro was an ear­ly pio­neer, spread­ing videos in 2012 that false­ly accused left-wing aca­d­e­mics of plot­ting to force schools to dis­trib­ute “gay kits” to con­vert chil­dren to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

Mr. Jordy, his tat­tooed Niterói pro­tégé, was untrou­bled to learn that his own YouTube cam­paign, accus­ing teach­ers of spread­ing com­mu­nism, had turned their lives upside down.

One of those teach­ers, Vale­ria Borges, said she and her col­leagues had been over­whelmed with mes­sages of hate, cre­at­ing a cli­mate of fear.

Mr. Jordy, far from dis­put­ing this, said it had been his goal. “I want­ed her to feel fear,” he said.

“It’s a cul­ture war we’re fight­ing,” he explained. “This is what I came into office to do.”

‘The Dic­ta­tor­ship of the Like’

Ground zero for pol­i­tics by YouTube may be the São Paulo head­quar­ters of Movi­men­to Brasil Livre, which formed to agi­tate for the 2016 impeach­ment of the left-wing Pres­i­dent Dil­ma Rouss­eff. Its mem­bers trend young, mid­dle-class, right-wing and extreme­ly online.

Renan San­tos, the group’s nation­al coor­di­na­tor, ges­tured to a door marked “the YouTube Divi­sion” and said, “This is the heart of things.”

Inside, eight young men poked at edit­ing soft­ware. One was styl­iz­ing an image of Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni for a video argu­ing that fas­cism had been wrong­ly blamed on the right.

But even some peo­ple here fear the platform’s impact on democ­ra­cy. Mr. San­tos, for exam­ple, called social media a “weapon,” adding that some peo­ple around Mr. Bol­sonaro “want to use this weapon to pres­sure insti­tu­tions in a way that I don’t see as respon­si­ble.”

The group’s co-founder, a man-bunned for­mer rock gui­tarist name Pedro D’Eyrot, said “we have some­thing here that we call the dic­ta­tor­ship of the like.”

Real­i­ty, he said, is shaped by what­ev­er mes­sage goes most viral.

Even as he spoke, a two-hour YouTube video was cap­ti­vat­ing the nation. Titled “1964” for the year of Brazil’s mil­i­tary coup, it argued that the takeover had been nec­es­sary to save Brazil from com­mu­nism.

Mr. Dominguez, the teenag­er learn­ing to play gui­tar, said the video per­suad­ed him that his teach­ers had fab­ri­cat­ed the hor­rors of mil­i­tary rule.

Ms. Borges, the his­to­ry teacher vil­i­fied on YouTube, said it brought back mem­o­ries of mil­i­tary cur­fews, dis­ap­peared activists and police beat­ings.

“I don’t think I’ve had my last beat­ing,” she said.
———-

Discussion

One comment for “YouTube Fascism in Brazil”

  1. Here’s an arti­cle about the ongo­ing role What­sApp is play­ing in the rad­i­cal­iza­tion of Brazil: David Nemer, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of media stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, has been study­ing the influ­ence of social media in Brazil both dur­ing and after the 2018 elec­tions. As we should expect, his find­ings are rather dis­turb­ing. While many of the peo­ple were active­ly involved in the var­i­ous What­sApp-based dis­in­for­ma­tion net­works dur­ing the 2018 elec­tions have sub­se­quent­ly left those net­works after accom­plish­ing what they want­ed — get­ting Bol­sonaro elect­ed — there are plen­ty who have remained part of that dis­in­for­ma­tion infra­struc­ture and con­tin­ue to use What­sApp to pull Brazil fur­ther to the far right.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, Nemer has observed a schism with­in the pro-Bol­sonaro forces on What­sApp since the elec­tion in three dis­tinct coali­tions. When Nemer first start­ed mon­i­tor­ing Brazil’s What­sApp groups in 2018 he found four dis­tinct groups. Those groups have now splin­tered into 10 dif­fer­ent groups that fall under these three broad coali­tions. One coali­tion, dubbed the ‘the pro­pa­gan­dist’ coali­tion, are sim­ply extreme­ly pro-Bol­sonaro and try to sup­port his gov­ern­ment in all ways. This has, of course, meant they rely heav­i­ly on out­right lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion. But they also expend a large amount of ener­gy attack­ing jour­nal­ist and the media and gen­er­al­ly pro­mot­ing the idea that the only place Brazil­ians can get hon­est infor­ma­tion is on What­sApp. This group is like the Fox News of What­sApp for Brazil.

    The sec­ond coali­tion Nemer has seen emerge is the ‘social suprema­cist’ coali­tion. This coali­tion does­n’t actu­al­ly care that much about what the Bol­sonaro gov­ern­ment is doing as long as the gov­ern­ment sup­ports far right social caus­es. This coali­tion shares lots of pro-gun, racist, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-Semit­ic con­tent. This is also the coali­tion where Nazi pro­pa­gan­da and sym­bols, like Pepe the Frog, are com­mon­ly spread through memes and videos. They also point out manip­u­late pho­tos of Brazil­ian left­ists to sug­gest they are Com­mu­nists or anti-Chris­t­ian. So this is like the 4chan/8chan ‘Alt Right’ fac­tion.

    The third coali­tion, ‘the insur­gents’ is per­haps the scari­est group. This is a fac­tion that has actu­al­ly become deeply dis­en­chant­ed with Bolsonaro...because they don’t think he’s extreme enough. The insur­gents are dis­ap­point­ed he has added more gen­er­als to his cab­i­net and view an armed insur­gency as the only way to com­plete­ly ‘cleanse’ the gov­ern­ment (of any­thing left-wing). This is the fac­tion that basi­cal­ly wants a return to Brazil’s mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship.

    So the legion of pro-Bol­sonaro What­sApp users that got him elect­ed has frag­ment­ed into groups that are large­ly sup­port­ive of what Bol­sonaro is doing and a fac­tion that thinks he’s not near­ly far right enough. It gives us an idea of what’s next in What­sAp­p’s rad­i­cal­iza­tion of Brazil:

    The Huff­in­g­ton Post

    What­sApp Is Rad­i­cal­iz­ing The Right In Bolsonaro’s Brazil
    The app was used to spread mis­in­for­ma­tion that helped elect far-right author­i­tar­i­an Jair Bol­sonaro. It still serves as a plat­form for rad­i­cal­iza­tion.

    By David Nemer
    08/16/2019 08:00 am ET

    In the clos­ing weeks of Brazil’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion last year, a vicious rumor about left­ist can­di­date Fer­nan­do Had­dad spread from the fever swamps of social media into the nation­al con­ver­sa­tion. Sud­den­ly, peo­ple across Brazil came to believe, false­ly, that Had­dad, the for­mer may­or of São Paulo and the last bul­wark against the rise of far-right author­i­tar­i­an Jair Bol­sonaro, had endorsed gay pedophil­ia.

    It was a piece of mis­in­for­ma­tion so bla­tant but so per­va­sive that even­tu­al­ly, legit­i­mate media sources and even Haddad’s cam­paign had to force­ful­ly reject it.

    Face­book famous­ly helped bol­ster Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in 2016 by serv­ing as a force mul­ti­pli­er for wild rumors about Hillary Clinton’s health and pho­ny ties to ura­ni­um pur­chas­es in Rus­sia. But in Brazil, the world’s fourth-largest democ­ra­cy, there was a dif­fer­ent cul­prit (with the same cor­po­rate par­ent): What­sApp.

    The mes­sag­ing ser­vice is a rel­a­tive after­thought in the Unit­ed States’ crowd­ed social media land­scape, used by only about one-fifth of the coun­try nation­wide — and even then, pri­mar­i­ly only for text mes­sag­ing. It is a dif­fer­ent phe­nom­e­non in Brazil, where an esti­mat­ed 120 mil­lion peo­ple — more than half of the nation’s pop­u­la­tion — use What­sApp for near­ly every­thing: mas­sive group chats and dis­sem­i­nat­ing and receiv­ing com­mu­ni­ty, nation­al and even glob­al news.

    What­sApp allows users to join mas­sive groups, some­times hun­dreds of mem­bers strong, which gives it a spe­cial pow­er in Brazil. And in a coun­try with high­ly con­cen­trat­ed main­stream media, it became an orga­niz­ing tool and an easy way to maneu­ver around tra­di­tion­al news struc­tures.

    Dur­ing the elec­tion, it became a potent tool for the spread of mis­in­for­ma­tion and fake news, espe­cial­ly for sup­port­ers of Bol­sonaro.

    Now, eight months into Bolsonaro’s pres­i­den­cy, What­sApp is still serv­ing as a large­ly hid­den plat­form for the rad­i­cal­iza­tion of right-wing Brazil­ians, even as Bolsonaro’s once-unit­ed base has splin­tered into sep­a­rate, and often com­pet­ing, fac­tions. And Brazil is feel­ing its effects.

    How What­sApp Bol­stered Bol­sonaro

    I began mon­i­tor­ing pro-Bol­sonaro What­sApp groups in March 2018, at the out­set of the elec­tion the social media app even­tu­al­ly helped Bol­sonaro win. I found that fake news spread in typ­i­cal fash­ion, through a struc­ture of groups that resem­bled a pyra­mid, as I detailed for The Guardian last year.

    Small groups of “influ­encers” sat at the top of the pro-Bol­sonaro What­sApp ecosys­tem. They active­ly manip­u­lat­ed news sto­ries and cre­at­ed mis­in­for­ma­tion meant to go viral.

    The influ­encers then pushed that mis­in­for­ma­tion down into larg­er groups made up of Bolsonaro’s most ardent sup­port­ers, who served as his troll army. Uni­fied in their sup­port of the right-winger, they pushed the influ­encers’ fake news to viral­i­ty.

    From there, the fake news spread into even larg­er groups of ordi­nary Brazil­ians, who used What­sApp to go around tra­di­tion­al media out­lets and receive news that rein­forced their incli­na­tion to vote for Bol­sonaro in dis­cus­sions that act­ed as echo cham­bers for the cause.

    WhatsApp’s assis­tance to Bolsonaro’s cam­paign became an inter­na­tion­al sto­ry after the elec­tion as the mes­sag­ing ser­vice was revealed to be yet anoth­er dis­rup­tive social media force in a world where Face­book, YouTube, Twit­ter and Gab served as incu­ba­tors for con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and mis­in­for­ma­tion that helped push the far-right to pow­er across the globe.

    But after Bol­sonaro won the elec­tion, atten­tion on What­sApp fad­ed, and many mem­bers left the groups they had par­tic­i­pat­ed in dur­ing the cam­paign. Their main goal had been accom­plished; they had made Bol­sonaro pres­i­dent.

    Those who have remained per­pet­u­al­ly logged on have done so for one of the main rea­sons they joined in the first place: They want to stay informed about Bolsonaro’s gov­ern­ment through What­sApp because they no longer trust the main­stream media to deliv­er the truth. What­sApp, for them, is now their pri­ma­ry source of news.

    But where they were unit­ed behind Bol­sonaro dur­ing his cam­paign, serv­ing and thriv­ing off of each oth­er, many of the main What­sApp groups now dis­agree on the president’s deci­sions and approach to gov­er­nance. Bolsonaro’s attempts to appease cer­tain planks of the soft coali­tion of mil­i­tary men, so-called “anti-glob­al­ists,” social con­ser­v­a­tives and eco­nom­ic elites that pushed him to pow­er, along with his hap­haz­ard and unfo­cused gov­ern­ing style, have left the groups fight­ing among them­selves about their expec­ta­tions of — and dis­ap­point­ments in — Bolsonaro’s eight-month-old pres­i­den­cy.

    The four groups I orig­i­nal­ly mon­i­tored splin­tered into loose coali­tions and have now split into a total of 10 groups, each of which has con­tin­ued to rad­i­cal­ize large­ly out of the sight of Brazil­ian reg­u­la­tors, politi­cians, the media, and even What­sApp itself, which has lim­it­ed access to the actu­al con­tent that is spread with­in the groups it hosts.

    The cur­rent groups can be split into three broad coali­tions.

    Two of them large­ly sup­port Bol­sonaro: one by push­ing gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da and cries of fake news to con­vince Brazil that what is hap­pen­ing under Bol­sonaro isn’t actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing; the oth­er by ampli­fy­ing his social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, far-right views — includ­ing his ram­pant homo­pho­bia, racism and sex­ism. Mem­bers of the third coali­tion have become some­thing of an insur­gency on the far right — a group of Brazil­ians who feel Bol­sonaro has betrayed their cause and have become his fiercest and most rad­i­cal oppo­nents.

    The Pro­pa­gan­dists

    The pro­pa­gan­dist coali­tion is most sim­i­lar to the What­sApp groups that formed before Bolsonaro’s elec­tion and is still made up of an assort­ment of the influ­encers, ardent sup­port­ers and ordi­nary Brazil­ians who pro­pelled him to vic­to­ry.

    These groups of sup­port­ers have become even more extreme. Where they once tol­er­at­ed some debate, they now shut down any oppo­si­tion to — or even mild ques­tion­ing of — the president’s acts. But instead of con­sum­ing, shar­ing and pro­duc­ing fake news about oppos­ing can­di­dates, as they did before the elec­tion, their mis­in­for­ma­tion now main­ly focus­es on gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da that works to dele­git­imize tra­di­tion­al news venues that have been report­ing the wrong­do­ings of the gov­ern­ment.

    Nowhere is this more evi­dent, per­haps, than in their efforts to dis­cred­it domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al report­ing about the rapid esca­la­tion in defor­esta­tion of the Ama­zon rain­for­est that has occurred under Bol­sonaro — a devel­op­ment that has drawn inter­na­tion­al out­rage.

    These groups have mobi­lized against jour­nal­ists and media out­lets who have report­ed on Ama­zon­ian destruc­tion. They have even pushed back against gov­ern­ment offi­cials — like Ricar­do Galvão, the for­mer head of Brazil’s Nation­al Insti­tute for Space Research, who was fired in August after Bol­sonaro open­ly dis­agreed with his asser­tion that rain­for­est destruc­tion was accel­er­at­ing.

    One mes­sage, for instance, attempts to dis­cred­it André Trigueiro, a jour­nal­ist from Brazil’s Globo news out­let: “André Trigueiro keeps say­ing that Bol­sonaro will kill the Ama­zon... we can’t expect any­thing dif­fer­ent from some­one who works for Globo Garbage! Com­mu­nist Press!”

    “Ricar­do Galvão,” anoth­er mes­sage said, “lied about defor­esta­tion data, anoth­er fake news! We have to stick togeth­er for the nation!”

    Such mes­sages are typ­i­cal, and they quick­ly spread to forums like Twit­ter and Face­book, where the pro­pa­gan­dists can direct­ly tar­get jour­nal­ists and oth­er users with cries of “fake news” and chal­lenges to prove that their report­ing is true.

    The Social Suprema­cists

    The sec­ond coali­tion — the social suprema­cists — is pri­mar­i­ly focused on align­ing them­selves with the far-right views of the pres­i­dent and his son Eduar­do, a con­gress­man from São Paulo, to ampli­fy those caus­es. Mem­bers of these groups are not inter­est­ed in the dai­ly polit­i­cal acts of the gov­ern­ment. As long as Bol­sonaro con­tin­ues to pur­sue a social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da, they’re assuaged and sup­port­ive.

    They share con­tent that is pro-gun, racist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Semit­ic and opposed to Brazil’s North­east, a region that is among the poor­est and black­est parts of Brazil (and has become a tar­get of the pres­i­dent). Nazi pro­pa­gan­da, pedophilic con­tent and favorite sym­bols of the Amer­i­can white nation­al­ist move­ment, includ­ing Pepe the Frog, are com­mon­ly spread through memes and videos, while they often manip­u­late pho­tos of Brazil­ian left­ists to sug­gest they are Com­mu­nists or anti-Chris­t­ian.

    But they are not siloed. They often push new mem­bers to oth­er, more rad­i­cal chan­nels of dis­cus­sion, includ­ing Dogo­lachan and 55Chan. Oth­er forums, mean­while, share sim­i­lar­i­ties with the U.S. incel — or invol­un­tary celi­bate — move­ment, and pedophilic, racist, and anti-Semit­ic con­tent is heav­i­ly shared and cel­e­brat­ed.

    Brazil has already suf­fered from the growth of these groups: In March, two men who had been active on some of these more fringe forums opened fire at a school in Suzano, Brazil, killing 10 peo­ple and injur­ing 17 more. And in the after­math, these groups pro­vid­ed a forum for a response to gun vio­lence that mim­ic­ked the way con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments and the gun lob­by answer school shoot­ings in the Unit­ed States.

    The Insur­gents

    There has also been a pro­lif­er­a­tion of rad­i­cal What­sApp groups made up of mem­bers who once sup­port­ed Bol­sonaro but have now become some of his fiercest crit­ics — not because they have become less rad­i­cal, but because they believe the pres­i­dent isn’t rad­i­cal enough.

    These groups have strong nation­al­is­tic sen­ti­ment and believe that Bol­sonaro betrayed the nation, pri­mar­i­ly because his eco­nom­ic min­is­ter has sought to pri­va­tize or sell Brazil’s state-owned com­pa­nies to for­eign investors. They also claim that Bol­sonaro has not kept his promis­es to “cleanse” the gov­ern­ment of its cor­rupt polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment, and although he has appoint­ed more gen­er­als to his Cab­i­net than any pres­i­dent elect­ed since Brazil’s mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship end­ed three decades ago, they are angry that he hasn’t ful­ly stocked the gov­ern­ment with mem­bers of the armed forces.

    In their view, the only way to save Brazil is to do what Bol­sonaro hasn’t: Orga­nize an armed insur­gency to com­plete­ly cleanse the leg­isla­tive and judi­cial branch­es of gov­ern­ment of its past ills.

    These insur­gents, almost all of whom once belonged to pro-Bol­sonaro groups before the elec­tion, have iron­i­cal­ly exposed some of the dirt­i­est prac­tices that occurred via What­sApp dur­ing the cam­paign. Many of them have alleged that they were com­pen­sat­ed — in amounts between $100 to $250 per week — to dis­sem­i­nate con­tent to ben­e­fit Bol­sonaro. And in doing so, they have point­ed the fin­ger at influ­en­tial groups of busi­ness­men who they said financed the net­work, and sug­gest­ed that vir­tu­al mili­tias — known as the Vir­tu­al Activist Move­ment — were paid to infil­trate What­sApp groups and spread mis­in­for­ma­tion.

    They haven’t direct­ly impli­cat­ed Bolsonaro’s cam­paign team, though they have said that at least one per­son who is cur­rent­ly an advis­er in Bolsonaro’s gov­ern­ment was among those paid to feed fake news to his sup­port­ers.

    These groups, too, have made their voic­es heard out­side of What­sApp. They have been instru­men­tal forces behind protests that have called on Bol­sonaro to shut­ter Brazil­ian Con­gress, shut down the country’s judi­cia­ry and even return to mil­i­tary rule — an indi­ca­tion of how rad­i­cal Brazil­ian dis­course has become under a pres­i­dent who him­self has long cel­e­brat­ed the country’s dead­ly and oppres­sive mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship.

    What Now?

    Only a tiny frac­tion of Brazil­ians belong to these groups, and they are not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of all Bolsonaro’s con­stituents. But they all reveal ways that peo­ple are becom­ing rad­i­cal­ized on mes­sag­ing apps like What­sApp.

    As Google, Face­book and Twit­ter have cracked down more firm­ly on vio­lent and poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous speech, con­sumers of that con­tent have flocked to apps like What­sApp and Telegram, anoth­er mes­sag­ing ser­vice pop­u­lar in Brazil, in search of safe spaces to find “inspi­ra­tion” and become rad­i­cal­ized.

    ...

    The solu­tion to this issue requires a mul­ti­fac­eted response. Law enforce­ment and courts have to impose the law — in many coun­tries, includ­ing Brazil, vio­lent hate speech is crim­i­nal­ized. Rad­i­cal­iza­tion can also start at an ear­ly age; thus, par­ents need to pay atten­tion to what their chil­dren are doing on the inter­net and be ready to inter­vene.

    Tech com­pa­nies also have to con­tin­ue to deplat­form these rad­i­cal­iz­ing spaces and fig­ures. Deplat­form­ing has worked at times: Face­book and Twit­ter have banned fig­ures like Milo Yiannopou­los and Alex Jones, lim­it­ing their influ­ence. But they still have thou­sands of fol­low­ers on Telegram.

    A spokesper­son for What­sApp told Huff­Post in a state­ment: “In the run up to last year’s Brazil elec­tions, we placed a label on for­ward­ed mes­sages and pilot­ed a lim­it on how they can be sent. We also banned hun­dreds of thou­sands of accounts for spam and are con­stant­ly work­ing to improve our abil­i­ty to detect and ban auto­mat­ed accounts. Addi­tion­al­ly, What­sApp worked to raise aware­ness about mis­in­for­ma­tion through a broad edu­ca­tion cam­paign on the radio, in print and online. We helped bring Project Com­pro­va onto What­sApp as one of sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions con­duct­ing fact check­ing via What­sApp. We will con­tin­ue to expand on these efforts and work with oth­ers across soci­ety to help address the chal­lenges posed by mis­in­for­ma­tion.”

    Though What­sApp has made changes in response to the elec­tion, it still serves as a unique plat­form for the spread of dan­ger­ous mis­in­for­ma­tion in Brazil and else­where. Rad­i­cal­iza­tion hap­pens at high speed — com­bat­ing it requires an even faster response.

    ———-

    “What­sApp Is Rad­i­cal­iz­ing The Right In Bolsonaro’s Brazil” by David Nemer; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 08/16/2019

    Now, eight months into Bolsonaro’s pres­i­den­cy, What­sApp is still serv­ing as a large­ly hid­den plat­form for the rad­i­cal­iza­tion of right-wing Brazil­ians, even as Bolsonaro’s once-unit­ed base has splin­tered into sep­a­rate, and often com­pet­ing, fac­tions. And Brazil is feel­ing its effects.”

    A splin­ter­ing of the pre­vi­ous­ly unit­ed pro-Bol­sonaro far right What­sApp move­ment. That’s what David Nemer has observed as he con­tin­ued mon­i­tor­ing Brazil’s What­sApp groups fol­low­ing the elec­tion of Bol­sonaro. There’s the Fox News-style Bon­sonaro loy­al­ists dubbed ‘the pro­pa­gan­dists’ who will spread what­ev­er dis­in­for­ma­tion is nec­es­sary to sup­port Bol­sonaro on a dai­ly basis. And a big part of mes­sag­ing from this coali­tion is the mes­sage that all oth­er news is ‘fake news’ and Brazil­ians can only get the truth from them:

    ...
    The four groups I orig­i­nal­ly mon­i­tored splin­tered into loose coali­tions and have now split into a total of 10 groups, each of which has con­tin­ued to rad­i­cal­ize large­ly out of the sight of Brazil­ian reg­u­la­tors, politi­cians, the media, and even What­sApp itself, which has lim­it­ed access to the actu­al con­tent that is spread with­in the groups it hosts.

    The cur­rent groups can be split into three broad coali­tions.

    Two of them large­ly sup­port Bol­sonaro: one by push­ing gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da and cries of fake news to con­vince Brazil that what is hap­pen­ing under Bol­sonaro isn’t actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing; the oth­er by ampli­fy­ing his social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, far-right views — includ­ing his ram­pant homo­pho­bia, racism and sex­ism. Mem­bers of the third coali­tion have become some­thing of an insur­gency on the far right — a group of Brazil­ians who feel Bol­sonaro has betrayed their cause and have become his fiercest and most rad­i­cal oppo­nents.

    The Pro­pa­gan­dists

    The pro­pa­gan­dist coali­tion is most sim­i­lar to the What­sApp groups that formed before Bolsonaro’s elec­tion and is still made up of an assort­ment of the influ­encers, ardent sup­port­ers and ordi­nary Brazil­ians who pro­pelled him to vic­to­ry.

    These groups of sup­port­ers have become even more extreme. Where they once tol­er­at­ed some debate, they now shut down any oppo­si­tion to — or even mild ques­tion­ing of — the president’s acts. But instead of con­sum­ing, shar­ing and pro­duc­ing fake news about oppos­ing can­di­dates, as they did before the elec­tion, their mis­in­for­ma­tion now main­ly focus­es on gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da that works to dele­git­imize tra­di­tion­al news venues that have been report­ing the wrong­do­ings of the gov­ern­ment.

    Nowhere is this more evi­dent, per­haps, than in their efforts to dis­cred­it domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al report­ing about the rapid esca­la­tion in defor­esta­tion of the Ama­zon rain­for­est that has occurred under Bol­sonaro — a devel­op­ment that has drawn inter­na­tion­al out­rage.

    These groups have mobi­lized against jour­nal­ists and media out­lets who have report­ed on Ama­zon­ian destruc­tion. They have even pushed back against gov­ern­ment offi­cials — like Ricar­do Galvão, the for­mer head of Brazil’s Nation­al Insti­tute for Space Research, who was fired in August after Bol­sonaro open­ly dis­agreed with his asser­tion that rain­for­est destruc­tion was accel­er­at­ing.

    One mes­sage, for instance, attempts to dis­cred­it André Trigueiro, a jour­nal­ist from Brazil’s Globo news out­let: “André Trigueiro keeps say­ing that Bol­sonaro will kill the Ama­zon... we can’t expect any­thing dif­fer­ent from some­one who works for Globo Garbage! Com­mu­nist Press!”

    “Ricar­do Galvão,” anoth­er mes­sage said, “lied about defor­esta­tion data, anoth­er fake news! We have to stick togeth­er for the nation!”

    Such mes­sages are typ­i­cal, and they quick­ly spread to forums like Twit­ter and Face­book, where the pro­pa­gan­dists can direct­ly tar­get jour­nal­ists and oth­er users with cries of “fake news” and chal­lenges to prove that their report­ing is true.
    ...

    Then there’s the ‘social suprema­cists’ who appear to large­ly be ‘Alt Right’ neo-Nazis and incels most­ly just focused on spread­ing social­ly con­ser­v­a­tives memes and neo-Nazi pro­pa­gan­da. Two fol­low­ers of this coali­tion when on a shoot­ing spree at a school this year:

    ...
    The Social Suprema­cists

    The sec­ond coali­tion — the social suprema­cists — is pri­mar­i­ly focused on align­ing them­selves with the far-right views of the pres­i­dent and his son Eduar­do, a con­gress­man from São Paulo, to ampli­fy those caus­es. Mem­bers of these groups are not inter­est­ed in the dai­ly polit­i­cal acts of the gov­ern­ment. As long as Bol­sonaro con­tin­ues to pur­sue a social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da, they’re assuaged and sup­port­ive.

    They share con­tent that is pro-gun, racist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Semit­ic and opposed to Brazil’s North­east, a region that is among the poor­est and black­est parts of Brazil (and has become a tar­get of the pres­i­dent). Nazi pro­pa­gan­da, pedophilic con­tent and favorite sym­bols of the Amer­i­can white nation­al­ist move­ment, includ­ing Pepe the Frog, are com­mon­ly spread through memes and videos, while they often manip­u­late pho­tos of Brazil­ian left­ists to sug­gest they are Com­mu­nists or anti-Chris­t­ian.

    But they are not siloed. They often push new mem­bers to oth­er, more rad­i­cal chan­nels of dis­cus­sion, includ­ing Dogo­lachan and 55Chan. Oth­er forums, mean­while, share sim­i­lar­i­ties with the U.S. incel — or invol­un­tary celi­bate — move­ment, and pedophilic, racist, and anti-Semit­ic con­tent is heav­i­ly shared and cel­e­brat­ed.

    Brazil has already suf­fered from the growth of these groups: In March, two men who had been active on some of these more fringe forums opened fire at a school in Suzano, Brazil, killing 10 peo­ple and injur­ing 17 more. And in the after­math, these groups pro­vid­ed a forum for a response to gun vio­lence that mim­ic­ked the way con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments and the gun lob­by answer school shoot­ings in the Unit­ed States.
    ...

    And then there’s the scari­est fac­tion: the ‘insur­gents’ who view an armed takeover of Brazil and mass purg­ing of soci­ety. They basi­cal­ly want a return to the dic­ta­tor­ship years:

    ...
    The Insur­gents

    There has also been a pro­lif­er­a­tion of rad­i­cal What­sApp groups made up of mem­bers who once sup­port­ed Bol­sonaro but have now become some of his fiercest crit­ics — not because they have become less rad­i­cal, but because they believe the pres­i­dent isn’t rad­i­cal enough.

    These groups have strong nation­al­is­tic sen­ti­ment and believe that Bol­sonaro betrayed the nation, pri­mar­i­ly because his eco­nom­ic min­is­ter has sought to pri­va­tize or sell Brazil’s state-owned com­pa­nies to for­eign investors. They also claim that Bol­sonaro has not kept his promis­es to “cleanse” the gov­ern­ment of its cor­rupt polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment, and although he has appoint­ed more gen­er­als to his Cab­i­net than any pres­i­dent elect­ed since Brazil’s mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship end­ed three decades ago, they are angry that he hasn’t ful­ly stocked the gov­ern­ment with mem­bers of the armed forces.

    In their view, the only way to save Brazil is to do what Bol­sonaro hasn’t: Orga­nize an armed insur­gency to com­plete­ly cleanse the leg­isla­tive and judi­cial branch­es of gov­ern­ment of its past ills.

    ...

    These groups, too, have made their voic­es heard out­side of What­sApp. They have been instru­men­tal forces behind protests that have called on Bol­sonaro to shut­ter Brazil­ian Con­gress, shut down the country’s judi­cia­ry and even return to mil­i­tary rule — an indi­ca­tion of how rad­i­cal Brazil­ian dis­course has become under a pres­i­dent who him­self has long cel­e­brat­ed the country’s dead­ly and oppres­sive mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship.
    ...

    “These groups, too, have made their voic­es heard out­side of What­sApp. They have been instru­men­tal forces behind protests that have called on Bol­sonaro to shut­ter Brazil­ian Con­gress, shut down the country’s judi­cia­ry and even return to mil­i­tary rule — an indi­ca­tion of how rad­i­cal Brazil­ian dis­course has become under a pres­i­dent who him­self has long cel­e­brat­ed the country’s dead­ly and oppres­sive mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship.”

    And that’s just what David Nemer has been able to observe. There’s pre­sum­ably quite a bit of Brazil­ian far right activ­i­ty over What­sApp he has­n’t been able to mon­i­tor.

    So these fac­tion­al fights with­in Brazil’s far right will be some­thing to watch. Except, of course, we won’t actu­al­ly be able to watch most of it because it’s all tak­ing place large­ly in secret on encrypt­ed apps like What­sApp. Although we do get to see these fights man­i­fest in the real world, like when there’s a protest call­ing on Bol­sonaro to return to mil­i­tary rule. Along those lines, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that What­sApp isn’t just use­ful for spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion and rad­i­cal­iz­ing peo­ple. The cell-like struc­ture of these What­sApp dis­in­for­ma­tion net­works would pre­sum­ably be pret­ty use­ful for orches­trat­ing some sort of mass armed neo-Nazi insur­gency too. Hope­ful­ly that isn’t the next phase of the rad­i­cal­iza­tion of Brazil but we’ll see.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 16, 2019, 1:36 pm

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