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A very long but fascinating article about the judge who has battled against Elon Musk and social media's deleterious effect on elections.
I have always believed that freedom of speech is essential to democracy, but social media has changed this dynamic. As one Brazilian judge pointed out that they think they're fighting for freedom of speech when in fact they prisoners of algorithms" Interesting point. Below is a fraction of the article.
"In his view, the fight over the internet began a decade and a half ago. “The far right noticed, during the Arab Spring, that social media could mobilize people without intermediaries,” he said. “At first, algorithms were refined for economic purposes, to captivate consumers. Then people realized how easy it was to redirect this toward political power.” He cast social media as a defining force of our time. “If Goebbels were alive and had access to X, we would be doomed,” he said. “The Nazis would have conquered the world.”
...In the run-up to the election, the Brazilian internet was filled with an incredible volume of false and inflammatory claims. ...An analysis...found that only four of the fifty most shared images were legitimate. Many of the most outrageous falsehoods were aimed at Bolsonaro’s opponent, Fernando Haddad. One meme showed a check for millions of dollars, ostensibly paid to Haddad by a criminal gang. Another, particularly widespread one claimed that he was distributing penis-shaped baby bottles in elementary schools, as part of a “gay kit.” A study published later found that almost eighty-four per cent of Bolsonaro voters believed it.
Those who called attention to disinformation became targets. Agência Lupa recorded as many as fifty-six thousand threats a month. Among the bolsonaristas’ greatest antagonists was Patrícia Campos Mello, a reporter at Brazil’s foremost newspaper, Folha de São Paulo. Campos Mello, now fifty-one years old, has spent decades covering major events in Brazil and around the world, including the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. When I got in touch to ask about her reporting on Bolsonaro, she responded from a frontline bivouac in eastern Ukraine.
During Bolsonaro’s campaign, the Brazilian press began reporting on how a group of his close advisers, including his son Carlos, established what they called the “hate cabinet,” which generated online propaganda and disseminated it through a network of supporters and bots. (Carlos and other associates have denied this.) Campos Mello broke a series of stories about businessmen who were financing a torrent of WhatsApp messages that denigrated Haddad. “They were hiring marketing agencies that offered assembly lines of disinformation,” she told me. “They had dozens of people inside rooms, sending thousands of messages to databases of voters they bought on the gray market.”
...“the Bolsonaro trolls went nuts.” They spread claims that she had been fined by the Supreme Court for spreading false information, that the story had been paid for by Lula’s party, and that she was a Communist. Strangers called her phone, shouting insults and warning that they would attack her. “Then they started sending messages threatening my son, who was six at the time,” she recalled. “People yelled at me in the street, hacked my phone.”
...The worst invective was fuelled by an influencer named Allan dos Santos, she said: “He posted porn stuff about me, tagged me, and called on his supporters to make memes.” Trolls created fake pornographic images of her, and some threatened rape. A few days after the hearing, Bolsonaro told a group of supporters that Campos Mello “wanted to get the scoop at any price.” In Portuguese, the word for “scoop” also means “anus.” After that, the memes and rape threats began referring to anal sex.
...Lula...suggested that a showdown was coming. “There’s something in the air that worries me, which is the weakening of the democratic system,” he said. “In Europe, half of the twenty-seven countries already have right-wing authoritarian regimes. In Latin America, we see that anti-democratic, anti-institutional movements are also growing, and half of society is in favor of this.”
He suggested that the internet made it nearly impossible to govern. “I don’t think that in any country in the world we still have a sophisticated way to insure sovereignty,” he said.
Link
Can democracy survive social media?
I have always believed that freedom of speech is essential to democracy, but social media has changed this dynamic. As one Brazilian judge pointed out that they think they're fighting for freedom of speech when in fact they prisoners of algorithms" Interesting point. Below is a fraction of the article.
"In his view, the fight over the internet began a decade and a half ago. “The far right noticed, during the Arab Spring, that social media could mobilize people without intermediaries,” he said. “At first, algorithms were refined for economic purposes, to captivate consumers. Then people realized how easy it was to redirect this toward political power.” He cast social media as a defining force of our time. “If Goebbels were alive and had access to X, we would be doomed,” he said. “The Nazis would have conquered the world.”
...In the run-up to the election, the Brazilian internet was filled with an incredible volume of false and inflammatory claims. ...An analysis...found that only four of the fifty most shared images were legitimate. Many of the most outrageous falsehoods were aimed at Bolsonaro’s opponent, Fernando Haddad. One meme showed a check for millions of dollars, ostensibly paid to Haddad by a criminal gang. Another, particularly widespread one claimed that he was distributing penis-shaped baby bottles in elementary schools, as part of a “gay kit.” A study published later found that almost eighty-four per cent of Bolsonaro voters believed it.
Those who called attention to disinformation became targets. Agência Lupa recorded as many as fifty-six thousand threats a month. Among the bolsonaristas’ greatest antagonists was Patrícia Campos Mello, a reporter at Brazil’s foremost newspaper, Folha de São Paulo. Campos Mello, now fifty-one years old, has spent decades covering major events in Brazil and around the world, including the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. When I got in touch to ask about her reporting on Bolsonaro, she responded from a frontline bivouac in eastern Ukraine.
During Bolsonaro’s campaign, the Brazilian press began reporting on how a group of his close advisers, including his son Carlos, established what they called the “hate cabinet,” which generated online propaganda and disseminated it through a network of supporters and bots. (Carlos and other associates have denied this.) Campos Mello broke a series of stories about businessmen who were financing a torrent of WhatsApp messages that denigrated Haddad. “They were hiring marketing agencies that offered assembly lines of disinformation,” she told me. “They had dozens of people inside rooms, sending thousands of messages to databases of voters they bought on the gray market.”
...“the Bolsonaro trolls went nuts.” They spread claims that she had been fined by the Supreme Court for spreading false information, that the story had been paid for by Lula’s party, and that she was a Communist. Strangers called her phone, shouting insults and warning that they would attack her. “Then they started sending messages threatening my son, who was six at the time,” she recalled. “People yelled at me in the street, hacked my phone.”
...The worst invective was fuelled by an influencer named Allan dos Santos, she said: “He posted porn stuff about me, tagged me, and called on his supporters to make memes.” Trolls created fake pornographic images of her, and some threatened rape. A few days after the hearing, Bolsonaro told a group of supporters that Campos Mello “wanted to get the scoop at any price.” In Portuguese, the word for “scoop” also means “anus.” After that, the memes and rape threats began referring to anal sex.
...Lula...suggested that a showdown was coming. “There’s something in the air that worries me, which is the weakening of the democratic system,” he said. “In Europe, half of the twenty-seven countries already have right-wing authoritarian regimes. In Latin America, we see that anti-democratic, anti-institutional movements are also growing, and half of society is in favor of this.”
He suggested that the internet made it nearly impossible to govern. “I don’t think that in any country in the world we still have a sophisticated way to insure sovereignty,” he said.
Link
Can democracy survive social media?