Brazil's insurrection directly aided by tech platforms, say campaigners

[cbabe]

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/brazil-s-insurrection-directly-aided-by-tech-platforms-say-campaigners

Brazil's insurrection directly aided by tech platforms, say campaigners

Monday January, 09 2023, 12:18pm EDT

Researchers from SumOfUs had warned of attempted coup for months as platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Telegram allowed anti-democratic movement to flourish

LONDON - Global campaign group SumOfUs has accused social media platforms including Facebook, TikTok and Telegram of enabling yesterday’s assault on Brazil’s Congress and called for an immediate investigation into their role in the crisis.

The 20-million strong citizens’ network said the companies had failed to heed months’ of warnings that their platforms were helping to grow an anti-democratic movement in the run up to the Brazilian presidential election, including by directing users towards pro-coup content.

SumOfUs researchers have been monitoring Brazil’s social media landscape since September 7 and, in a series of reports, highlighted the extent of electoral disinformation and violent content in circulation. Along with Brazilian and international partners, the group repeatedly called on social media companies to take immediate steps to tackle the problem in order to prevent a repeat of the January 6 attacks on the US Capitol. Key findings included:

On TikTok, five out of eight of the top search results for the keyword “ballots” were for terms such as “rigged ballots” and “ballots being manipulated”;
Facebook and Instagram directed thousands of users who entered basic search terms about the election to groups challenging the integrity of the vote;
Facebook was actively approving harmful ads that sowed doubt in the election results, including ads that specifically called for a military coup. These problematic ads racked up 615,000 impressions;
YouTube allowed Bolsonaro's Stop the Steal narrative to go viral on its platform, with videos promoting this conspiracy theory gaining more than 22 million views, and 2.3 million Facebook interactions.

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[Initech]

1. Brazil's wingnuts definitely got some lessons from our wingnuts.

[kimbutgar]

2. I bet Bolmasaro was coordinating it from Mara a lago.

Timing is really interesting and he had the two ringleaders helping him TFG and Miller and also Bannon.

[Quakerfriend]

3. And, the end game is to get $ from Vlad

for weakening your own country??