by Laís Gouveia
It is no secret that Lula’s campaign is facing a David versus Goliath battle. As many people have put it, this is “the toughest and most decisive campaign of our lives.” When we look at how much big tech is investing in efforts to boost Brazil’s far right, we begin to understand just how much is at stake in this election. The direction Brazil takes over the next few years will have profound consequences for a world increasingly dominated by groups that hold the machinery to grind ordinary people into the dirt.
Last week, I wrote that a confidential source working at Meta Brazil had told me that the company, controlled by Donald Trump’s close friend Mark Zuckerberg, had carried out mass layoffs of its content moderators. It replaced a significant portion of its staff with machines and artificial intelligence systems that now decide what can and cannot be published in Brazil. The change came precisely during the election campaign. No, your algorithm did not suddenly go haywire by sheer coincidence. There are external commands and interventions at work.
Now another cobra strike by the all powerful tech giant has come to light: sabotage through WhatsApp.
Instagram’s algorithms have turned the platform into a collection of isolated bubbles, with appalling engagement for the progressive camp. Meanwhile, far right figures such as Nikolas Ferreira are achieving engagement levels comparable to Beyoncé’s on their videos, despite having vastly fewer followers. The world is remarkably generous to those on the far right. That leaves WhatsApp as the only viable alternative, and one that had been working extremely well.
Of course, we have countless contacts there. Everyone from the evangelical aunt we see once a year to Adalberto, the plumber who still hasn’t decided who to vote for. It is fertile ground for reaching voters, but the chief saboteur already has it in its sights.
First came Supreme Court Justice Kássio “Orgyman” Nunes who went completely off the rails with two individual rulings and ordered the WhatsApp group Exército de Lula, or Lula’s Army, shut down. He did so without establishing that the group had spread any fake news that could justify such a move.
Now Meta has joined in, sabotaging WhatsApp’s AI in a far subtler move than that of the pro Bolsonaro Supreme Court justice. A report by Thais Bilenky of UOL indicates that “Meta’s artificial intelligence tool on WhatsApp treats Lula (Workers’ Party/PT) and Flávio Bolsonaro (Liberal Party/PL) differently when generating digital campaign material. When given identical requests to generate a Brazilian flag in green and yellow bearing the words Lula 13 and Flávio 22, the system only generates the image of the Bolsonaro candidate. Likewise, Meta refuses to generate an image of Lula on Paulista Avenue bearing the number 13, while fulfilling the same request for Flávio.”
This is blatant sabotage, without even bothering to disguise it. An outright spit in our faces. And I believe things will get much worse, especially when it comes to Status, those little green circles that are essential for promoting the president’s campaign. I predict loading failures and videos disappearing out of nowhere.
Big tech companies stand to gain enormously from the president’s defeat. Flávio is the leading activist against social media regulation. In reality, it is his so called hate machine that stands to benefit enormously from the lawless environment that has taken hold online. It helps elect his allies to Congress through folkloric displays of outrage and a steady stream of lies. The foundation of Bolsonarismo is an unrestricted, unregulated social media environment where fake news can be blasted out at will. In other words, this sinister partnership between Flávio and Zuckerberg has never been more profitable.
This article originally appeared in Brasil 247, was translated by Panamerican Dispatch with express consent of the editor-in-chief, and can be read in its original Portuguese here.