r/news • u/AudibleNod • 19h ago
Brazil’s Lula wins electoral court challenge against Meta for alleged pro-Bolsonaro algorithm bias
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/south-america/brazil-lula-wins-electoral-court-challenge-meta-alleged-bolsonaro-bias-rcna6038352.5k
u/swoopy_boy 19h ago
Ban Meta, FB, X and Instagram before it is too late.
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u/Golgi_Complex12 18h ago
average brazilian wouldn't understand and would go nuts if whatsapp or ig stopped working. their reach here is insane
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u/platocplx 18h ago
They def need a replacement for WhatsApp honestly should broken up away from meta
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u/Extra-Fly5602 18h ago
Its called Signal
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u/mattgrum 17h ago
Unfortunately it's not a replacement if the person you need to contact doesn't have the Signal app. Network effect lock-in is in full swing.
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u/platocplx 17h ago
Yeah to the point this stuff is like a utility
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u/Salt-Operation 15h ago
Which begs the question: why aren’t Brazilians using a utility to contact other people with? Like a paid cell phone plan that allows calls and texts, through a cellular network rather than internet? Is it because WhatsApp is free?
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u/pants6000 14h ago
Text messages are basically welded to phones and the cell network and your phone number, all of which sucks.
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u/platocplx 15h ago
Its the group chat features and businesses entrenched everyone does business on there and WhatsApp was the first to facilitate that. Apple tried to have some official business chats etc and iMessage and RCS is starting to help but it will take time to not have people so entrenched in these apps. There are tons of family group chats etc. so yeah.
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u/Salt-Operation 14h ago
Ooof yeah, there’s lots of business and government entities in the US that use Twitter as their official channel to get quick information out and it fucking blows.
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u/Wild_Marker 17h ago
Sure but if you ban Whatsapp then the network effect breaks instantly.
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u/Not_Here_Senpai 15h ago
How did that work for Discord screen sharing? I'm friends with many Brazillians, when the government bans them from doing something they just get a VPN and do it anyways.
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u/Wild_Marker 15h ago
The people who know how to use VPN and the general population are not even in the same venn diagram.
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u/OsmeOxys 14h ago
not even in the same venn diagram.
I get what you're trying to say, but... Subsets are kind of a venn diagram's thing.
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u/mattgrum 16h ago
What happens instantly is you have a fragmented landscape where different portions of your contacts are using different apps and you have to try and remember how to contact each person. Over time one network will gain momentum and slowly become as ubiquitous as WhatsApp, but then you have the same problem of there being a de facto monopoly.
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u/21Rollie 14h ago
The problem is that WhatsApp was bought by Facebook and nobody stopped them. I don’t think fb could buy every single chat app
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u/platocplx 15h ago
Yeah at minimum these companies when they reach certain thresholds need more laws around them. The EU has a framework around it but I think it can go further so that they need to comply and can’t manipulate things at large scale anymore.
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u/Golgi_Complex12 17h ago
I do agree. Unfortunately even business steered towards it. Let's see now with the new API costs..
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u/Hayinn 15h ago
It's basically impossible to not use WhatsApp here in Brazil, sadly. The older generation live and breathe WhatsApp, like it's the only way to make calls and trade messages
Edit: forgot to mention that almost all of the cellphone data plans give WhatsApp free of data usage, you can use it even after your data depletes
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u/itllgrowback 12h ago edited 11h ago
Living there for a few years a decade ago, I learned quickly why WhatsApp is so prevalent there versus in the US - in Brazil, for those who don't know, carriers limit free calls and texts to numbers within their own network - so to put it in American terms, with a Verizon phone number, you cannot call a T-Mobile number without paying for it.
Which leads to businesses having a phone number from each carrier, so customers can use whichever they have. It blew my mind seeing business cards with four numbers listed: one each for Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, and another for example. Also many people by necessity have cell phones with multiple SIM slots, which is really rare in the US.
WhatsApp immediately makes all of that irrelevant, for the network of people who uses it. So it definitely took hold and it'll be hard to let go.
Signal probably solves the same issue, but only if your friends use it, and by now there are so many established group chats and everything else, not to mention the business cards again which probably list the WhatsApp number on there.
In the US, WhatsApp has nice features but doesn't solve such an important existing issue like it did in Brazil.
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u/NoSkillzDad 17h ago
I can't scream this louder. Legislators are all sitting like "it's not my problem".
Fuck them all.
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u/LThadeu 18h ago
Please, it's been scientifically proven that social media is already detrimental to the average human mind. Now, it's influencing actual political matters.
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u/Skyver 17h ago
"Now"
Social media has been used to influence political matters for well over a decade.
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u/C9_Chadz 15h ago
Cambridge analytica happened and nothing came of it except that company probably just got renamed and continued to do the same and many others joined in when they realized there is no real consequence.
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u/ipeedinthetoothpaste 16h ago
Peter Thiel gave a talk about how social media would allow the far-right movement to essentially bypass the democratic process. He said this in 2012. There's nothing "now" about it lol
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u/PM_Me_Your_Kinks369 14h ago
And since then he was made his AI "Palantir" which is helping commit genocide plus it's integrated into not just the US government (Pentagon) but Germany and a few other major EU countries.
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u/Bubbly-Treacle-4334 17h ago
Now? Dude trump absolutely would not have won either time without social media and russia
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u/MistahJasonPortman 14h ago
Meta desperately needs a good competitor. Mark Zuckerberg has twisted the algorithm and allowed bots that advance his political agenda. I remember Instagram would sweep for bot accounts prior to Meta’s acquisition of it.
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u/resilindsey 12h ago
They did, then Zuck bought them. At this point nothing that gains any momentum worth bothering Meta can grow organically. And if it does, they can use their comparatively infinite resources to crush them or buy them out (or hostile takeover). Free-market capitalism at work.. I love would for some good ol' fashioned trust-busting, but the "make america great again" crowd never includes that in the "things that made america great". Or the 90% income tax on the highest bracket. Or increased workers' protections and rights under the first and second new deals. They're just referring to the open racism.
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u/SafeBananaGrammar 11h ago
The unregulated, open doors of social media are a malignancy on global society. A revolution of behavior is critical because regulation does appear likely.
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u/sack-o-matic 15h ago
Or even just regulate engagement algorithms like we regulate online gambling, since that's basically what they are.
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u/P0rtal2 16h ago
Despite the progressive content I have engaged with (even if by just slowing down while scrolling), FB continues to hit me with MAGA content. I've ignored the content, I have said I'm not interested, I have reported the content...none of it matters.
At the most 'harmless' they're trying to get liberals to engage with conservative content in the comments and drive engagement with the platform. But I suspect in addition to that, they want anyone in the middle or maybe to the center right to also see the content and become more rabid.
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u/MistahJasonPortman 14h ago
I’ve literally reported tons of extremist sexist and racist stuff (lots of comments calling for the death of women or people of color) and meta always, ALWAYS says, “we didn’t find anything wrong with the comment so we left it up.” But GOD FORBID you leave one little comment using a mean word to call out a sexist, racist white man in the comments. Meta actually deletes those.
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u/thepianoman456 12h ago
It’s funny what Meta decides to censor on Instagram. You have to say “Fa$c!st” and stuff. They don’t want you calling out their own kind!
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u/stevez_86 13h ago
I even block and mute them and they still show up. I know because I go to block and mute and it shows I already did that and I know I didn't do it recently. They are allowing Maga and all that to bypass even what you select as filters right now.
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u/bender40k 14h ago
I wonder if they are recommending this just to get people riled up. Nothing generates clicks and comments like ragebait and Meta has been doing this for years.
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u/aboutchocolate 12h ago
fox news and newsmax are the highest sources every time in google news without an account. what a weird coincidence. fox news says only an idiot would think it was actually news. apparently google is full of idiots, so whacky! too bad it will cost everything.
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u/guice666 14h ago
Engagement algorithms are so easy to manipulate with bot traffic, making it nearly impossible to complete against. It creates a race of blue vs red bots - a race nobody benefits from.
What's the solution? I really have no idea right now. We can't ban social media. Tech can only progress. We live in a world where this is going to be a norm. and it has to be figured out.
Maybe finding some way to identify "outlier" traffic? But that also flags "viral" content.
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u/CategoryZestyclose91 9h ago
I have documented the far right bots on Twitter for almost a year now.
I also report violent content so there’s a record.
I cannot begin to describe to you the depth of the darkness that is being pushed on that platform.
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u/JonnyBravoII 18h ago
At the end of WWII, people like Hermann Göring (among many others) were tried and imprisoned for the rest of their lives. As I recall, many were held at the same site. When the dust settles, I truly hope that Musk, Zuck and all the others end up in a maximum security prison, with no Internet and no influence, rotting away for the rest of their lives.
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u/x_S4vAgE_x 17h ago
Fun fact, most Nazi's got released after 10-20 years. It was only Rudolf Hess who was Deputy Fuhrer until 1941 who remained in prison for life
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u/uhhhwhatok 17h ago
Mind you the big german industrialists who used slave labour and were close friends of Hitler got off even lighter than that and made giant fortunes after the war ex Friedrich Flick, Ferdinand Porsche
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u/x_S4vAgE_x 17h ago
Porsche in particular is always an eye opening one given how their cars are everywhere now
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u/Uilamin 13h ago
Volkswagon was created by the Nazi party (oddly Porsche was commissioned by the Nazi's to help build the company)
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u/vintageballs 13h ago
*Volkswagen
And ironically, while the Porsche AG is owned by Volkswagen, the Porsche Automobil Holding SE owns 53% of Volkswagen AG. Really interesting company structure. But I swear it's all good - lower Saxony state owns 20% of Volkswagen so it's not like all of the ownership is in Nazi heirs' hands
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u/nw342 17h ago
A ton of nazis (most) werent even tried for their crimes. Also, a lot of nazis either remained in politics, or were shipped to america/canada. I honestly prefer the soviet method of dealing with nazis, they dont deserve trials.
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u/sai-kiran 14h ago
Trials help establish guilt, with out them, I could claim you’re a Nazi and get you dealt with in Russian way. How are you gonna prove your innocence?
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u/A-dab 16h ago
Hess' story is actually absolutely insane. The guy flew a plane (literally, he was the fucking pilot) alone all the way to Scotland because he wanted to negotiate with Churchill, where he was promptly arrested. Imagine Vance commandeering an F-16 and flying it all the way to Iran to meet with Mojtaba, or Mikhail Mishustin just randomly taking off to Kharkiv because he wanted to negotiate with Zelensky.
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u/properthyme 16h ago
Former Nazi party members and sympathizers held prominent, influential positions in the West German government, judiciary, and police forces as well as many top industrial leadership roles. One of the major motivations behind the rise of the Baader-Meinhof group.
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u/Blagsc 18h ago
no no, they need internet or regular updates, *They* all thrive on knowing the damage they do is "for the greater good of surviving and outpacing the poor".
They need to see everything they brought about crumble, no posting, just a doom scroll of there company's failing and all the policy's getting winded back.
that the "end of the world" they are planning for was all there own fault
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u/Ronaldo_Frumpalini 17h ago
Zuck owns 15% of Kauai, the guys running the world in to the ground make sure they'll survive to destroy the next one too.
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u/OkSell1822 16h ago
I don't think foreigners have a clue of how endemic WhatsApp and Instagram are in Brazil. Meta is an evil company, yet it indirectly supports a massive amount of the country's internal market because of how small businesses depend on it to cut marketing costs and have client relations.
Even public service workers heavily rely on whatsapp for communication. Its naturalized to the point its barely livable without it, as in you cannot find or maintain a job without WhatsApp in most urban areas.
The most sensible thing would be to ban Meta from operating in Brazil, but its so important to the economy we would literally need a transition period to ban it, it would take literal years to decouple our economy from WhatsApp, and that's counting out popular resistance, which would have plenty off...
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u/bikedork5000 15h ago
The fact that a country has that level of dependence on an app owned and controlled elsewhere is a major strategic weakness
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u/ConceitedWombat 13h ago
To be fair, you could say that about any country outside of the US that is dependent upon Microsoft products.
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u/balder1993 4h ago
That’s true, but the issue with Meta is worse, because they actively bought all channels used for mass communication. No company should be allowed to have such power.
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u/bikedork5000 10h ago
Does Microsoft have a track record of say......disabling Excel for foreign political parties it whimsically decides are their enemies?
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u/lucosims 5h ago
No, but they do have a track record of developing military technology to the US, technology that could be used againt these countries
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u/mauricioszabo 15h ago
This is unfortunately the truth. When Twitter went to shit, I left it but I though how would my life work without it. For context, three documents I found via Twitter only, and only got a product I paid for because of Instagram.
In my Twitter/Document case, essentially what happened is that no government official channel was working, I made a post in Twitter tagging some official accounts, and HOURS later I had a DM asking me how they could help... it was kind of insane, really, and the whole ordeal was solved in days instead of months.
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u/bwoah07_gp2 7h ago
Americans can't comprehend how popular WhatsApp is around the world. It's not common in America for people to use it.
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u/ToranjaNuclear 4h ago
What do Americans use instead for instant messaging?
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u/bwoah07_gp2 4h ago
If they are on iPhones, iMessage and if they're on Android, they use Google Chat. So basically, the default text messaging app in your phone.
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u/ExoticPuppet 5h ago
I hate the "META IS STEALING YOUR DATA!!1!1!1!" argument because a lot of us use WhatsApp since way before it was owned by Meta.
Also few people give a fuck about this, it's not as shocking of a statement as they think it is.
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u/_CMDR_ 13h ago
They could nationalize the local WhatsApp division. Done.
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u/OkSell1822 12h ago
You know we tried regulating social media to make it stop spreading fake news and fostering crime right? You know that it was met with a massive campaign from the far right and from the big tech themselves that paralised the project.
We cannot even regulate our media services, nationalizing it would be the reason enough to Maduro us
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u/bauhausy 12h ago
Arguably the reason Meta is interfering so much in the Brazilian election, boosting Bolsonaro and severely capping the reach of Lula, is because the latter promised to regulate them.
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u/AstronomerRound5064 18h ago
Social media should be banned during election period. Thats not right.
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u/Bleacherbum95 17h ago
This stuff isn't contained to a couple months. Disinformation campaigns on social are year round events.
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u/herbiedishes 18h ago
That’s like this one time in Myanmar when the fb algorithm supported the wholesale slaughter of 10000+ people by the military spreading hate and dehumanizing content.
And they didn’t even get a fine for that one.
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u/UknowImRight422 9h ago
Big techs serve the epstein class.
And the epstein class wants latin america as a narco-colony.
The us is the enemy.
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u/NinjaGaiden11 18h ago
Election interference????
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u/RandomXDudeRedZero 15h ago
Why are this tech companies not being punished by every government? Last I heard the EU also had beef with Meta due to their products being purposefully addictive, but I have not heard anything else.
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u/Xizzie 14h ago
Because capitalism breeds corruption. Look at how China treats billionaires and compare it with the capitalist countries.
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u/rhyddhau 12h ago
For all their overtures about being "Communist," China is a capitalist (but illiberal and highly authoritarian) nation. They're also infamously corrupt, especially at the regional and municipal levels. Nationally, the CCP permits their oligarchic billionaires to operate monopolies so long as they get kickbacks, moving against them only when they begin to threaten the CCPs power or when the nation's economic stability is greatly threatened (see: Evergrande). Jack Ma is a great example: A healthy system should never have permitted him to accumulate that much power and wealth. We shouldn't glaze the CCP just because the US has become so malignant and corrupt.
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u/ViniStaub 12h ago
The idea is that the billionaires should not become a political force. I think they make a better job of it than any "liberal" democracy (which aren't really liberal if it's not one person one vote).
Do you think the popular opinion has more or less influence over the State on China, compared to other countries? The people is certainly more listened to there than in Brazil. Here, they keep privatizing everything even as 70% of people are against privatizations.
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u/Bicentennial_Douche 12h ago
The old Soviet Union basically ran on corruption. And China is in practice very capitalistic.
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u/Electronic_Film_2837 14h ago
Because they can just pay fines and the owners can go to a different country without extradition laws
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u/EarthBounder 6h ago
Meta paid $1B in fines for this. It stung, for like a month. They also made some light adjustments for the child & teen policies.
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u/Thecrawsome 16h ago
Zuck is trying to bring in corporate fascism around the world.
Zuck is a shitty American. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went to harvard. Then goes in to fuck up people’s lives just like every other harvard grad.
Zuck didn’t work for his opportunities. That’s why he get gets along with Trump so well.
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u/sai-kiran 14h ago
Builds a app to creep on girls, Gets called a creep,
Was noticed by some other people who want to utilise his “backend” for their idea.
Steals the idea, fires lifelong friend and still continues to be the same creep.
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u/MistahJasonPortman 14h ago
I’ve been giving major side eye to Priscilla Chan. She must be equally terrible or stuck under a hard prenup.
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u/Marv18GOAT 11h ago
Wrong Zuck just goes with whatever’s popular. He had tampons in the men’s bathrooms at meta and then removed them after the 2024 election. Pure money whore nothing more
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u/leoxyz 17h ago
If anyone at Meta is reading this and knows of something, you can be a whistleblower and help Brazil by getting in contact with a trustworthy organization here named Ctrl-Z ( https://ctrlz.org.br/ ) . They have a dedicated channel for that ( https://vazabigtech.org/ )
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u/sai-kiran 14h ago
I don’t think people with a conscience wouldn’t be still working there. The company started creepy, continues to be creepy and will doe creepy.
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u/Shaky_Balance 15h ago
I know “alleged” is about this specific lawsuit but Brazil has been basically the prime example content algos heavily preferring right wing content over other content with the same engagement. Facebook internal research even found they were favoring lies and inflammatory content before they buried their own report.
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u/TheTresStateArea 12h ago
We need to ban algos I think. We shouldn't be served anything we don't expressly subscribe to.
And somehow also ban non human accounts without giving up individual anonymity.
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u/No-Anybody-4094 13h ago
There's a far-right politician in Brazil that thanks to Meta has more views on his posts than Selena Gomez.
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u/HijackedMyAccount 16h ago
Brazil is the only country showing the fucking playbook on how to beat fascism. You HAVE to choke off their lies online!
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u/Xizzie 14h ago
The average US citizen has been feed with so much propaganda that they flat out refuse to see how far they have fallen.
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u/HijackedMyAccount 13h ago
Left lives in reality.
Right lives in a mental prison made for them by billionaires.
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u/Tall-Archer5957 9h ago
Isn’t Brazil about to elect a fascist as president who’s running on pardoning the previously attempted fascist coup against the government?
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u/The-Fumbler 16h ago
Just block meta In the country. Like no critical systems are running on meta so turn it off and the people will find an alternative.
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u/paranoidzone 16h ago
The entire country of Brazil runs on WhatsApp, basically.
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u/highgarden 17h ago
If Lula banned Meta services he would lose in a landslide. Fine should be higher but be realistic folks. Social media ban would be more than unpopular it’d disrupt the economy.
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u/Sedert1882 6h ago
And the US will not admit this is election interference in Brazil's elections. If it's done to them in any shape or form then all hell is unleashed.
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u/EtherealPheonix 5h ago
100k a day fine until they comply, though this presumably maxes out in 9 days when the election happens, what a fucking joke that's not even a rounding error for META as the cost of potentially swinging an election
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u/IMightBYourDad 4h ago
FYI Instagram has been taking down many reels/posts/accounts criticising Modi’s regime from India as well. They’ve been also making posts from independent journalists unavailable in India while Modi’s IT team continues to spread fake news.
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u/de-motivator1000 6m ago
I keep advocating for the ban of these American Mega Corps in the UK. The US put out their national security doctrine earlier in the year where they said they would actively seek to undermine governments in Europe and support far right movements in those countries, yet these guys still continue on like Trump and his stooges have their best interest in mind.
These nutcases want an eternally hobbled Europe and South America, upon which they can exploit for corporate profits in perpetuity.
When is the world going to wake up to this nonsense? At the least Europe, or anyone else capable should make an open source alternative to Facebook.
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u/AudibleNod 19h ago
Mark Zuckerberg was in the front row of Trump's second inauguration. Trump's Brazil pick is Flávio Bolsonaro. It's not hard to connect the dots on this one.
Meta has to pay $98,000 if it fails to comply with the order. It makes $186,000,000.00 profit a day.