Brazil: thousands of videos linked to Bolsonaro deleted after raids in case of attempted coup

In the two days following the federal police operation against former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his allies last week, the channels that make up Bolsonaro’s digital ecosystem on YouTube deleted or made private more than 1,500 videos, he said. the OGlobo website reported on Wednesday..

The volume is higher than that recorded in previous days, when less than 200 contents were deleted per day from accounts in this area. Cleaning” was detected in the data analytics company’s tracking Data from the novelwhich according to Globo monitors the behavior of far-right profiles on the social network.

According to these local media, the deletion of the videos was a measure taken by the channels themselves and not motivated by an action by the platform or a judicial decision. The strategy of pro-Bolsonaro influencers is recurring during operations against people under investigation for attacks on institutions, and has also been observed after the legal failures of the former president and his allies in recent months.

In July last year, OGlobo recalls, the profile of MP Gustavo Gayer (from Bolsonaro’s party) he hid just over 200 videosincluding the content that They mentioned the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and ministers of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), after a trial at the Electoral Court which declared Bolsonaro ineligible.

In the last wave, those who suffered the greatest losses were the channels ZangaoBluesby journalist Toby Cotrim, with 183 thousand subscribers, and BolsoNews BN, which has 323 thousand followers and an unidentified author. Another channel that deleted videos is the account Conservative and patriotof the former candidate for federal deputy and pastor Alberto Jubanski, with 163 thousand members.

What were the videos about?

According to Globo, most of the videos have been deleted discuss Brazilian political issues and mention authorities, such as the ministers of the Federal Supreme Court and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or They are in line with Jair Bolsonaro’s speeches.

Globo was unable to recover the complete videos that were deleted or made private, but It was possible to verify the titles and descriptions.

Among the 524 videos deleted from the Cotrim channel, for example, some of the titles already reported attacks against Alexandre de Moraes, the judge who investigated the coups of 8 January 2023. One of them launched an appeal to the channel’s followers with the text “He calls for the impeachment of Alexandre de Moraes.”

The account also deleted a post in which defended a general strike for “verifiable printed voting”, made for the 2022 elections, and videos that targeted the STF. There are publications in which Cotrim suggests that Lula will not take office or what The Armed Forces have everything under controlcarried out in December 2022, in the midst of the coup groups and before the assault on the headquarters of power in Brasilia.

The channel also eliminated a series of publications with references to Article 142 of the Constitution, used in recent years by Bolsonaro supporters. to defend the military intervention, although the constitutional text does not contain such a provision. In a note addressed to Globo, Cotrim stated that the removal of his videos was carried out to comply with YouTube policies and coincided with the sanctions applied by the platform.

“My decision to make videos private or remove them from the channel is simply to try to comply with YouTube guidelines, which They increasingly limit my freedom of expression, as well as that of other right-wing YouTubers,” he said, adding that “there was no pressure” from the PF and that their videos “are fully known to the authorities and it is very easy for them to recover them.”

Criticisms of the research

The profile of Alberto Jubanski, candidate in the 2022 elections in Paraná, 387 posts deleted after the operation. One of the deleted videos, published on the 9th, made direct reference to the investigation into a coup attempt. In the title of the post, Jubanski asks: “Will they arrest the captain?”

The publications they highlighted to Lula’s imminent arrest or impeachment They were also identified in the excluded content list. In one of these publications, from June last year, Jubanski exchanged letters with numbers to bypass the networks’ moderation and even asked in the title: “Death3 of Lul4 and desperate ministers of the STF, what is happening?” In other content he stated that the arrests were “illegitimate” for acts of coup They are “flagrant”.

The BolsoNews channel, created in 2020, removed 316 videos from the air in two days. Some posts also mention STF, Moraes, and TSE in descriptions and titles, but there are no explicit attacks. When contacted, Jubanski and the BolsoNews channel did not respond.

What is Bolsonaro accused of?

The Brazilian justice system is increasingly closing the siege around former president Jair Bolsonaro, of whom he accuses his apparent coup attempt to prevent the inauguration of Luiz Ináicio Lula da Silva in Brazil after the October 2022 elections.

The recent publication detailing preparations for an alleged coup attempt by the far-right leader and his closest allies left the former president more exposed than ever.

Bolsonaro, who says he is a victim of “persecution”he was barred from leaving Brazil on Thursday, as part of the “Tempus veritatis” operation, the hour of truth, in Latin. Other collaborators of his were searched and some of them arrested.

Bolsonaro called for a march in San Pablo on February 25 so that people can defend him “peacefully” in the streets.