The challenge of “containing” fake news, one month before the presidential elections in Brazil

A month before the elections in Brazil, the authorities are struggling to contain the disinformation that floods social networks, but despite being more prepared than in 2018, the fight against fake news remains a challenge.

Former left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leading voting intentions with 47%according to the latest Datafolha Institute poll, and far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, second with 32%, are the subject of most of the fake content before the October 2 general election.

Disinformation was already rampant in the 2018 campaign, especially through Bolsonaro groups very active on WhatsApp and experts agree that this has had an impact on the election resultswhich gave the victory to the current president.

Since then, institutions, civil society organizations and technology companies advanced in the fight against false information on social networkswhere Bolsonaro has 47.5 million followers and Lula, 16.6 million.

The President of the Higher Electoral Court (TSE), Alexandre de Moraes, said on the first day of the campaign that it would be “firm and relentless” against the “dissemination of false or fraudulent news”.

The TSE has already ordered the removal of dozens of content, including Bolsonaro’s own publications, such as a video in which, during a meeting with ambassadors in July, has criticized without proof the reliability of electronic voting in Brazil.

The Court also created a group to combat disinformation made up of institutions, tech giants such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, Google, TikTok, Telegram and YouTube, as well as universities and media outlets.

This has led to compromises such as WhatsApp’s decision to postpone the election until after the implementation of the “Community” instrument.which will allow you to bring together multiple groups in the same space and its administrators to send messages to all of them.

For its part, the Telegram platform, preferred by Bolsonaro for the defense of unlimited freedom of expression, was forced to appoint a legal representative in Brazilthreatening to be blocked across the country.

“Without the collaboration of the platforms it is very difficult, because it takes a long time to take any punitive measure, and even when it is adopted, the damage is already done, because the information has already circulated“, says the sociologist Marco Aurélio Ruediger, director of the Communication School of the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

perfectionism

But the battle against disinformation went hand in hand with its improvement.

On platforms such as TikTok and Telegram “disinformation is rampant” because they favor, respectively, the “simple short video montage” and the creation of channels where “hate speech” proliferates, says Ana Regina Rego, coordinator of the National Network for Combating Disinformation.

According to the newspaper O Balloonvideos with false information about Lula and Bolsonaro have been viewed millions of times on TikTok.

Three videos showing Lula drinking clear liquid, falsely claiming that she is “getting drunk”, reached 6.6 million views; five videos that attempted to discredit the stabbing suffered during the 2018 campaign by Bolsonaro have been viewed 3.3 million times.

Other widely circulated content verified by AFP’s Fact-Check service includes false claims that, once elected, Lula would have ordered the churches to be closedor misleading comparisons of gasoline prices during left (2003-2010) and current governments.

TikTok has assured AFP that it removes videos that violate its “community standards” and that it is committed to removing content that could affect the election process, as well as avoiding highlighting information in its suggestions. “potentially misleading that cannot be verified”.

Content that “combines facts, lies, decontextualization with sensationalism, they have 70% more potential to go viral what an informative piece, “says Rego.

Hence the danger that false information will take on a disproportionate dimension, as already happened in the United States when Donald Trump’s supporters invaded the Capitol in January 2021, convinced that there had been a fraud in the elections in which the former president lost to Joe Biden.

In Brazil, too, a major concern is that Bolsonaro and his followers will refuse any possible defeat, given the president’s ongoing interrogations of electronic voting.

“Society today is less naive than what it receives. But I fear that the results will not be accepted and violence will be encouraged, we can live in a situation similar to that of the United States, “says Ruediger.

AFP agency

PB