Meta Ignores Brazilian Court Order to End Bolsonaro Favoritism
panamericandispatch.org
panamericandispatch.org
My confidence in the validity of their claims tanked right about here.
I'm all for regulating transparency into social media algorithms. Meta most certainly is compromised by foreign actors. But can we choose less stupid hills to die on than numerology and GIFs? Headline is not remotely supported by the evidence.
It's one thing to discard it as "numerology and gifs" but it's another to willfully disrupt legal elections in a soverign country.
Or is a decade a really long time and we've all forgotten about Cambridge Analytica?
Reinforcement feedback loops, etc
If this is influencing your votes your democracy is already lost.
The public can fight Facebook in the same way an infant can fight Muhammad Ali.
Especially if they're the same exact people who whine at the top of their lungs that our elections are the subject of foreign interference (even when it isn't). If one does a thing to someone else, they have zero leg to stand on when they think it's being done to them (even when it's not). Some of our first childhood lessons are "Lying is bad" and "Two wrongs don't make a right". Beyond ridiculous that the (supposedly adult) people in charge of our nation and corporations aren't able to handle lessons that most of the rest of us learn and understand as tiny children.
Perhaps in Brazil it’s illegal for political messages go viral on social media at all? Then I could see how there’s an issue here. But that isn’t my understanding.
CA put out quizzes and in that era of Facebook the average user absolutely did not think filling in a quiz meant giving some organisation your data.
People probably didn't think about them being run by third parties at all - it was just a fun thing to fill in shared by friends and family.
The average person who did understand these things, before the mid 2010s, was very passionate about open standards. The zeitgeist at the time was that you should be able to do anything through the API that you can do through the official app; it wasn’t until 2015 (https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/28/facebook-api-shut-down/) that Facebook turned off their official API for letting third parties dig through your friends’ entire profiles. If Facebook had announced in 2017 that they’re turning off API access to the timeline, which they ended up doing as part of the Cambridge Analytica response, people would have been very frustrated and would not have believed that it was a privacy-first measure.
I'm not sure i want to live in that world.
That is what seems to be happening here.
The truth doesn't matter, what matters is getting more government money, and more regulation to get more financing, etc
NGOs are big business, and be assured, they don't care about fairness one bit more than Meta
Algorithmic transparency is a deeply unprofitable and difficult task, with people from all sides screeching at you thinking you're biased against them. Governments obviously shouldn't be involved (unless you're a fan of state-controlled media), and so the only people that will take this on are people that care enough about the impact of social media on society to give up careers in the private sector.
If you care so much, you can always join one of these NGOs! You won't. I guarantee you they are not as biased as you think they are, and they certainly don't hold a "shadow ban this guy" hammer.
And you can always claim it's biased towards one side. So, which one is which then?
I'm completely confused about your analogy to song shuffling. I disagree with your characterization that permuting a list randomly isn't "truly random" in the way that selecting an item from a list randomly is, but even ignoring that, I'm completely unable to figure out what you think the equivalent of that is for an LLM.
We are talking about 2 trials, right? Or did they do more repetitions?
What would be the "correct" numbers to get from 2 trials that show an even distribution?
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For comparison:
I clicked twice to generate numbers on random.org
The second generated numbers were
Here are your random numbers:
13 22
Timestamp: 2026-10-27 10:01:22 UTC
> why would ~~AI~~ random.org pick two numbers, out of 1 to 25? Should that not be evenly distributed instead? Why is the AI so skewed?
(The first set of numbers were 20 and 12. Unfortunately I didn't get lucky to get 13/22 on the first try.)
I believe though it is an old phenomenom that if (given the default context) you ask a random number, it will more often than not give numbers from a very small set.
I just used a "Temporary chat" with ChatGPT twice to "Give a random number" and it gave 42 both times (this shuold be rather understandable why it ended up with this). Then I asked "Give a random number in 1-10" twice and it responded with 7 for both (and this too is an old "magic number").
btw today's models run random.randint() by default unless you prohibit python by choosing one of the dumb models, disable thinking, disable tool calls, etc.
How is meta compromised by foreign actors? And who are the foreign actors?
It also doesn't help that it's easy to lump 'the left' with 'everything I don't like re social issues' because the institutional left is basically neoliberals who prefer to talk social politics to avoid talking about economics.
That's actually a great analysis, thanks for that!
I think that’s very USA centric - i feel it’s different in Europe or South America
That person was then politely told to rtfa and given more substance than they thought was in there.
And what did you do?
That’s quite ironic.
As for the evidence, it has been well documented beyond the parent comment's silly examples and it includes shadowbanning popular profiles with certain opinions.
I guarantee your political opponents also think Meta is trying to shadow ban then.
That sarcastic comment justifies all Putin's laws about "foreign agents", "undesirable organizations", "extremist organizations" and such.
So Putin can justify anything with words - what they say doesnt really matter or reflect reality. The actions and outcomes matter.
A: social media is a mind control tool that can be used for targeted political manipulation, as shown by the cambridge analytica scandal and plenty of other research.
B: the US is a hostile foreign power in relation to South America, as proven by its continuous threats, embargoes, tariff wars, coups and more recently the unashamed declaration of a "Donroe doctrine"
?
If the provider can tamper with the algorithm to filter out information that goes against its political preferences, how is that ineffective or not targeted political manipulation? The idea of democracy presumes that the public can be well informed in order to take decisions.
Hint: it is not the same beliefs plus anger. Anger is only a proxy, it isn't polarization itself.
This is something that has been measured and its growth has correlated with deployment of algorithmic social media in country after country (where it not all deploy at the same time).
your own country flipped its shit and said that Tiktok was CCP propaganda less than a year ago and tried to ban it, so it seems like foreign influence on your politics does seem to be a bad thing.
The irony and hypocrisy are hilarious.
When in fact, it comes after
> The petition describes a GIF search on WhatsApp for the word “brasil.” The first result was an image of Flávio Bolsonaro. It showed his ticket number and identified his running mate.
> According to the records sent to the court, the same result appeared on three separate accounts. The groups use this to ask whether its top position comes from systematic ranking criteria.
> A similar check on Instagram also showed images of the senator among the first results. Users who searched for “brasil” found three images of Flávio Bolsonaro in the top positions
> On WhatsApp, a GIF search for the word “ladrão” (thief) returned a caricature of the president in a striped uniform, a reference to prison dress. Another result carried the message “Supporting the Workers’ Party is a mental illness.”
> On Instagram, a search for the same word showed a GIF reading “Vote 13.” That is the Workers’ Party election number, tied to Lula’s candidacy.
And you could also think that the authors would be for censorship and completely crazy, when in fact:
> They are not claiming that they have proven bias in Meta, choosing instead to posit the question to the Superior Electoral Court.
That's all ignoring the fact that Trump and the US openly support Bolsonora, who is in jail for attempting a coup after losing the election.
And Brazil, AFAIK, was a military dictatorship until, what, 40 years ago? To my knowledge, without a "hard cut" that would have investigated this part of the country's history.
I am not Brazilian, who knows, I can't tell whether Lula is corrupt, or anything, what I have not seen is proof of the election fraud claims put forward by Bolsonaro sr.?
Not irrelevant since his son of course rehabilitates him and wants to "correct the public record".
And also, imprisoning him of course was a strong move that also needs justification.
But it would be cool to limit political content on platforms with non-audited, non-public and intransparent engagement algorithms.
Just as it would be good to stop intransparent flow of big money into politics.
The latter is a sentiment that Trump catered to when he became president for the first time. Of course, only in a twisted, cynical way: "the system is broken, so I alone can fix it".
Regardless of anyone's political affiliation: Meta has a long history of not giving a shit whether their engagement algorithms at best... "damage" democratic processes, so I don't see any reason to be smug about it.
As for WhatsApp GIF searches. Searches for "brasil" shows one candidate as the first person after GIFs of the flag. Search results before you have started typing anything shows the other candidate.
You can search for any negative term that one side commonly uses against the other, and WhatsApp will suggest GIFs of the person. Do you understand that millions of normal people send these GIFs to each other in WhatsApp groups and private messages? Of course they're going to turn up in top suggested.
Do an image search on Google for a common derogatory term of any (in)famous politician you know of and look at the results.
Of course, it could be organic. I shortened my text a bit so it's not explicitly mentioned anymore, but I still wrote about "engagement algorithms".
It doesn't need to be a political influence dial at Meta's HQ.
Regardless of whether there is intentional influence by the platform, or the platform intransparently favors other actors who in turn use the platform, it's a problem. Even when the platforms just do it for simple financial reasons or political opportunism.
On HN, people are usually quick to lament to damaging effects of engagement optimization on public discourse.
I thought mentioning that I cannot judge whether Lula is a corrupt president (I assume that's what's meant by "criminal") is enough to make clear that I am not arguing for silencing opinions.
What I would like to see is addressing Social Media's role in weaponizing outrage advertisement using slander, and also, platforms getting away with not making transparent how they weight political advertisement in elections.
In my opinion, electoral advertisement should be regulated, and it is regulated, in many countries. This does not prevent you from sending memes on WhatsApp, it might prevent a platform from suggesting political memes to you when you did not explicitly seek out partisan content.
Regarding the rest:
Lula has been imprisoned because of corruption, Bolsonaro has been imprisoned because of his coup attempt.
Seems hard to argue about that in one-sided way, and I'm not gonna make any explicit stance here, I am not from Brazil.
It seems impossible to assess whether one of the two is in fact not guilty of the crimes they were charged for. What I did notice though were the election fraud claims, and consensus seemed to be that they are false. The coup attempt also seems to be undisputed.
The EU has sought out trade deals with Brazil, which was more easily possible with Lula, AFAIK.
I'm not gonna defend everything (sry, not "anything") the EU does here either.
My point was how the public deals with election fraud claims and coups.
And it does seem strange to normalize those openly, even 5 years after the capitol storm.
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But, to be clear: I am not interested in advocating for Lula in Brazil, that's a Brazil problem and I don't know enough to have an opinion on this. Maybe a gut feeling, but it's easy to get rid of that by reading from the other side (e.g. about corruption, crime rates etc).
That was hopefully not something I said in my initial comment either, because viewing politics as a football match is not healthy, and Germany has its own problems which are more relevant to me - and yet, German politics would still not be something I want to comment about extensively here.
I only wanted to comment on the role of Social Media in political elections. The fact that coup attempts are now so openly normalized in many countries considered democratic (US, Turkey, Brazil)... might seem odd to me, but that's more of an "illusion of stability" thing I guess.
It's actually not, a cursory understanding of Brazilian politics is all that's needed to understand this in context. Lula was essentially "acquitted" for his crimes, as it was proved after he served a few years in prison that the charges were brought under false pretenses by partisan operators. (https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/04/brazil-crimi...)
It was also quite convenient for liberals and the right wing at the time to jail Lula, as he was at the apex of his popularity and was making life hard for the Brazilian bourgeoisie. Bolsonarism can essentially be read as a revolt of the Brazilian elite against Lula's economic policies which stepped on the toes of a few powerful sectors of the Brazilian capitalist class.
Lula has a long history of successfully managing capitalism as a socialist. Brazilian politics is extremely corrupt and pay-to-play, and the Bolsonaros are essentially a crime family in their own right. Flavio, the son running for president, has been convicted of embezzlement when he was a state congressman and is literally under investigation right now for money laundering and bank fraud.
It’s disappointing to see it upvoted to the top of the thread. Seems many people are looking to dismiss the issue rather than fully consider it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/1x965on/eu_n%C3%A3o...
What would be useful here is leaking the system prompt for the Meta AI inside WhatsApp
This used to be an under the hood and frowned upon type of maneuver, but now it is much more rampant and far reaching thanks to AI
- Meta has suspended Lula's facebook account a week from the election day, and many advertising instagram and facebook accounts associated with his campaign have been consistently suspended and then reactivated with days of delay (this is a huge loss in the context of a political campaign)
- The reach of his opponents is being inflated to unexplainable proportions while people are having trouble finding Lula's profile by searching for... lula. And then you got people like Nikolas Ferreira, whose videos consistently reach several times his follower numbers and reach several times more views, likes, shares, etc than people like Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé, Messi, etc. He's a Brazilian politician who speaks Portuguese and talks about strictly Brazilian subjects. He recently posted a MUTED video that reached 60 million views in hours.
- Lula's big WhatsApp channel for coordinating online campaign actions with voters kept getting suspended over and over
- There are reports from Brazilian META EMPLOYEES talking about the unresponsiveness of the internal American team to solve reports they made regarding Lula's platform issues
There are so many problems I can't even list them all here without making it a wall of text. It's just too obvious.
The numerology is weak evidence on its own, but it is decidedly odd in connection with the other examples. If a pattern persists in seemingly irrelevant areas and favours one candidate in a political race then the call for clarification is valid.
Or at least a serious enough issue for a court to order Meta to desist while the legal trial is ongoing.
That's "Half-Life 3 confirmed" levels of copium.
Big tech is so rigged (intensional or not), the question if it is socially net negative has become rhetorical.
You might simply have been engaging with related content unknowingly, even if it's only one critical of them.
Either that or it's deliberately showing people stuff it knows they will hate to harvest hate scrolling.
I get AfD content recommendations (lurid, trashy stuff of uhm uncertain truth value) a propos of nothing in the village I grew up in - they are popular there with about 25% in the 2025 election. The region is not even in the east or particularly suffering economically. I don't get these recommendations in Berlin. It seems regional.
If you don't then actions might be taken against you see CBS and other media having to pay.
DoJ choosing who to look at.
The exact same can be said of labor. There’s nothing unique to “capital” (ie, rich people) here, it’s just how humans are. By nature, we care more about how big of a slice of the pie we’re getting relative to our neighbors, even if that means we all get a smaller slice than we otherwise would have. That’s exactly what the tragedy of the commons is about.
The miracle of modernity is that we’ve built institutions that incentivize individuals to act in ways that we otherwise wouldn’t, for the greater good. It’s a delicate balance, but capital isn’t unique in its propensity to upset that balance.
A lot of bots of US origin are propagating false narratives posing as citizens of these countries.
Somehow none of the hundreds of thousands of software engineers that have worked there have managed to uncover exactly what this purpose is despite having access to the monorepos and visibility into the recommendation engine pipelines.
On the modern internet, people confuse conspiratorial thinking for well-reasoned thinking. But an idea is not correct just because it is interesting or exciting.
It's not a secret that Meta is selling political preferences on its platform, as they have been for decades. Several Meta employee have blown the whistle about it already.
I favorite reels that are pro-Palestinian, and now my feed is packed with anti-Zionist reels. I literally don’t think I’ve ever seen a pro-Israel reel.
There is evidence here of influence on the Brazilian elections. They were working with Cambridge Analytics to influence British elections.
There has been multiple whistleblowers saying they are offering political favors. There as studies showing they do indeed prefer certain parties.
How long can we keep our heads in the sand? When will it be enough
How could that be made to happen? Should EU somehow move to federated (let’s say per country) instances of Mastodon or something? Or one big platform? How would regular folks get used to it? And how could those initiatives be prevented from falling into irrelevance when network effects are at play?
I agree with the idea, it’s just that there’s the usual hurdles there aren’t necessarily good answers for that I know of.
Amazon/AWS tried this route with their "sovereign cloud" which still ends up being beholden exactly the same way as "real AWS", so what's even the point? Who is even falling for these "tricks"?
It might work, but it also might bloat the whole operation so much that the social network becomes non-functional.
>We already prevailed in a similar legal case in Germany in 2021-2023 in which we learned an important lesson: we tried to use geoIP blocking as a “hack” in a similar circumstance at the start of the legal proceedings, allowing us to continue services in Germany until the case concluded. The plaintiff (Sony Music Entertainment GmbH) then used a VPN to access the blocked content from Germany in circumvention of the geoIP blocking. The court agreed with Sony in their assertions of noncompliance, and we were fined for contempt of court.
I guess it was Germany after all.
If free DNS is supposed to be able to block people who use a VPN to circumvent a geoIP block, then the court is effectively demanding global reach for their blocking orders. It doesn't matter whether the court doesn't have the expertise in this, it only matters that they made such a moronic decision.
We had video streaming sites like youtube. We had cellphone manufacturers. We had chat applications.
But the conditions for these companies were better outside of Europe. Now we're stuck with everything not made in Europe. (South Korea is more relevant in consumer tech than the EU.)
European governments still haven't swapped off MS.
Could a European competitor have even existed when even youtube struggled with the GEMA lawsuit for over half a decade? And that by the end of it they still had to pay?
I realize these are heavy handed approaches - but shows what can get done.
Perhaps smaller scale things can work as well: Ie supporting alternatives when they occur - ie tiktok back when it was kinda Chinese - use the China threat to enforce objective standards - rather than just following the us stance.
Use existing monopoly legislation.
All creating an open market place for social media that allows for newcomers and local alternatives rather than the single monopoly that is the situation now.
They are the minimum.
And StudiVZ, which I never liked, made that slowly die out. Facebook came later.
I would very much prefer to still be part of local social media (where you could resolve issues with the admin directly), but federated to other networks.
Both the US and the EU are already doing this exact thing with cars, basically.
https://www.blast-info.fr/articles/2026/information-exclusiv...
But the reason is not sovereignty - it's to make sure people can't receive communications not approved by the (fascist*) French government.
* Please do not mince words or make excuses. We know they are fascist because they're shooting the population in the streets and turning off the internet, just like bad countries do. So far this is isomorphic to the Arab Spring.
B-but the EU can't do that!
It absolutely can. Just like it can push Chat Control down everyone's throats even though if you held a referendum on it it would be voted down (no, most Jacques the plumbers on the street don't want mass surveillance even if it's "against crime").
They have, as the joke goes, more money than God and influence all over the world. They are beholden to no one. They have the resources to fight in court against decisions they don’t believe in, and all the lobbying they need to shape established laws.
They choose their actions, and their actions are their own. Every single dollar they donate to the current president but not the previous one is an admission of their allegiance and (lack of) morals.
Having principles and standing for them costs money, and these societal parasites subsist on money and influence. Make no mistake, they will sell their own mother to further their goals, but they don’t have to while they can keep selling everyone else’s.
The problem is that the same is true for many politicians. They do a lot of lobbying in Europe too.
That’s not the argument. Unfortunately, reading comprehension and engaging in good faith continues to decline rapidly on HN.
Not being beholden to someone does not mean you have power over them. For example: you are not beholden to me and thus don’t have to do anything I say; but that doesn’t mean I have to do anything you say either, I’m not beholden to you.
The administration can take over them with the snap of a finger if they so desire. They have absolutely no power.
The best example of that is the BBC suit, where the only reason it's happening is because the US doesn't have any control over the entity because it's British.
No, no they cannot. They sure want you to believe that, though, and the longer that fantasy is left unchecked, the more power it gets. The current administration is not omnipotent, and that is exemplified by the times it was pushed back (not by the bootlicker CEOs at major US tech companies, obviously).
Like John Oliver said, use the four key words that make weak bullies go away: “fuck you, make me”.
What's different for this administration is that neither the Congress, Senate or Supreme Court will opose them.
There is a national broadcast apparatus in Germany, directly funded by the people in form of mandatory household monthly contributions. It definitely needs improvements and is far from ideal but it doesn’t work at behest of government (budget pressures, etc.). It was designed to resist the top down pressure from the admins (lessons learned from what Nazis did). AfD along with some private news networks backed by the likes of Telekom are really pushing to abolish it.
That's how we can be sure it's worth keeeping.
I agree with the general claim of their safer space. Yet, I see several possibilities why that ended in an unnecessary aggression police operation -- esp. LKA in every federal state seems to overcompensate for non-action on devastating crime.
I don't see the connection. Explanation welcome. Esp. since I don't won't to have a last word on a topic I don't know enough about.
They probably show posts based on location and background, so essentially just like Fox, CNN, MSNBC but everyone sees theirs from the same screen with the same agenda pushed from all of them.
I have almost no reason to look at my facebook feed, check it perhaps once every 1-2 weeks in case something important was only posted there (not that this helps as they don't show me all actual friends actual updates). Recent visit was 50% ads, 25% recommended or weirdly boosted content, including a post from Mark Zuckerberg promoting his AI, and a post whose content I forget from the White House (I live in Germany, the last time I even visited the USA was 2018).
Also, this isn't a new phenomenon. If you're interested, I'd recommend reading Shoshana Zuboff's 2018 book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
I look for stuff I need on a search engine, watch the video I need only (mostly tutorials) and then leave. I never follow YouTube recommendations anymore - that’s how it keeps you hooked and feeds you what they want you to watch. (It’s also nonsensical and blatantly obvious these days - I went in to watch a video on how to tie a bow tie, why is there a recommendation on “Bolsonaro has Lula shaking in his pants, find out why??”
We banned YouTube for casual entertainment at home years ago - one of the best decisions we ever made, other than the toxic content pushing, it’s also so ad-infested it’s totally worthless anyway.
I remember when YouTube was “better than tv! Content on demand, no ads!”. Those days are long gone
AfD is controversial - it's click bait - the algorithm is feeding 'action' - that's the problem.
There is very little chance that Meta is doing algorithmic political adjustments at the behest of Zuck.
It's conspiracy theory without a shred of evidence.
As much as Zuck is a maligned actor, that's not how these things work thee.
X - yes, that could happen there, Meta and Google are different kinds of organizations.
Meta is feeding you click bait without bother.
YouTube is feeding you clickbait wit some concern, especially for advertisers.
X is almost entirely feeding you clickbait, and very aggressively amplifying clickbait voices, and heavily promoting those voices Elon wants promoted.
None of them are making up and promoting magical weird memes.
Edit: I should add, the political interference will directly happen but in a censorial way. If they can do something under the cover of 'upsets advertisers' - they will do that
YouTube wouldn't take ads for the film attacking Elon. I this is one of those Type B kinds of influences, not amplifying or making clickbait but a form of narrative censorship. But - they will do it within the limits and constraints of their own system. They are not sneaking into the lab and magically adjusting the algo. They are finding corporate/legal justification and doing it within that framework. If investors push hard enough and there's any thread of concern, lawyers can make a case. Elon might have threatened to sue, or do all sorts of things, and YT comes up with an excuse for whatever.
Finally - there is state intervention. State actors will ask them to do stuff. Sometimes through process aka FBI requests, sometimes through influence 'for state interests'. Again more on the Type B side.
You may see this kind of activity in trying to stop AfD etc later. German State might make the case that ABC actors are known to promote Nazi propaganda, this is illegal in Germany, you will be fined and banned unless you remove x y and z accounts etc etc.. That could happen for sure, even with dubious legal considerations all the way around.
It might seem so, if one hasn't read "Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work", by Sarah Wynn-Williams.
To be clear I think it's entirely possible that YouTube is adjusting its recommendation algorithm to show AfD content to people more (or perhaps less) than would happen "organically", because AfD is a salient political party in German politics and YouTube knows this. But how do you determine what is the correct amount of AfD content to be recommended to people in a politically-neutral way, that doesn't end up amounting to you arguing that the YouTube algorithm is only fair if it censors political content you personally think is bad?
What are people going to watch between a 3 hours in depth debate about the future of the country on topics such as ecology, finance, social security and pension systems VS hundreds of reels about ImMiGrAnT RiOtS in paris?
“End algorithms”? Even a firehouse of newest comment (or most upvoted as suggested) would benefit Bolsonaro if his online support outnumbers opposition. Ban both candidates from the platform, or make every search show them both? That will probably not work; confuse Brazilian citizens why their politicians are being censored (which will influence them because their politician is being attacked by Lula’s court, or even Facebook acknowledges their opponent politician is dangerous); and not end the lawsuits if they continue bringing “evidence” like Meta AI randomly generating Bolsonaro-related numbers.
The most egregious evidence against Meta are suspending Lula’s official accounts. This can also be attributed to a neutral system processing opponents’ mass reports, but has an obvious solution: give every official account immunity from suspension except by the highest level admins, because they’re supposed to only be suspected according to guidelines, and a $trillion company has enough resources to closely monitor high-level official accounts.
How come? If it is an algorithm, change the algorithm. Newsfeed used to be based on timestamp. Then, lots of weights and statistical analysis went into it to show you what the algorithm thinks will drive most engagement.
Content ranking algorithms, specially on social networks, are very complex and usually engineered towards generating engagement.
And it seems to work as intended given the amount of engagement is post.
Or they could explicitly promote Lula, but that would be biased towards him…
In this universe, it's perfectly identical to our current universe other than Meta being a company that makes lawnmowers. They're not the only company that makes lawnmowers, but they're popular.
It turns out though that meta has been making lawnmowers illegally unsafe, but meta's business model that let them outcompete everyone else was cutting corners on safety. If meta made their lawnmowers comply with the legal requirement for safety it'd be an existential threat to them.
Now, I ask you, should Meta be allowed to continue selling illegally unsafe lawnmowers?
They've banned Bolsonaro's competitor days before the election. The US government has PUBLICLY announced that they would interfere with the brazilian elections.
That's without mentioning all the manipulation Flavio has done with AI and bots, which we can't yet prove was aided by the US (I'm personally sure it was, but I don't have any evidence to back it up)
Every state should have foreign agent laws (NGOs must register and must be transparent over their financials). Every state should have control over their information space (especially educational, social and news media). Russia and China understood, Brazil and Europe did not.
Alternatively, this blatant use of any tool available to influence non enemy states is disgusting, and forces everyone to a "everyone loses" scenario. Shifting the focus to an insufficiently defended victim removes the focus from the nature of the aggression.
It clearly is an enemy state. The US, that is.
Just visit the website of the NED and look at the many projects the US government finances around the world to meddle in these countries politically in favor of US interests[1]. Nations have to protect themselves against these foreign influences, otherwise they will be eaten alive.
NGOs are just one tool of exerting political influence in foreign nations.
Much more powerful are proprietary digital services like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Their algorithms control what information people consume every day. If you are the CIA or the NED, that's the tool you need to exert influence on the thinking of the predominantly younger people in foreign countries (e.g. flush anti-China news into the Facebook feeds of younger users in Myanmar or Thailand).
That's why the US government wanted to move control of TikTok within the US to a domestic organization. They knew what was going on.
EDIT: Just take a look at the NED website about Asia[1]. They don't even hide it: 295 projects in 13 Asian countries with a budget of over 50M$ to promote 'democracy' (i.e. US interest, anti-China propaganda). These countries need to act aggressively against these NGOs, because these NGOs do not act in the interests of the country and it's people.
[1]: Example: https://www.ned.org/region/asia-2/
And no, your claim that US has a firm grasp on what information reaches its people is laughable: you can host and serve any information critical of government without issues. The closest you had to putinism was when companies en masse started deplatforming Trump and his supporters in early 2021.
- personalized ads
- election ads
by law strictly two different things.
The risk of voter manipulation is just way to high. This also isn't just about manipulation by US companies, the system they created is just to ab-usable by others, too. To make it worse the more ethical values a person has/upright and honest they are the less likely are to use such means but the more likely they would make a good elected politician for the general population. At the same time humans are just way too easy to manipulate.
(Naturally there is also a case for _any_ personalized ads being a high risk for societies, especially democracies, and in turn the concept if it should be banned. Important here is to note that often just basing ads on the "non ad content" they are displayed alongside with is getting you quite far. So if there even is a need for highly personalized ads can be put in question. Through the topic gets far more complicated with highly personalized non ad content recommendation systems..)
As soon as they start interfering with democratic processes in other countries, it's imperialism.
Wasn't Lula convicted in 3 levels up to a federal court called STJ?
And then a single federal court judge who never submitted the case to colleagues, simply declared his judgement void based in technicalities?
And then all the investigation restarted from scratch, but since by law he was too old, his crimes prescribed in half the time and he was never investigated again.
The cherry on the top is that this single judge who declared his convictions null was appointed by the felon's political party.
So about a dozen different judges, in municipal, state and federal levels, analysed his multiple charges and declared him guilty in some of them. Then a single federal court judge appointment by the suspect's political party voided all of them.
He also didn't rape children and steal billions while destroying the world economy...
That’s because Trump sends better primate dominance signals than Biden, therefore everything he does is right. That’s how it works. Just ask the brain stem.
The surprise is not that he was kicked off the main social media companies, the surprises are that the wheels of US justice turned so slowly that Trump got a chance to be re-elected rather than life in prison, and likewise that the US electorate went for him.
The fact that they didn't ban him for so long weighs toward being partial to not banning politicians. Which seems to be the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
One, Trump may not have been reelected if meta hadn’t banned him. So maybe it was another case of meta trying to help republicans.
Or, if Trump hadn’t been reelected, maybe the republicans wouldn’t be facing one of the worst midterm routes in history.
But honestly I’m not actually sure the point you’re trying to make. Meta hired a Republican strategist into their c suite since then. Sooo much has happened, there’s a lot of historical context to try to put it in.
The Ayatollah.
13: https://g1.globo.com/jornal-nacional/noticia/2026/10/23/meta...
(1): Might be worth pointing out here that Meta has a long history of basing personalization not just on what you do but what people "close to you" do. E.g. if Meta knows you are in the same location (e.g. same WiFi, not sure if they use that today) and then shortly after the other person searches for idk. air purifiers the chance of you getting air purifier ads is largely increased.
Allocate risk to each according to their reward.
Of note, this Bolsonaro is the son of the former president, with zero political plans or credentials; his only claim is the name itself and what it represents. I find the idea of a family lineage in government, much, much worse.
Lula was voted in to power, Brazil is still a strong democracy despite the direction it’s going. It is a shame that another viable opposition candidate could not be produced as I’m not fond of having 80+ year olds in that seat, but still better than the alternative.
Bolsonaro’s government has zero proposals for anything that will lead the country in that direction anyway, and did very little in the four years they had. Some new, fresh leadership is urgently needed, hopefully in 2030 if there’s still elections.
100% of my friends know who I am, therefore I must be famous.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/technology/twitter-far-ri...
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/29/elon-mu...
- https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/x-has-disproportionate...
- https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/elon-musk-turned-x...
We forget this but hard right content is still highly promoted on X, especially related to white supremacy and anti-immigrant, and it is also protected from content violations.
I guess it depends on what you consider to be "hard left".
If you consider anything to the left of Elon Musk's anti-immigrant, pro-White positions, unrestrained capitalism for him (although he is pro-tariffs on foreign EVs), to be "hard left", then yes, it is pretty prevalent, but I would argue that is actually representative of reality.
With that in mind, why shouldn't it be in favor of the locals and reflect the values of its own society instead of some tech bros with imperialist ambitions?
The article is discussing a candidate who got the majority of the vote in the 10/4 election. Where did you get the idea that this content doesn't "reflect the values of its own society"?
People want to deflect and blame foreign powers for why their platforms are failing among the electorate. The argument is essentially that they are so right and correct that any deviation from their values could only have occurred due to Bad Guy external intervention, which conveniently justifies why we need mass censorship.
Just do a better job convincing people you're right. Censorship will just mask social problems until the outbreak is even worse.
I’m all for limiting foreign influence. But frequently people use this as an excuse to silence some „undesirable“ factions. For better or worse.
Playing obvious problems of Brazil‘s judiciary system down like that are clear red flags for somebody not for 1 sec contemplating how he would react if the political camps would be reversed in this situation. It is their sovereignty if the censorship happens on speech you don’t like
People that want to do good things and people that want to do bad things don't deserve the same treatment. Neutrality is complicity.
It's getting ridiculous online.
Right-wing folks are driven by social media since ~2016. Their content is emotional, aggressive and naturally conducive to more engagement. It’s what their base feeds on. So a lot of the situations described here are just standard ranking algorithms doing their job.
But that begs the question: is the existence of these platforms that amplify divisive and inflammatory content the problem itself? I vote yes. The power of reaching a wide audience should not be handed off without any cross-checks.
I'm relatively sure I see bot activity on public facebook groups where I live in a blue county in a blue state and see hundreds of vitriolic angry comments that aren't aligned with voters current frustrations (i.e. economy)
Related:
Meta employees say Lula’s accounts restricted in Brazil election: Report
It has to end. Millions of lives are at sake.
I am sure that everyone involved must be feeling invincible but this is how you build resentment that will last and in most cases result in conflicts or regulations. Probably Musk, Zuckerberg and Thiel will be fine but they will destroy the prospects of the upcoming libertarians and cement the Chinese dominance as they don't have a problem of unruly billionaires and the problem of someone getting rich by doing one thing getting the right to do decide on everything and screw it up for everyone. Sad, I really don't want to live in a China-style political system.
If I have to choose between being subject of the Chinese Communist party or American psychopath billionaires, I'll gladly choose the party.
You know how they say that USA is a very new country and that even some pub in Europe can have longer history? Well, that's true but it doesn't mean that European countries have centuries of continued administration, most are a few decades old as a result of revolution or a war.
Europe is a very violent place for politicians, politicians being oversees and untouchable is a very new phenomenon.
Strip it back to just billionaires, or their equivalent over time, and thus it always was.
People talk about the “new world order” as though this is some novel concept - but you can saunter back in time past the east India company, the bourbons, the holy Roman emperors, Rome, Greece, Sumeria, and see the same pattern played out throughout history. True power sits with wealth - an impoverished ruler relies on others for his means, and has no power of his own.
The wealthy, those with power, have always decided for the rest, have always had outsized influence, as long as there have been societies with the concept of “mine” and “yours”.
Basically with corruption you can control what democracies do. We see this with the orange mafia in charge of the USA right now - even though sometimes it also yields entertainment, indirectly:
Cuts to Sundar starring blankly.
have lefties in power for the next of the decade and you'll see how datacenters become all about clean energy investment, climate change starts to matter, "don't be evil" starts to take shape
Took me a moment to parse the typo
It’s more simple than that. Industry tends to align with government because they have power and they want that power to be benefit them. If you’re a large company it would be stupid not to try to maintain that relationship.
Yet, from a pure intrinsic values perspective, people that are power-seeking are alike in industry and politics, and when they support an authoritarian state/movement instead of a democratic one, it shows their true intentions.
And they have their favorite phrase:
Nothing Can Stop What Is Coming.
This should be regulated to avoid interference from anyone.
The biggest problem now is that the billionaires behind social media nowadays will push for a liberal / right wing agenda in the west for their own interests.
No.
Its flagship product, its anthropological jewel, its greatest achievement, is the right-wing poor person. A genuine feat of social engineering: materially deprived, yet rich in convictions that run counter to their own interests.
They have been carefully molded. They have been taught that their problems always come from below or from next door — the immigrant, the welfare recipient, the civil servant, the unemployed — never from above.
They have been taught to hate taxes while surviving thanks to public services. To defend heirs to fortunes while having nothing to pass on themselves. To applaud those who crush them, as long as they speak loudly and promise law and order.
The right-wing poor person is a fascinating creature. They vote against their own interests with fervor, convinced that one day, perhaps, they too will find themselves on the right side of the fence.
They mistake brutality for courage, authoritarianism for protection, injustice for merit. They are sold fear in a ready-made package, identity at bargain prices, and anger in bulk on a monthly subscription.
At the dawn of this new world, the monsters do not emerge from the margins: they rise from the ballot boxes, television studios, and simplistic slogans.
They thrive on manufactured misery and sabotaged political awareness.
Capitalism has not merely produced poverty; it has achieved something far worse: it has made the poor docile, obedient, spiteful, and grateful.
A masterpiece, I'm telling you!"
Maximino Fernández
This curious animal was laid bare by the discovery that we are hackable by nature, and hacked by behaviour science. Though it took a few decades to get going, the understanding of how to influence motivation and decision-making is now very mature.
In order to arrive at this understanding, you need data, and lots of it. The social media platforms have performed the function of data aggregators and testing grounds for algorithmic control. But it was not the tech companies who came up with plans, only the tools to put them into practice.
The culprits, though they operate in shade, are generally non-partisan and understand that divide-and-conquer has always been an effective strategy. These people sometimes work in intelligence bureaus, but not always. They are, however, always known to those agencies. After all, you do not need to know you are an asset to be an asset.
The algorithms, necessarily kept as protected IP, are statistical engines that profile and predict, producing probabilistic outcomes and estimates. Before LLMs, one might have argued "but how can probabilistic algos really produce something meaningful?", now I would think people might have a different take, if they could see the layers and weights.
An emperor used to need an army, and this is what replaces it for non-violent insurrection and domestic control. Many will even state their ambitions publicly, and sometimes (though less frequently these days) their procedure. What they are doing is not strictly illegal, because the law gives "sovereignty" to a person's choices, without recognition that their choices might not be their own. Libertarianism has played right into their hands, in this sense.
A masterpiece, not only of conception, but also social engineering, with a technological endoskeleton built on the aggregated data we all willingly give them. All information feeds the machine, just as every financial transaction cements the central bank's authority.