Metaはブラジル大統領選に干渉したのか？ ゲスト：Laís Martins

So we had content moderation decisions that started already before the first round that affected both the Lula campaign online, but I would say also progressive voices. So first we had Lula's campaign page being disabled from running political ads. No explanation for a few hours, they just couldn't run ads. And we know that, you know, during election season, hours count. Hello and welcome to Tech Will and Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Laís Martins. Laís is a Brazilian tech journalist who you will probably know from her work with The Intercept, but she has also been published in many other places. Now, you might also recognize Laís's name because she was literally on the show last month, to talk about data centers in Brazil.

And if you listen to that episode, you will know that at the end, we were talking a bit about the Brazilian election and how things might turn out. Well, that's the reason why she's back again, because there were some really important stories and developments that happened during the election that I figured we needed to talk about on the show. And I figured it would be great to have Laís back on the show in order to talk about them. You might have read that Lula, the kind of left-wing Workers' Party president, faced a really difficult re-election battle. It looked like he was probably going to become president again. Then all of a sudden, after the first round of voting, because Brazil operates with a two-round presidential voting system, his competitor, Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, actually came out ahead in that first round of voting. And so it looked like he would probably move forward and win the ultimate election. It was actually when Lula did ultimately win, it was the first time since Brazil became a democracy that the candidate who came in second place in the first round won the final round of voting, which is a big deal, right?

But I didn't just want Laís back on the show to talk about the Brazilian election, though that is important. There was also a really important story that played out during the election about how Meta was interfering and actually making it more difficult for Lula and for more left-wing campaigns to get their messages out on these social media platforms. And this became a huge controversy in Brazil. Maybe you have heard about it. If you are outside of Brazil, maybe you haven't. But I figured that that was something that we needed to talk about because it's another example of how these U.S. tech billionaires are using the power that they have by controlling key communications platforms to influence what is happening in countries around the world, whether that is in the United States itself or in other parts of the world. something that has been happening for a long time when you look about Facebook's lack of moderation in many different markets and what that has meant there for politics, but also social divisions and social cohesion. But, you know, increasingly moving in and trying to, it looks like, weaponize those platforms in order to try to shape an election result in the favor of the company,

that does feel like a notable development, right? and a worrying development, especially as we see growing concern about these U.S. tech platforms and the U.S. government as a whole. So I wanted to have Laís back on to talk about what was going on there, to talk about what the impacts were, to talk about what we actually know, and now what another Lula government might mean for tech policy in Brazil, especially having had this experience during the election. So that's all to say, I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. I think you're going to find it very insightful. It's exactly the kind of thing that I think you listeners of Tech Won't Save Us will find really interesting. And if you do, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or family who you think would learn from it. And if you want to support the work that goes into making Tech Won't Save Us every single week so we can keep having these critical in-depth conversations on the tech industry, how it's affecting not just people in the United States, but in many different parts of the world, you can join supporters like Andrew in Barcelona and Erica from Victoria, British Columbia by going to patreon.com

slash TechWon'tSaveUs, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much, and enjoy this week's conversation. Laís, welcome back to TechWon'tSaveUs. Thank you. I'm glad to be here again with some good news this time. Yeah, at least a mix of good news, right? I don't typically have guests on so recently after they have already been on the show. Of course, you were just on the show a month ago. But, you know, obviously there have been some significant developments in Brazil that I figured were worth talking about on the show. And I figured that you were, you know, the best person to have on to discuss them with, you know, as basically like, I guess, the unofficial Brazil correspondent of Tech Won't Save Us at this point. I love that. Yeah. But, yeah, so let's get into the election to start off with, right? You know, as we were talking about at the end of the last episode, and as I'm sure many listeners will have been paying attention to, Brazil has been having this presidential election where Lula was up against Flavio Bolsonaro. And, you know, the real concern was that Flavio was going to take this, right, especially after the results in the first round of voting and what the polls seem to be showing.

You know, talk about the result. Talk about what we saw here. And how surprised were you when Lula did come out on top on Election Day? Okay, great. I think it was a big surprise, the result last Sunday. So we left the first round with Flavio leading with not a significant margin. But the fact is that never before in Brazilian history has the candidate that ended the first round first lost the election. You know, it was kind of a defeating result after the first round. But what was also surprising was that immediately the following day, left wing groups started to organize what they would call a turnaround campaign. They were not only targeting voters who had not gone to the polls in the first round, but they also wanted to bring in voters who were disillusioned with politics or like people who had voted for the other candidates that were running in the first round. So what we saw in just three weeks was this massive, I would call it a hybrid campaign because it was not only an online campaign, but it was also offline.

You know, people took to the streets multiple times. Like elsewhere in the world, youth movements were a big part of this offline, you know, the demonstrations. And what happened was on Sunday, for the first time in history, the candidate who had ended the first round and second turned around with a margin of 4.4 million votes and Lula ended up winning. It's important to say that the polls on Saturday night, the night before elections, were still showing flagging winning. So people were, you know, I think on the outside, people were like, yeah, we have to stay hopeful. But on the inside, I think people were already preparing for the worst. But I think this was a historical result. I think it's still very early to say exactly what happened, but something special happened there, both with the online mobilization, but also the fact that on the streets, you would see people, you know, holding posters saying the left and right against Bolsonaro.

So it was actually a turnout for democracy. I wouldn't say this is a complete endorsement of Lula's campaign or what he represents as a candidate, but people really understood what was at stake and they showed up because of that. Yeah, Brazil, I think we pushed away the threat of a fascist government for now, Of course, Congress is another story. We can get into that. But this is kind of the general picture. Yeah. And literally pushed the fascist threat up to the United States as, you know, Flavio Bolsonaro fled the country very soon after the election result. But of course, has declared himself the true president. Right. yeah that's insane also like kind of like Juan Guaidó story all over again and one minor detail that I mean it's not minor because it's also pathetic but on his first letter like this letter he published last night with declaring himself like the legitimate president of Brazil he used a crest of Brazil that is actually quite old and it reads Estados Unidos de Brazil like the United

States of Brazil, which was an old crest, like from before the new constitution. So is that actually like a nod to something or is it just a mistake? You know, he had promised to stay in Brazil and organize the opposition against Lula from Brazil. He had been asked that and he once again lied and he fled nearly like 48 hours after the election results. Although many of the people around him, including his party, including very close political allies, have confirmed the election results, they have said it is what it is. Life goes on. We'll try again. But he hasn't accepted the defeat. Interesting. Yeah. And, you know, it echoes what a lot of these kind of far right parties are doing now, questioning election results and, you know, not accepting that they actually lost. You know, for someone like Flavio Bolsonaro, and of course, you know, we'll get on to the kind of tech element in a minute. But for someone like Flavio Bolsonaro to right after the election, you know, decide to flee the country and go to the United States, you know, I think a lot of

international listeners might not be very familiar, like, what would be driving him to leave the country? What is he worried about? Does he just think that there's, like, you know, a political prosecution that's going to happen or other actual things that he's done that now he could come up on charges for? Yeah, his narrative is that he is being politically persecuted by the Supreme Court in Brazil, again, Justice Alexandre Jumaraes, who we've spoken about on the show. But what is actually the fact is that he is under investigation already. There are two probes in the Supreme Court related to money laundering, embezzlement that have him at the center of the investigation. One is about the biopic on his father, the Dark Horse movie. Flavio is a senator, right? His term goes until the end of the year. So this has, he's under special privileges. Starting January 1st, he loses, he leaves office officially because he had left to run for the presidency and he loses

these special privileges, which means these investigations could finally move on with more ease. So there is expectation that he could probably be arrested in January, even as a preventive measure to stop him from fleeing. On Sunday, seven minutes after the election results were called by the electoral court, the Supreme Court requested he hand in his passports. So they probably had identified there was a risk of him fleeing. He didn't, and he fled. So he actually fled with his passport. But, you know, we were speaking about this yesterday. I also think this shows that there might be so much more about Flavio and his connections to all these political scandals, then we know. To me, it signals that losing these privileges would really change his life. So I think that's why he anticipated and fled already. Yeah. And is there any sign that his father is going to like finally die after all this? Who is, of course, under arrest? I don't know. Maybe a disappointment. I don't know. There was, you know,

Fabio vowed to release his father. He would say that he would get the presidential, his father would give him the sash. So his plan was actually to release his father before he even took office as president to allow him to be there on Inauguration Day, right? That is not happening. And again, Jair Bolsonaro is under house arrest still. So he, and he technically shouldn't have access to his phone or social media. So I'm not sure like how much he's aware of what is actually happening with his son. But I think this definitely prompts a reorganization of the far right. In Brazil, we are seeing like just last night, you know, historical allies kind of breaking away from Flavio, saying that, you know, we've accepted the results. This is not how you respond. This is not how a democracy works. So I think there's this vacuum now for who will be the next far right leader or who will take up the space that had been occupied by Flavio for the last few months or years.

So, yeah, interesting chapters to come on the far right, I would say. Absolutely, absolutely. And, of course, there's one other, I guess, a wrinkle in the story about the far right, which is that, you know, Lula may have won the presidency, but as you were saying, the Congress and, I guess, a number of state governments are controlled by the far right. What is that going to mean for, you know, how government is going to work in Brazil for the coming years? this means probably the biggest challenge for lula in his political career he will have to negotiate with a congress that is not only against most of his agenda but is against what this government represents um so they are uh supporters of the bolsonaro people this is horrible for many of you know like important agendas in brazil i would say of course tech regulation, we can speak about that, but also environmental protections. Even before the current Congress, which is already horrible, had dismantled a series of environmental protections with a

horrible bill that was approved. There's an expectation they could do more. There's also expectation they could reverse some of the decisions that Lula took in his previous government, because now they have the majority. This also means that they have the majority to possibly impeach Supreme Court justices, which was a big goal of theirs. They want to take more eyes out of the Supreme Court So this will be a huge challenge I think Lula is the guy for it He probably the most politically savvy person in Brazil He has negotiated with multiple different actors but it also could mean a path where the federal government has to advance policies in a more unilateral and possibly authoritarian, like with air quotes, way through decrees and, you know, executive orders, because trying to get anything through Congress would be very hard. So I think we'll have to see what happens. At the same time, I would say that the past few years have been

surprising. For example, the Kids Online Safety Act that garnered enough support in Congress from the right, the far right even, and the left to advance it. So I don't think it's impossible, But of course, it will mean having to sit down and negotiate and obviously make concessions. And I don't think voters that came out to support Lula are very aware that he will have to make concessions. So I would expect some disappointment around that. So it's going to be interesting. And I think Lula knows the challenge he's up for right now. Yeah, absolutely. I think that makes a lot of sense. I just have a more quick question for you on this. and then I want to get on to talking about what Meta has been doing in this campaign. You know, obviously Lula is, I think, 81 years old. He's quite late in his life and certainly isn't going to have another term after this. Is there someone kind of rising up behind Lula who looks like will be able to kind of take on his mantle or that he's kind of like preparing for power afterward?

Or is this really like kind of a Lula party at this point? I would say it's still a Lula party and that is a big problem because again, you know, like four years ago we were discussing the same thing like who is the succession on the left and four years have passed nothing has happened and again, Lula was the only candidate that could try to face the Bolsonaro's I think now it's like now or never, right? Yeah, he will there's a question even if he can make it to the end of the term because he would be 84 or 85, I guess, by the time it ends. One possible path is his vice president. You know, like he would renounce in the middle of the term. His vice president takes over and kind of like already leads into a presidential campaign. His vice president is Geraldo Laufmann. He's a traditional figure from the right, the center right in Brazil. In 2022, he was invited to be Lula's running mate. And I would say in a true show of democracy, he had been a critical voice against Lula for many years.

His party had been the opposition party to the Workers' Party forever. He said yes, and he joined the ballot, and they have been doing, you know, very good government. He is more of a technical figure. He's kind of on the shyer side, so Lula kind of stands out, and he's always on background. but he would appease to this center left, center right voter. He's not a figure from the radical left. At the same time, people have been saying this election has shown that we need to go even more radical. So there's space for this radical figure from the left to emerge and try to enact, I don't know, more robust reforms. I think these next years in government will show what is exactly the type of government that we need next and what are voters willing to endorse. But right now, if you ask me, like, who's the next president, I have no idea. Like, there's no person I would appoint. That's fair. And, you know, there's still a few years out, so hopefully, you know, hopefully Lula and the people around him

will recognize that that is the kind of work that needs to be done. I hope they started working on this already. Like, yesterday, it should be a priority for the Workers' Party, I guess. Even if it's not someone from the Workers' Party to try to get a coalition together and, like, emerge someone from inside this coalition. Exactly. And, you know, I feel like we saw similar discussions playing out in the United States around Bernie Sanders and, you know, who was going to kind of take up the flag for him because he's also quite old, right? And it looks like that's probably going to be AOC at this point, but it still doesn't feel like she commands the same level of kind of, you know, public, you know, support and stuff like that that Bernie Sanders did, right? And so it'll be interesting to see how that evolves. Yeah, there's a big age gap there, right? like a big generational gap. So is there someone from the middle ground that could kind of like be this transitional person? I think that's the question. It's also the same in Brazil. We have some young political figures, for example, André Janonni is the digital mastermind of Ula's campaign. Now people have been saying, oh, he should be the next president. I don't personally believe he has a profile for that,

but he's also quite young still. So like, is there someone that can, you know, conduct a transition between these generations? I'm not sure right now. Yeah, really interesting. It'll be something to watch, certainly. You mentioned this kind of director of the digital part of Lula's campaign. Obviously, the digital aspect of the campaign has become a real discussion point in the Brazilian election. If we look back a few years ago, we were talking a lot about X, right? And, you know, the role that X was playing in Brazilian politics, and in particular how it was even briefly banned because it would not remove these far-right accounts that were involved in the attempted coup that occurred in Brazil. Now, fast forward a few years, we're talking about Meta, and we're talking about what seems to be much more direct attempts at manipulating the vote and kind of public opinion on what's happening in Brazil. And so what was Meta actually up to in the Brazilian campaign? And do we have any idea of why they would do something like this?

Okay. So let's see what happened with Meta, right? So what we have is a series of content moderation decisions that affected left-wing communication on Meta social media channels, WhatsApp, Instagram, and also Muse AI. I'll mention that. But first and foremost, I want to say metaservices are the most widely used in Brazil, right? The Brazilian population is like, I would say 98%, I guess, is on WhatsApp. That's what we use. We don't use iMessage. We use WhatsApp to communicate. Yeah, it's like essential communication. Yeah, it's like where everyone is. You use it for work, for personal life, for everything, basically. Instagram is also widely used. I would say Facebook is now the least used, but still there's a share of the population on there. So we had content moderation decisions that started already before the first round that affected both the Lula campaign online, but I would say also progressive voices. So first we had Lula's campaign page being disabled from running political ads.

No explanation for a few hours. They just couldn't run ads. And we know that, you know, during election season, hours count. And the amount of money that campaigns are dumping into Meta to run ads is insane. Right now in Brazil, Meta is the only platform running political ads. Google stopped running political ads last election. So they have this monopoly over online political advertising, right? So it's huge money. And the Lula campaign, without explanation, was unable to run ads for a few hours. Meta said it was a technical glitch. They apologized. This was restored a few hours later. But around, I think even the day before, just the day after, there was this other big fact, which is there's this Instagram profile that came up called Revelando Brasil. They're a group of independent journalists connected to a podcast. And they've been doing these viral explainer videos where they call in like a famous person, a singer, an actor, like a public figure to talk about one of Flavio's scandals.

So it could be, you know, his connection to people investigated for money laundering. It could also be how he defended a police officer that's accused of shooting a five-year-old girl. So different sides of Siaviu. And they took down the profile after one of the first videos. That went very viral. Again, no explanation. And then they came, like the profile was restored a few hours later, and they apologized for the inconvenience. That's what they called it, inconvenience. So this was before the first round. After the second round, we saw more evidence filing, again, of content moderation decisions that were not only hurting big figures, but civilians like journalists, activists, academics, university groups, unions. So there's an organization in Brazil called... And this is after the first round and before the second round. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. And those three weeks in between. There's an organization in Brazil called Control Z, a recent organization that is pushing back against big tech's power.

And they accounted for at least 1,200 reports of censored accounts, you know, technical restrictions on accounts like you're unable to like or repost. 1,200 content moderation decisions that affected these accounts. on, I think, a few days before the second round, we had this massive scoop by Folha de Sao Paulo, a newspaper in Brazil, based on internal messages from Meta employees confirming there was a technical restriction on Lula's account that was hurting his engagement and reach. You know, people identified, they couldn't understand why they sent it out to engineers in California. These guys also couldn't explain why they took a long time. It seemed from the messages that meta didn't prioritize this i think this shows well you know better than me but maybe five like eight years ago this would have been a war room situation right they would have stopped everything they were doing to figure out what happened why is this like maybe it is a technical glitch but why is there a technical glitch so i think this was kind of the confirmation of what

people were feeling like something is off on meta's channels but it's always a suspicion right Although Control-Z was saving up this evidence to eventually file a lawsuit, this actually happened, but the Foyer San Paolo scoop confirmed. And then there was one thing also about Muse AI, which was important because it became very clear to people what this looks like at the user's end, right? People were trying to generate, they were asking Muse AI on WhatsApp to generate me an image of, say, like Lula 13, his party number. and then the response would be i'm sorry i'm not allowed to generate that oh so then generate me a flabu 22 and it would generate a flabu 22 and like multiple they would try different like generate me a luiz in asio lula da silva and it also wouldn't work generate me a bolsonaro 22 it would work so people were like hey what's up right again meta call this a technical inconvenience they said there was like a filter applied that was um because lula's name was so short like only four

letters. Again, they put it all, attributed it all to technical inconveniences. And then again, later on, another Control-Z report, they also did this investigation based on internal documents that showed these restrictions were still applied even after Meta vowed to, you know, let's look into it, let's see what's happening. So I think the question is, okay, we identified and we know for sure there were technical restrictions. Why? And why didn't they take the steps to stop this? What we also saw was a response from, you know, the courts. The electoral court at one point told Meta, you guys have to take measures to ensure that a competition is fair, that all candidates are treated equally. They threatened to apply a fine in case Meta didn't take actions. But I also think the question is, are they able to enforce this? How are they checking if, like, you know, it's an equal playing field. We don't have access to what is happening on the back end. And then we also had the Federal Prosecution Service in Brazil doing two things. First,

they published a series of recommendations to Meta. So like Meta should take steps to ensure, one, that candidates are treated equally, but also that any user that is affected by a content moderation decision has an explanation as to what happened, why this decision was applied, Because people were seeing their profiles taken down, not being able to comment or repost without any explanation. Like there was something technical, but people weren't understanding why. So a series of recommendations like these, but they also asked the federal courts to open an investigation, a public civil lawsuit into Meta to try to understand what happened and if they should be held accountable. So I think these are the things that are ongoing. we still don't have many of the answers. What I think is safe to say is it's clear there has been evidence of meta's technical decisions favoring one side and hurting the other. And is it a coincidence?

Is it like by chance that this has hurt more the left than the right? The left being the party or like the side that is more willing to advance a tech regulation agenda. So, you know, this is what we have. I think anything other than that right now would be speculation. But I think these are enough elements for us to investigate, start discussing what happened and what should we do from here. Exactly. You know, figure out the degree to which things were occurring during the campaign. You know, the degree to which that it actually hurt Lula's campaign in favor of Flavio. And also, you know, what can be done to ensure that this doesn't happen again? because obviously a step has been taken in the past to temporarily ban X, Elon Musk's platform, but it seems like it would be a much bigger ask or a much bigger lift to try to ban meta platforms as you say when WhatsApp is essential communication Were these actions also affecting what was happening on whatsapp and and how kind of messages were going on there or or it unclear

uh to this no i i don't think we had any reports of whatsapp we did have like lots of reports of whatsapp accounts um being like disabled by meds but this has been happening i i guess not only in brazil for a long time already because they're thinking it's spam so like i have many journalist friends whose accounts have been disabled because they just send out so many messages. They're journalists, right? They're reaching out to sources, like, trying to understand what's happening. So I think WhatsApp is kind of treated more as a neutral ground. But at the same time, and I was telling this to someone yesterday, you know, Lula's army by the end had 10 million users. I think we're not naive to think that Meta is not seeing what's happening in these groups. Like, this is crucial information about how the left organizes, right? links that are shared, the demographics of the users who are in these groups. So I think people kind of forget that WhatsApp is meta also, because on WhatsApp we don't tend to see these moderation decisions,

but I think we should start realizing. And then I was also discussing like, yeah, maybe we should move Lula's army to Signal, but also like would people adhere because Signal is not that popular in Brazil. So it's a big question. And I think, you know, that the X ban is really important because at one point I heard someone saying like, we should ban Meta, like we banned X. That's so much more consequential, right? Basically, WhatsApp is the backbone of Brazilian society, I would say, like lots of things run on WhatsApp. So having an extreme decision is also not ideal. I don't think we should push it to that point, but we have to find a way. And another point is, you know, people have asked me, but has this really affected the outcome of the election? I don't know, but I also think it doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter. It's not fair that a foreign company takes decisions that could potentially, even if they haven't, could potentially interfere in an electoral process outside of this country. This is meddling with democracy in another country. It's also not allowing the political process to be completely organic.

you know when one candidate has more reach than the other and they're trying to pay for the same thing this whole thing with political ads to me is just insane because we're dumping money into these platforms trusting that they're giving us the reach that we've bought but how do we actually check so i think lots of questions here and to me the question of has it affected or not doesn't matter it's like the premise of it is already wrong they shouldn't have this power in their hands Exactly. I think that makes perfect sense. And when I hear you say that, it brings to mind how, and I'm not sure what the rules are exactly in Brazil, but in many countries, how, you know, during an election campaign, there are typically rules on traditional media organizations around how they cover political parties and, you know, kind of being fair in terms of the coverage that they provide and the amount of coverage. and then if you don't have similar rules applying to social media and you see them kind of making decisions whether they claim that they're for technical reasons or whatever that are potentially hurting you know one major candidate over another then you know obviously that is going to prompt a

conversation about how to ensure that that is not happening in the future especially when these platforms at least in some form are going to be sticking around like it's not like these are just the flash in the pan. And, you know, in four years, there's not going to be social media platforms anymore. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Like, we don't know what will happen for years. But you're right, we have rules for like TV advertisements, they know it depends on the party, but they have like mandated time, sometimes it's free, sometimes they pay for these insertions, we should have the same level of transparency and standards for online advertising. What we we don't have this at the moment we don't know it's i feel like it's a bet right that campaigns put in money and they expect it to work out but they're also not able to verify whether the ad was actually delivered to the demographics that they ordered so it's crazy and i think people don't realize the amount of money that goes into it so much spending um i would say like lots of the budget from political campaigns right now are going into platforms and of course meta is profiting from this so

It's even worse, right? They're taking decisions that could hurt the democratic process, but they're also banking on it. I think it's crazy. Yeah, I feel like that is like a perennial discussion in Canada. Like it comes up again and again about our political parties and our government spending so much money advertising on these forum platforms, especially at a time when we're often talking about how journalism is kind of lacking funding. and so much ad money has moved from traditional kind of local or at least national journalistic organizations to these platforms already. And the government is doing the same thing because they also want to reach people, right? And yeah, it's a really difficult kind of, yeah, I guess set of decisions to make on how to do that. And especially after Meta a couple of years ago now pushed back on a law that was designed to basically get it to contribute some degree of its profits to, you know, Canadian journalism.

That, yeah, it kind of prompted it again as to like, why should we be spending money on this, on the platforms of this company that isn't, you know, kind of even abiding by our laws? It's just wild. Is there anything else on this point about Meta that you think is worth discussing further, you know, given that you are much more in the weeds on this than I would be? I want to just mention one thing that I think is remarkable and should have an impact in the future agenda of tech regulation in Brazil. I think this was the first time we saw public support for pushback against Meta. We had a demonstration in front of the Meta headquarters in Sao Paulo. Of course, not a massive turnout, but I would say it was like a weekday in the afternoon. We saw lots of people showing up and holding posters saying, you know, the big slogan in Brazil was, meta não se meta, which would be like meta don't meddle or meta don't interfere. But it's kind of a jargon in Brazil now because people understood this is what foreign interference looks like.

This is what happens when a foreign company meddles with our political process. So I think this really made it concrete for people why we need to push back against big tech's power and why we need more rules for how these companies operate in Brazil. So I think this is positive. And I would, of course, congratulate civil society organizations that were able to capture this momentum and explain to people, this is why during four years we have to insist on regulating tech. This is what happens. Like we're on the verge of a very crucial process and we're kind of blindsided by this company. Right. So I would say I expect public support to continue for a tech, pro-tech regulation agenda. And it became kind of cool to be against big tech, right? I think it was a good moment of organizing the hate against these platforms. So I think this is really positive. And we saw even, you know, demonstrations in Ireland, Brazilians in Ireland,

or also I think there was a smaller group, of course, but demonstrating in Menlo Park. So I think this is concrete. Actually, people are organizing movements against big tech. Meta was the scapegoat this time because it became so clear. But I've been telling people like, yeah, it's meta this time because we saw the evidence. But truly, all these companies have so much power over us and our political processes that we shouldn't focus only on one company. We should use this opportunity to look at all of them. So I think this is a very positive outcome also. Absolutely. I think it's really important that you brought up that point. And on the question of tech regulation, that's kind of where I wanted to go next, right? You know, we have already seen some degree of movement on tech regulation from Lula's government, you know, before this election, as you said, you know, even getting an important bill through the Congress, despite, you know, the kind of right-wing parties having a lot of control there. So beyond the broader tech regulation agenda, which I want to come to in just a second, if we look at social media specifically, do you think that Mehta's interference in this election is going to prompt like a new wave of regulation of social media or at least attempts to regulate social media in response to what we've seen in the past few weeks?

I think so. So in his victory speech already, like just a few moments after the election results was called out, Lula said, we saw foreign interference from a company. This is why we need to regulate tech. So I think the fact that he already mentions this in this first moment is a big signal that his government is willing to enact a stricter agenda. whether this will happen is the other big question because it depends on congress a lot right and we have a congress of the worst congress in history for sure but a very far right leaning congress so bolson's party is now the biggest caucus in congress so they can control several crucial votes they can they're probably going to elect the next president of the lower house and of the Senate, which is a crucial role that decides what gets to even be voted or not. And they are very close to the big tech lobby. And, you know, Flavio, even before he fled, he was saying, my intention is to revoke many

of these Lula era regulations. We want to restore competition, all that BS that we always hear of them saying that regulation hinders competition and innovation. We expect this group of Congress members to enact this agenda, although Favu hasn't been elected. So this could not only mean any further attempt to regulate will face serious challenges in Congress, but they will try to dismantle what has already been enacted. So the prospects are not good. At the same time, it's what I just mentioned. I think there is public support for tech regulation right now. So the question is, how can the government kind of take advantage of this momentum to push this forward? We have two important things on the horizon. The AI bill, which has been in Congress for a long time. I think we even spoke about it last year when I was here. It has been discussed.

It's in the Senate right now, and it could be put to a vote before the end of the year. Like right after the election, I saw an Instagram story from a person who works in the federal government. and they wrote, okay, now let's approve the AI bill. So I think there is a sense of urgency from the government that they have these months left with the current congressional composition to try to advance. This is one thing. And the other is kind of the DMA, the economic regulation bill that the Lula government had proposed. It's also making its way through Congress. It is a very interesting piece of legislation because it looks at, you know, antitrust, the more competition issues, it doesn't look at content. And I think this really attacks what we saw in this election, like the problem of online advertising, monopoly, etc. The question is, will people understand that this embodies the problems that we just saw? I think it's also a communicational challenge, right? How do we explain to people, we should rally in support of this bill, just like we rallied in support of the online, kids online safety act bill.

So I think, yeah, challenges, but also paths for advancing. It will require a lot of communication and, again, negotiating, and let's see what happens. Yeah, and I guess when you said the DMA, it's like a digital markets act, and the European Union has kind of moved forward, I guess, something like that, eh? Yeah, at the same time, what we're seeing in Europe is kind of like them going back, right? maybe figuring out that lots of the things that they tried to enact didn't work. So I think looking at Europe right now isn't really the perfect example, which is why there's also a massive opportunity here for Brazil to be kind of a trailblazer in the region and enact its own policies, like things that work for that context, that are not just a copy and paste of European regulations. I think also another question right now, you know, you mentioned the news remuneration bill in Canada. This is also a question, how do we fund journalism in Brazil right now? Well, this is like a sliver of what happened in these elections.

But also, there's a big journalistic crisis because we found out that many of the legacy newsrooms are connected to political scandals like this big banking scandal. Independent journalism really played a role in these elections, surfacing investigations and crucial information that helped voters decide. So how do we allow these outlets to continue doing their work? How do we fund them? So also this is a government question, right? Is it a mission for the government? Should we try to get platforms to pay and compensate journalists? So there's a lot of questions right now. The Google News case is still ongoing in Brazil. So I think there are many avenues. And again, it will be so important to organize this hatred against big tech and try to tell people, like, this is what it looks like on the political side. It's not only, you know, activism and online campaigning. It's also regulations and bills and support and Congress, like, write to your Congress people that they need to support this, etc. Do you see, like, a broader agenda here, too?

Like, obviously, you know, you're talking about a Digital Markets Act. You know you talking about things beyond social media regulation If I remember correctly just before the election when was moving forward legislation on you know online gambling and things like that You know are there other pieces of this that you think him and his government will be trying to take on? And do you think that there are any pieces of that agenda that the Congress would be more, you know, kind of like open to, even if maybe, you know, stricter social media regulation is something and that will be harder to get through. Yeah, the online gambling was enacted right before the first round. Lula passed this decree that banned online gambling from night to day. And we've already seen positive impacts of this rule because just yesterday I saw data that the National Supermarkets Association saw an increase in spending. This means people are, again, spending money on food. This money has been going to betting companies that are kind of throwing this money out of Brazil

into fiscal havens, we have no idea where this money is going to. So this already had an impact. Flavio had vowed to reverse this, or like he was kind of, you know, trying to avoid, but there was an intention of reversing this if he was elected. Now, again, Congress has to confirm this decision because it's a provisional measure that has only, it expires in 90 days. But I think this is something that rallies the board from both the right and the left, because, for example, evangelicals are super against gambling. it's right prohibited so there is support from them and i think there has been um a consensus in brazilian society that bets were a big problem for women for children this was taking money from businesses so i would imagine there will continue to be support for this i don't see anything else really uniting people um like i think anything would kind of be stuck by you know the big tech lobby in Brazil. But I want to mention one thing that I believe is interesting. In the last few

days, I've seen lots of people like regular people in Brazil who are not from, you know, the open source movement, or even like the sex sovereignty movement saying we need to build alternatives, like we need a Brazilian WhatsApp, we need a Brazilian Instagram, like it's time now. So I think this is also interesting, because people understand, like, you know, the maybe the The censor is not fighting the fight in these spaces, but moving to our own spaces. And this was a big question because with the whole digital strategy thing, like Andrei Giannone, the New York Times just published a big profile on him. He's the most interesting figure, I would say, of this election, other than Lula. His idea is that we should dispute the space and use far-right tactics. So what he organized, I'll do a parenthesis here to speak a bit about him, but, you know, he created this group, Lula's Army, on WhatsApp. It's a WhatsApp channel. By the end of the election, there were 10 million people in this WhatsApp channel. I would say it's like a big percentage of people who actually vote in Brazil.

And what he did was he gamified the campaign. So he would give people missions like, OK, on Saturday, 9 a.m., everyone is going to wake up and post a selfie on Instagram wearing the Brazilian jersey. with a L. And then, okay, now at 8pm, when Flavio is giving an interview to Jornal Nacional, the biggest news program in Brazil, we're going to try to up this hashtag on X. He even, I don't want to use the word manipulated, but he even got people to search massively for certain terms on Google. So Google Trends would pick it up. And sometimes during debates, they use Google trend so it would be like what is a miliciano like what's a paramilitary person in brazil terms that would connect flag into the scandal that would actually help people understand like this is what uh flagu is like this is who he is this worked right but he used tactics that are far-right tactics so like very uh posts that are screaming his dragon is

explodgy, like explode, like we're going to explode this post. Like he would post something and massively people would like it, repost it, etc. People started using WhatsApp status. That is something we don't use. That's like a grandma thing and Brazilian people started using it. So it led people to think of their use of social media differently and even use like AI slop type of, you know, posters to communicate about fabulous things. So I think there is a question. Okay, it worked, right? It was effective in some way. Is this what we want? Is this the type of communication that we want? Like, do we have to bend to their tactics to make effective communication? Or is there another way? This is a question for academics, not a question, I think, for us. But I think there is a question to be made also, which is, is it possible to regain back the space, right? Because what we're seeing is not only metasactions, but the algorithm in Brazil has hugely favored right wing candidates.

There's this guy, Nicolas Ferreira. He's a federal deputy from Minas Gerais. His Instagram posts are something like there. There's definitely an anomaly there. People have been saying in one hour, he gets like 40 million likes. His posts are more like than Beyonce. Messi's like retirement posts. He had more likes on a regular post than Messi's post. So there is something on his account that people look and say, it's not normal. What I think Andrej Anonis, the digital strategist guy, tried to do is he tried to hack the algorithm. He tried to, you know, like, let's use it in our favor. Let's try to use the same tactics and get this engagement in our favor. It worked to some level. But is this the path that we want to take? Like, do we have to do it again next time around? Or by then, will we have a different type of campaign? Will we have more rules that allow for a more equal playing field? Yeah, that's a really interesting set of questions to think about and to try to grapple with, right?

And to think about the way forward and what is effective. Because on the one hand, you don't want to just feed the space to the far right. But then on the other hand, it's like, is this really how we want to be communicating and trying to manipulate these conversations? but if the right is doing it you can't just let them you know be the only ones right because they have a monopoly over communication but my question is do we have to scream on instagram to be heard like do we have to you know use the ice lob to be seen do we have to be on x i think that's a big question like i'm i'm no longer in it on x for a long time now but my friends have been saying like this after the elections it just got even worse but i saw that some progressive people were there trying to like be present i think it's a big question but i also think this whole thing in result offered a different insight which is something the far right doesn't have they only show up online they don't show up offline and the campaign in result was very hybrid it had online but also offline components like part of this game game game if fine thing was people trying

to turn votes right like okay my grandma votes for maybe another candidate I'm trying to switch her over flip her over to Lula there were manuals online how do you talk to people like you're gonna start by asking this you're gonna listen to them you're not gonna be confrontational so I think this was kind of the value of also giving people a sense of belonging you know this army thing is so weird Paris at the same time it's like left-wing people becoming soldiers like people would call themselves like hello soldier it's it's all funny but at the same time it's a bit weird like it's kind of cult-like right but i think what it did was organize hope and give people a sense of belonging like this is we're in it together despite the end result we're gonna fight this fight together and this is so valuable and to me the question is how do we keep this momentum for the for next years and to use it also in favor of ensuring lula does a good government a government in the interest of the people, right?

Now I'm like, you know, data centers is my beast. So I'm like, he already mentioned data centers in his victory speech. And I'm like, oh my God, Lula, again? So how do we ensure that this tech regulation that they will try to enact next serves the people? Actually, like, is interesting for us and not only rules because we need rules. So many questions. But I think it's the ground, the prospects are, they look good, except for Congress, but there is space for working together and working for the people. Absolutely. Yeah, hopefully that power can be wielded to push Lula in the right direction, rather than just saying like, yeah, Lula, you know, it's so great, right? So I guess my final question, Laís, is just, you know, we have been talking about what we've been seeing up to this point. You know, obviously, Lula is going to get inaugurated again, and I believe it will be January, the new Congress will take effect and there will be difficulties with government there. Are there particular things that you'll be looking for in the coming months and kind of watching?

I think the Digital Markets Act economic regulation for sure is something I'll be watching. I'm also very curious about the Google News case that is ongoing in Kaji, which is our antitrust authority, because this could also have a massive impact on journalism. We're seeing organizations, journalistic organizations, make the case that Google's AI overview is hurting traffic to their websites. So any decision could have a massive impact not only regarding Google, but also like how, you know, OpenAI is creating websites and using. So I would say these two things, but also if there is any other type of tech regulation proposal that could kind of embody what people are feeling. Like, I don't know, maybe a bill looking at online advertising, ensuring that, I don't know, like we have TV advertising that meta gives candidates a quota that they should spend on and that's it.

No one else is allowed to pay for. I don't know. I think we might see something because it became so clear during this election that, again, the playing field is not equal, but also that this money could be better spent on other actions other than just dumping them into Meta and this money leaving the country. so I would say things should happen oh yeah and the AI bill that's something like to look out for in the next few months because I understand there is a sense of urgency from the government to try to prove this before the year ends because to take advantage of this congressional composition because probably next starting in January there would be no support at all for this bill and also interesting to see what type of negotiations will be necessary to advance any of these these bills or propositions. I think there's a lot to learn for other countries also about how we negotiate with the far right about tech regulation. Is there any path for negotiation or is it a direct veto?

We'll see what happens. Yeah, plenty on the calendar, plenty to watch. And I think, as you were saying, I think one of the interesting things or one of the opportunities here is for Brazil to chart its own path, right? to start looking at what is best for Brazil and not just so often as we see from so many countries looking to Europe as an example because it has traditionally done more tech regulation than other parts of the world. And, of course, you know, we know that Brazil has a long history of working with Linux and, you know, open source systems and trying to get off its dependence on these major tech companies. So how can we see that advance and, you know, hopefully see things advance on data centers and AI as well? I hope so. I think there's an opportunity there, right? I've been speaking to activists, like groups that work on data centers, and they're like, yes, he mentioned it. So there's an opportunity now for us to tell him, yeah, data centers, but not these ones, like not these companies, right? Let's invest in public data centers. Let's try to make it, we can draw another path for data center development in Brazil that does not benefit these companies that we're going up against.

so I think there's also space for improvement there and I will end by saying this in his speech Lula vowed to make an open government he said he wants to bring open his government to people on the streets kind of in gratitude of them going out to support him he wants to bring young people, he wants to listen more so this is a very positive sign of a government that has recognized that maybe it doesn't have all the answers that it actually needs to listen to what people want a good sign, I think, of a democratic government. And yeah, I think we all, there's, you know, the sigh of relief because, of course, the worst was averted, but there's also a path for an even better government this time around. I think that sounds fantastic. And honestly, if, you know, Lula is going to be able to push things through this Congress, I feel like he's going to need that people behind them, right? The people who he's saying he's going to bring into the government. You're going to need that people power to force the far right to work with them. And so it feels like that could be a really good strategy if that is ultimately how things play out.

Laís, always great to have you on the show. Always important to pay attention to what is going on in Brazil and to get your insights on it. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thank you so much, Ferris. Always a joy to be here. And yeah, keep an eye out for Brazil because exciting news is sure to come out. Laís Martins is a Brazilian tech journalist. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation Magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash techwontsaveus and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week.