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BRASILIA (Reuters) – Facebook's popular messaging service, WhatsApp, has become a political battleground for decades in Brazil's most polarized election, raising fears that it will distort the debate beyond the eyes of the US. public.
Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a projection of the Whatsapp logo on this illustration taken on March 28, 2018. REUTERS / Dado Ruvic / Illustration
Facebook touted efforts to crack down on misinformation on its main platform before the second round of the presidential election between right wing Jair Bolsonaro and southpaw Fernando Haddad. But WhatsApp has been inundated with lies and conspiracy theories.
Haddad now alleges that businessmen supporting Bolsonaro have paid to bomb the voters with misleading propaganda, in violation of the electoral law, which his rival denies.
WHAT IS THE INFLUENCE OF WHATSAPP?
WhatsApp has more than 120 million users in Brazil, a country of nearly 210 million, equaling the reach of Facebook's main platform on one of the world's largest markets of the company.
The courier service has become one of the main means used by Brazilians to keep in touch with their friends, colleagues and family.
The vote in the first round of elections on 7 October underlined the major role that social media plays in Brazilian politics.
Bolsonaro, a seven-member congressman from a tiny party, had little access to public campaign funding or television advertising, but his grassroots campaign and his disproportionate presence on social media was the only one in the world. 39, helped to win 46% of the vote, avoiding almost a second round.
Datafolha survey company found that two-thirds of Brazilian voters use WhatsApp. Proponents of Bolsonaro were more likely to follow political news on the platform with 61% of them claiming to have done so, compared with 38% of Haddad voters.
WHAT ARE THE RISKS?
WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption allows groups of hundreds of users to exchange text, photos, and videos beyond election authorities, independent fact controllers, or even the platform itself .
False rumors, manipulated photos, decontextualized videos and audio hoaxes have become campaign ammunition, becoming viral on the platform with no way to control their origin or reach.
Many fakes make Haddad a Communist whose Workers' Party would turn Brazil into another Cuba, convert children to homosexuality and plan to rig voting machines.
Others have spread a conspiracy theory that Bolsonaro allegedly staged his near-fatal assassination attempt at a rally last month, which removed him from the election campaign and elections. presidential debates.
WhatsApp has tried to discourage the tsunami from lying by limiting the number of recipients to whom a message can be transmitted. The company also advertised how to spot fake news and blocked hundreds of thousands of accounts during the campaign, using technology to detect the automated behavior of "robots".
WHAT IS THE LAST SCANDAL?
Haddad accuses Bolsonaro of not only benefiting from misinformation about WhatsApp, but encouraging his followers to fund messages en masse on the platform. This would amount to soliciting illegal contributions to an election campaign as part of what they call an "economic abuse of power" undermining the elections.
On Thursday, S.Paulo's Folha newspaper announced that Bolsonaro supporters had paid digital marketing companies up to 12 million reais ($ 3.26 million) to broadcast tens of thousands of commercials. Haddad said his party had witnesses who heard Bolsonaro encourage business leaders to fund their efforts.
Bolsonaro denied any knowledge of such a ploy and called on fans who would stop him.
WhatsApp said that she was taking the charges seriously and that she "was taking immediate legal steps to prevent companies from sending messages en masse", including letters of termination and dismissal. abstention addressed to the companies in question.
WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES?
Brazil's central electoral court on Friday opened an investigation into the allegations, which experts quickly described as "WhatsAppgate".
Haddad's allies say the scandal should invalidate the elections. However, it is unlikely that the survey will derail the Bolsonaro campaign by one week of voting and with an 18-point lead over Haddad in recent polls.
Nevertheless, the allegations have tended an already angry and polarized electorate and are likely to weigh on the next government.
According to Fabio Malini, professor of technology at the Federal University of Espirito Santo, the way in which the marketing companies got the mobile phone numbers used for WhatsApp messaging may have violated the Brazilian data protection laws.
Brazilian lawmakers and judges have tried several times in recent years to infringe on the privacy offered by WhatsApp, creating headaches for Facebook executives who are often called to account. The latest election scandal could intensify these pressures.
Reportage by Anthony Boadle; Edited by Brad Haynes and Bill Trott
