Parmy Olson, Columnist

Social Media Firms Failed Once Again in Brazil

Insurrection in Brasilia shows the damage that can be done when Meta, TikTok and other platforms neglect viral misinformation in foreign markets.

January 9, 2023 at 3:40 PM UTC

By Parmy Olson

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.”

Inside Brazil’s presidential palace after rioters were cleared out.
Photographer: CARL DE SOUZA/AFP

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As Brazil picked up the pieces on Monday from the damage caused by supporters of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, it was hard not to see echoes of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol — not least because both incidents were stoked by activity on social media. Brazilian users of Meta Platforms Inc.’s WhatsApp, as well as Telegram and TikTok, saw a surge in calls to attend a “war cry party” in the capital in the run-up to Sunday’s violence in Brasilia, according to the Washington Post.

Even before that, ahead of the presidential election last October, Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp had been flooded with misinformation about the integrity of Brazil’s vote, which saw Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva narrowly defeat Bolsonaro. It doesn’t help that Meta allows misinformation from political candidates to go unchecked, a policy it should have changed long ago.