Good evening, everyone! Lost everything! You must have seen this headline: "The drama of the heartthrob who lost everything", or that other one, "You won't believe what happened to the original cast of 'Malhação'.
" Every time it says, "You won't believe," I click, and I always end up disappointed because I believe that I won't believe, but in the end, I always end up believing what they say, and the website never reveals something unbelievable. It's never something like, "Perereca from 'Malhação' won the Nobel Prize in Physics! " I can't believe it!
I can't believe it! No. .
. You click and find out that Perereca from "Malhação" became an investment broker. Who cares, I believe it, yeah, who cares.
That's precisely what I expected from Perereca from "Malhação. " Just like Mocotó. Another day I clicked "You won't believe where Mocotó from 'Malhação' is now.
" I found out that he opened a butcher shop. A butcher shop that he insists is not a butcher shop: it's a meat house. Which, in English, Mocotó, is called a butcher shop.
That's the definition of a butcher shop: a meat house. But that's what I expected from Mocotó, especially considering his name, which is a nickname for a butcher. So I believe, of course, Mocotó became a butcher.
Anything can happen to the original cast of "Malhação": Mario Frias became the Secretary of Culture, Carolina Dieckmann became a law. In other words, anything can happen. Even though we know that it will be disappointing, these websites know that we will click the link, and why?
Because humans are very interested in knowing what happened to people they have absolutely no interest in. And I like to say, "Humans like" for things that I like because it makes me feel less guilty. It's not me, it's humans.
"The drama of the comedian who wasted hours of work with clickbait. " Clickbait, by the way, is an English term for these articles that do anything to get your click. And of all of them, the most foolproof ones are the "before and after" kind.
Is the website not doing well? Just put a before and after of Cristiano Ronaldo. Of Gusttavo Lima.
Of Wesley Safadão. Of Neymar's sister. Or Gabigol's sister, who had plastic surgery and now looks just like Neymar's sister.
Who, by the way, was dating Gabigol! Before and after also applies to personalities. Yes, because Regina Duarte used to be "Brazil's sweetheart"; then she became the ex-girlfriend with a restraining order.
Before, Jovem Pan was a radio station for young people; now it's a YouTube channel for old people. They're always in the wrong media. Before, we made fun of Alexandre de Moraes because he was cutting marijuana plants in Paraguay.
Now if I run into Big Alex, I'll invite him to smoke a joint. After all, we have something in common: we like to hold and release. But the best before and after of all time was Olavo de Carvalho: he died and became a poet.
This before and after thing is such a clickbait that you could even say that Western society is based on a big before and after. Even today, we count the years as before and after Christ. Yeah, the Bible was the original tabloid.
If it had a catchy headline, the Bible would be titled: "Urgent! You won't believe the drama of the famous prophet who lost everything. " By the way, Jesus is a guy who also had a very radical facial before and after because he was a Jew from Galilee, and after he died, they turned him into a Swedish backpacker, a Theo Becker, a lead singer of Engenheiros do Hawaii.
Yes, my highway is the path to truth and life, he must have sung. They gave him a posthumous facial harmonization, poor guy. But those of us who were born in the 80s, or earlier, also experienced a very drastic before and after, the internet.
Yes, we millennials grew up with the internet, but it changed even more than we did. It's balder and has an even more crooked spine. Back in our time, to begin with, it was dial-up.
Yes, kids, the internet used to make noise. And not just any noise. It sounded like it was exorcising a robot.
But the craziest thing is that this apocalyptic noise was music to our ears because it meant that the computer was connecting. Yes, to get on the internet, you had to perform a ritual including satanic music. Nowadays, imagine!
You're on the internet all the time, you must perform a ritual to get off the internet, you have to drink ayahuasca. But you don't have to do anything to get on anymore. Not only did we not have cell phones with internet, but we also had to get off the phone to get on the internet.
We used to hear this all the time, "Get off the internet, I want to use the phone. " And through this dial-up internet, we witnessed the rise and fall of ICQ, UOL chat, Orkut, Humortadela, and MSN. Not to mention Fotolog and Flogão, which were like Instagram without filters and without messing with users' mental health.
To start with, you could only post one photo a day there, and that was it. And you didn't waste time scrolling through the timeline, there was no timeline, you had to go to the person's profile, waiting for each pic to load, nobody had the patience for that. Stalking someone was so fucking toilsome.
There was a photo site that I used to visit a lot, called "good jerk-off. " It was really something! Each photo took a minute to load, starting from the face and going down.
You had to masturbate seeing a neck. It was a medieval practice. It was very erotic.
Usually, I finished before reaching the nipple. Sorry, I mean humans finished before reaching the nipple. Humans of that time.
Humans told me that. It was around this time, more precisely in 1996, that Bill Clinton signed the main American law on the internet, which is still in effect today. This American law exempts platforms from liability for user-generated content.
This law made a lot of sense when it was created because, at that time, as we mentioned, internet companies were mere hosting services for websites and blogs. This American law influenced one article of our civil framework for the internet, sanctioned here in 2014, which also exempts platforms from liability for user-generated content. Today, platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram are practically immune to the law, they cannot be held accountable, as if they were children or Bolsonaro's offspring.
Today, digital platforms like Google or Facebook are giant companies. The largest in the world. Bigger than Ford, Shell, or Coca-Cola.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is worth one and a half trillion dollars, which is practically the GDP of Brazil in 2021. Yes, there's a company there in California worth the same as all the wealth produced by 215 million Brazilians in a whole year. Yes, we have over two hundred million people toiling away for a whole year, planting soybeans, living on offshore platforms to extract oil, making cakes in jars, charging for legal advice, day trading on Faria Lima, selling costume jewelry, extracting tons of iron ore, and we are worth the same as a single company in Silicon Valley.
And what does this company do? You ask it a question, and it tells you, "oh, it's right there. " This company basically replaced the idle person by the roadside.
A company worth one and a half trillion is doing the same thing as the guy at the gas station. Seriously now, it's obvious that Google does more than just tell you where something is. Just like Instagram is not just a place for you to post pictures of yourself smoking weed for your close friends list.
In the last twenty years, most technology companies have transitioned from a model of digital infrastructure that delivers content to a model of algorithmic distribution of that content. In the 90s, these platforms operated somewhat like rental printing presses, making it suddenly very cheap and easy for anyone to publish their own newspaper. Today, they do much more than let you publish your newspaper: they are the only way for you to publish your newspaper, they charge those who want to advertise in your newspaper, and they charge you to distribute your newspaper properly, and if they feel like it, they hide your newspaper behind the back shelf of the newsstand, and they also prohibit your newspaper from having things they don't like, like female nipples.
Today, these platforms have so much data about each of us that they can sell increasingly personalized advertising. Everyone has experienced this. "Hey, I was thinking about traveling to Cachoeiro de Itapemirim, and this ad from the bus company popped up about tickets to Cachoeiro!
Instagram is reading my mind! " No, actually, it's worse than that. You only thought about traveling to Cachoeiro because it showed you the song "My little cachoeiro" by Roberto Carlos.
Why? So you think you're thinking on your own. The algorithm doesn't read thoughts; it writes thoughts.
In summary, Google pretends to be the guy by the roadside who gives you information, but it's as if you asked that guy how to get to Niterói, and he tells you to take the Dutra Highway because he's getting some money from Graal. The algorithm is basically the code that decides what we will or will not see and tries to capture our attention so that we see everything it wants us to. It's not there to inform us or entertain us, but to sell access to us to whoever is willing to pay, generating profit for the platform.
Yes, the algorithm is our pimp, with the difference that this pimp keeps 100% of the profits, and we get paid with cute cat videos and microdoses of dopamine. As a result, companies keep growing infinitely, and my timeline starts getting bombarded with ads like this: Yes, the algorithm understood that I have a beard and that my wife gets mad when I shave and leave hair in the bathroom sink. And if I pay R$35.
99, Amazon will solve this marital problem with a beard apron. But it's not just the powerful beard apron lobby that buys advertising space on the internet. In the middle of last year, right in an election year, the biggest political advertiser on Google and Meta, which includes Facebook and Instagram, was.
. . Brasil Paralelo.
Yes, a website that tries to reinterpret the history of Brazil from the perspective of those who haven't studied Brazilian history. A site that sees our history from the viewpoint of Olavo de Carvalho, and that viewpoint can't see anything because it's six feet under. How are you seeing the history of Brazil from down there?
And they decided to release a conspiracy documentary about Bolsonaro's stabbing six days before the election, and to finance a massive advertising campaign on digital platforms to give visibility to the documentary, without considering this expense as a donation to the presidential campaign. But attention: it's not illegal campaign financing. It's parallel campaign financing.
That's why many countries are currently reconsidering the laws from the early days of the internet that exempt platforms from liability for posted content, especially paid content, out of which they make a lot of money, or content that goes viral massively, out of which they also make a lot of money through advertising. The first significant initiative in this direction was in Germany. In 2017, the German government passed a law called Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz.
Yes, that's the name of the law. Germans make words like they make sausages, throw everything in, mix it up, and screw it. And this word must be difficult even for them because they themselves invented an acronym to be able to say it without giving up halfway: NETZDG.
Even Germans have trouble speaking German. Well, but what matters is that this law requires platforms to remove, on their own, any clearly illegal content. In 2018, France passed a similar law focused on combating fake news.
And a few months ago, the European Union implemented the Digital Services Act, which requires Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and twelve other platforms to provide access to their databases and algorithms whenever requested. It also instructs these platforms to change the algorithm if it is shown to pose a systemic risk, and prohibits targeted advertising based on certain categories, such as ethnicity or the user's political opinion. That is, it makes it difficult for those who want to sponsor supremacism or religious hatred.
Now, if you want to advertise something exclusively to the young white reactionary man, you'll have to advertise on Léo Lins' show, not just put it out there for everyone to see. This is the law that, here in Brazil, is serving as inspiration for Bill 2630, also known as the Fake News Bill. The bill, which has as rapporteur Congressman Orlando Silva, aims to control large platforms with over ten million users in Brazil.
But even within these platforms, the law doesn't intend to control all the content posted by all users, especially considering that on YouTube alone, people upload 500 hours of video per minute. I know it's strange to think in terms of hours per minute. How can 500 hours fit into just one minute?
Do they use K-Y on that minute? I feel sorry for that tiny minute, poor thing, with 500 hours crammed into it. Humans have a hard time understanding that concept, it's not just me.
You might be thinking that it's impossible to monitor all of that. 500 hours per minute. Yes, indeed.
But there's one detail: 5% of YouTube videos account for 95% of all views. That's why Bill 2630 isn't too concerned about censoring your grandfather when he says the Supreme Court should be shut down because his video will only have 4 views, we know that. It will be him watching his own video to make sure everything went smoothly.
Then your cousin who sucks up to him, your sister who will send you the video saying, "Look at grandpa embarrassing himself again," and then, of course, also Big Alex. He's omnipresent, he watches everything at 5,000x speed, and he doesn't care. But seriously: YouTube only needs to take action when thousands of people share your grandfather's video at the same time, and when it's being boosted by their algorithm.
Or by your grandfather's money, boosting their algorithm. Then, if the content is criminal, the platforms will have to take action under penalty of fines. They will have to be accountable and fix their algorithm so it doesn't happen again.
Eventually, they will stop making money out of your grandfather. There's also this advantage: that money can go to you. If the law passes, you might get a PlayStation!
Great, huh? Today, platforms already remove criminal or false content, but often the process takes time. In practice, these companies still make a lot of money by running advertising content for days and days that violates the country's laws or spreads lies.
For example, using Google's ad bank, we can see that Bolsonaro spent R$28 million on the platform to sponsor content during the elections, mostly on YouTube. However, when we try to see what this content was, we can't find out because it was removed for violations. And YouTube doesn't explain which violations.
But before being removed, these ads made a lot of money for Google and were seen by hundreds of thousands, or in some cases, millions of people. Maybe that's why Bolsonaro liked to tell people to "Google it. " Just Google it.
I Google it, right? Or you can Google it. Just Google it.
If you Google it. . .
Google it. Just open Google. You can Google it, folks.
You, lefties, just Google "abusive pleonasm. " It's looking bad for you. He should Google the word Google.
It's Googuel, Googoo, Googa. Search on Googui. Search on Googgooga and you'll find the name of Googui.
Just open Googui. Is it Goongui? He told us to search for abusive pleonasm on Goongui.
I searched there, but I think he didn't put enough money into that news. The only occurrence I found was him saying "abusive pleonasm. " It doesn't make any sense at all.
The expression doesn't even exist. Because every pleonasm is abusive, meaning abusive pleonasm is a pleonasm itself. Bolsonaro invented metapleonasm.
And if you, Bolsonaro, don't know what metapleonasm is, just Google it. You know what you'll find there? Nothing, sucker.
But anyway, Bill 2630 also changes something very important: currently, there is nothing in the law that prevents Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter from suspending any account without giving an explanation to the user, or that obliges them to create a clear channel for you to complain when your account is hijacked. The new law wants to force the platforms to create complaint channels and give them a deadline to respond to the user. Anyone who has tried to reactivate a deleted or hacked account knows that talking to Instagram is worse than talking to internet providers.
In fact, it's much worse because, in case you haven't noticed, unlike social media, telemarketing has been regulated. Nowadays, by law, they can no longer ghost you and force you to listen to "Für Elise" endlessly. It's no longer allowed.
But Instagram, in case you haven't noticed, doesn't even have a phone number for you to call. There's not even a Judith for you to curse at. If someone creates a fake account of yours on Instagram or if someone hacks your account to take money from your friends, you won't find a human being to solve your problem.
Instagram directs you to a form that doesn't bother to tell you how long it will take for your complaint to be read or if it will be read, let alone addressed. And you love to badmouth public offices. The biggest companies in the world have a much worse service than Detran.
Not to be confused with Deltan, who no longer renders any service. But going back to the bill: many people didn't like Bill 2630. Starting with the technology companies themselves.
Google, for example, placed an ad on their own page against the bill, saying that it would increase disinformation, confusion about what is true and false, and make the internet worse. They are wrong just by believing that something could make our internet worse. "Oh, this law will make RedeTV worse.
" No, folks, it's impossible. Google would have paid over R$500,000 to run the same message on Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify. They went against the consumer protection code by publishing a political ad without informing in the ad itself that it had political content.
They were very stupid because, in their fight against regulation, they proved that they need regulation. It's like people who claim to be very humble. "Arrogant, me?
I'm the most humble person I know, I'm all about peace, and I'll punch anyone who thinks I'm not about peace. " Telegram, on the other hand, which doesn't even have an office in Brazil, sent a message to all its Brazilian users attacking the bill. And they went even further than Google, claiming that the law would "end freedom of speech" and give the government "censorship powers.
" It was a lie, and the content was taken down with a court order. But before that, over 1 million people had already read the lie. It's like that famous Mark Twain quote says: "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.
" This can be easily proven because this quote isn't actually from Mark Twain. I think it's from Clarice Lispector. Why do you think these companies are so determined to avoid any kind of regulation?
Most likely, it's for financial reasons. Today, they make a lot of money out of hate speech because moderation is expensive, and hate speech generates engagement, which generates money. And that's where the danger lies.
An example of this danger was what happened in Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia with that narcissistic name. An invitation to go there always sounds sexual: do you want to come to Myanmar? No, thanks.
In 2011, the dictatorship in Myanmar ended, the telephone network was privatized, and access to mobile phones became much cheaper. The phones came with Facebook pre-installed and could be used for free, without consuming data. The result was that Facebook became the internet itself in Myanmar.
Within months, thousands of people joined and hate speech spread like wildfire. Buddhist monks started going viral on Facebook, preaching violence against an Islamic minority, the Rohingya. Yes, just because you're a Buddhist monk doesn't mean you're not an asshole.
The distribution of assholes in religions is almost equal, a wonderful distribution. And yes, the monks there began preaching hate. According to an Amnesty International report, the Facebook algorithm "actively amplified" the persecution, garnering support for a military campaign that resulted in rape, deaths, and the exile of over 700,000 people.
Yes, it was such a chaos that it gave the military an excuse to regain power, crushing civil opposition. In this video, a classic, a gym teacher inadvertently recorded footage of the military coup happening, dancing and not realizing it. You can see that Facebook not only helped spread hate speech but also fitness dances, which is almost as serious.
And the two things are connected. Just like the woman in the video, we don't even notice the collapse of democracy because we're focused on squatting. Oh, and apparently, do you know how many people Facebook had to moderate content in Burmese, the official language of Myanmar, when all the madness started?
One. And based in Ireland. So, probably drunk on top of it.
But going back to Bill 2630, it wasn't just the big tech companies that were upset about it. Many far-right politicians were too. One of them is Congressman Nikolas Ferreira, who has been convicted of spreading fake news and is now sharing fake news like this one to explain why he's against the Fake News Bill: Let me explain what this Bill is about.
It's about digital companies' trade secrets. It's like asking Coca-Cola to reveal the Coke recipe and Pepsi to reveal the Pepsi recipe. So, many people working in those companies will have to show the formula of what they're doing.
Can you imagine if Coca-Cola or Pepsi had to disclose their ingredients? Can you imagine if it had to be written on every soda can? I don't think this boy, Nikolas, has ever come across a label.
I can picture him looking at it, "Mom, I discovered the secret here. We're going to be millionaires, Mom! Here's the formula, I found it!
" Does he think that if Instagram discloses its algorithm, people will start creating social media at home? They'll make a little homemade Instagram? Is Instagram going to be the new kombucha?
But young Nikolas is not alone in this fight. There's even a newly-formed coalition against Bill 2630, with people like this: This is just a preview of what will happen and it will affect the press, too, you can be sure of that! We don't want Bill 2630!
This is nothing but a gag! This is nothing but the beginning of a dictatorship in Brazil! Dear press and everyone, I have just one word for you: God exists and He won't allow this bill.
"God exists. . .
", that's seven words. Not just one. I think this congressman thinks he speaks German.
By the way, pastors always ask this: "Have you heard the word of Jesus? " Sure, go ahead. What's the word?
Then they say a thousand words. Don't fall for this word scam. This word thing is clickbait.
And why are far-right politicians like Nikolas Ferreira so concerned about platform regulation? Probably because these platforms currently benefit their content. Today, 70% of YouTube traffic comes from content recommended by the algorithm itself, according to the company's data.
The Wall Street Journal showed that the YouTube algorithm tends to recommend far-right content. Yes, if you watch a kitten video and let the website endlessly recommend the next videos, you'll probably end up watching Olavo de Carvalho claiming that Pepsi is made from aborted fetuses. That's probably why Nikolas thinks the formula is secret.
Oh, the good old days when fetuses turned into Pepsi, now they turn into congressmen. A study conducted by MIT showed that fake news has seven times more chances of being shared than real news. It's proven that the algorithm favors lies.
So, we can't expect that a debate of ideas will naturally help people distinguish between truth and lies because what these platforms are creating is not an egalitarian debate of ideas, it's a 7-1 of ideas, a gauntlet of ideas, a gangbang of ideas. The fact is that today, unlike in the 90s, most of our social interactions, personal and professional communication, relationships, news consumption, interface with reality, economic interactions, and our emotional, family, professional, all happen on the internet. Without us realizing, our profiles have taken the place of our actual selves, becoming almost just one thing.
But our profiles are forced to live under the terms of use defined by people we don't know, don't vote for, and who make a lot of money off us. It's more than time for us to collectively define our terms of use. Bill 2630 won't turn the internet into a paradise overnight, but it will be an important step for us to achieve something we have never had: civil control of the digital environment.
Of course, if the text isn't completely distorted in Congress. And that's a real risk: since it was presented, the bill has faced a lot of attacks. There are even congressmen trying to secure immunity for themselves to publish whatever they want without following the new rules.
This kind of abuse needs to be fought against and should not prevent a genuine debate about regulating social media. Because deep down, this discussion is not about fake news, freedom of speech, or internet security. It's simply the beginning of a long-overdue process that can no longer be postponed.
Today's internet needs regulation because today's internet is today's world. It's where we choose our candidates, earn our living, and sell our products, like cakes in jars. We really need to take this first step, and we need to do it quickly.
Before we become a clickbait headline: "the drama of a country that had nothing and lost everything! " That was Greg News! Good night!
