YouTube announced Tuesday that it will withdraw videos that question the integrity of the 2018 elections in Brazil, among other measures to combat misinformation ahead of the October elections in which President Jair Bolsonaro will seek a second term.
As an example of the policy applied in the United States and Germany in recent years, the platform will remove videos “that promote false allegations that fraud, errors or widespread technical problems altered the election result” in 2018, YouTube Brasil, based in Sao Paulo, reported in a statement.
Bolsonaro, in power since 2019, has repeatedly questioned the reliability of the electronic voting system in Brazil and is facing a judicial investigation for alleging, without evidence, that in 2018 there was fraud that prevented him from winning in the first round.
This raised fears that Brazil could repeat a script similar to that of the United States, where hundreds of supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in January 2021 enraged by allegations that the Republican lost the elections to Joe Biden because of massive fraud.
YouTube reported on Tuesday that it will not allow content that misleads voters about the voting time or place in October, or “false information that could make people desist from going to the polls. That includes false allegations that electronic ballot boxes were hacked in the 2018 election and that the votes were adulterated,” according to the company's guidelines.
With more than six months to go before the elections, polls indicate that Bolsonaro will likely face former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round (2003-2010).
In a campaign that is expected to be very polarized, the fight against disinformation is at the heart of the concerns of Brazilian judicial authorities.
Last week, a supreme court judge ruled the blocking of the encrypted messaging platform Telegram, which continued to fail to respond to successive judicial appeals.
The application, a fertile ground for disinformation and widely used by Bolsonarista groups, ended up having to yield to court requests to reverse the blockade, including deleting an August 2021 publication in which Bolsonaro questioned the reliability of the ballot box.
He also appointed a legal representative in Brazil and committed to a series of measures to combat misinformation during the elections.
On Tuesday, Telegram removed two new profiles attributed to the Bolsonarist militancy, called “Freedom of Expression” and “Information War”, with thousands of followers each, according to the GloboNews news channel.
Bolsonaro had called Telegram's suspension “inadmissible” and said it threatened the “freedom” of Brazilians.
The president has already had other content removed from YouTube for spreading false information, including a live intervention in which he associated the covid vaccine with AIDS, which was also withdrawn by Facebook and Instagram.
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