Critically, through a partnership with Facebook, many cell phone plans in Brazil (particularly on cheap pre-paid phones) do not include data but grant users exclusive access to WhatsApp and Facebook as the sole entry points to the Internet. However, the issue is not only digital illiteracy but also a lack of access to legitimate methods of verifying information. The burden of fact-checking rests on the shoulders of users-a heavy lift in a country where over half of the voting population has not completed high school and many are very new to social media. Unlike a public forum like Facebook, which can monitor public information (and sometimes, private information), WhatsApp has limited latitude to regulate usage without infringing on user privacy. Information received from such intimate sources can feel deceptively trustworthy, but the true source of information received via WhatsApp is extremely difficult to trace.īeyond its tremendous popularity as a relatively no-frills messaging platform, WhatsApp sells its users on secure encryption and privacy. On top of everyday conversation, users share stories and memes with friends, family, and others in private or group conversations. Used by nearly seven out of ten Brazilians and 95% of all smartphone owners in the country, WhatsApp is ubiquitous. What makes WhatsApp such a vector for disinformation?
Bad actors-with the help of unsuspecting users-subverted democracy through the mass, coordinated spread of lies via the unsuspecting platform. A significant chunk of this is due to the rise of WhatsApp as a theoretically democratic (albeit unregulated) space to share information, posing a direct challenge to the heavily controlled primacy of television, radio, and print-a trend that seems unlikely to be reversed. In a result seen by many as impossible without the rise of social media and WhatsApp as a political news source, Brazilians decisively elected far-right nationalist Jair Bolsonaro ( Social Liberal Party–PSL)-previously a little-known congressman from Rio de Janeiro with almost zero official public advertising time-over Workers’ Party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad on Sunday, October 28. Brazil’s elections, however, showed precisely how as disinformation runs rampant and even family group chats become political minefields, a much more sinister narrative of what the platform ‘offers’ is taking form. WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging application, was once seen as a simple means of communicating and sharing information with friends and family.
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