News Post: How The Brazilian Left Won An Election with the Internet

0:10Mike Rugnetta Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a

0:13 podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta. This intro was written on Tuesday, 10/27/2026 at 10:28AM eastern, and we have an electable show for you this week. In this, our monthly news episode for October, I chat with Caio Almendra, writer, podcast host, and organizer with Brazil's Socialism and Liberty Party about Lula da Silva's come from behind win in the Brazilian presidential election this last weekend in which the Internet, online organizing, and tech companies had taken a central role. But first, we're gonna take a quick break.

0:52 You will listen to some ads unless you are on the member feed, and when we return, we'll talk about a few of the things that have happened since the last time you heard from us. Our house is a very, very, very fine house with two cats in the yard. Life used to be so hard. Now everything is easy because of you and our five stories this week. Okay.

1:17 Right up front, there are gonna be two pieces of show news that I wanna get through. First, one, Georgia was on proxy with Yahweh Shah talking about her biggest fear, which I'm not gonna spoil it, but if you haven't heard the episode, it is probably not what you were expecting. You can go back one app in this feed in your podcatcher because we cross posted it, or even better, go subscribe to Proxy. It's great. We're big Yowie fans.

1:43 Listen. Please listen. Listen. Go listen. And two, t shirts. We're selling them. You're buying them, I hope. Link in the show notes. This design was unveiled during stream week, and folks, we have been so busy, and I'm not gonna lie, a little disorganized. We have not even had time to set up the store to take your money, but they are finally here.

2:05 The fucked up little melty guy designed by Nate Bear. Oh, I love it. So it is in t shirt form, ready to come into your home and get goo all over your stuff. There's a link in the show notes. Please note these are presales. So you're gonna have a few weeks or so to get an order in, and then when the presales close, we're gonna print them all up in one go. We're gonna send them all out in one go, and then this design will go away forever. So if you like it, get in there now. Make sure you get one. Will these arrive for Christmas?

2:38 You are wondering? Probably not, but we love you anyway. Okay. On with the actual news here we go. Microsoft is offering buyouts to upwards of a quarter of its total employees. In a memo sent this week, workers were offered, quote, the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources, end quote. The company is offering to cut ties with up to 60,000 staffers in AI experiences, Copilot, Core AI, Windows and devices, Xbox, finance, and human resources teams. Cloud and AI, Microsoft AI teams, and corporate, external and legal affairs are all also partly implicated according to The Verge. The tech giant recently gutted its games division, firing nearly 5,000 employees in

3:33 and adjacent to its Xbox team. This year, Microsoft has also engaged in what tech insider labeled last March, quote, maybe the largest technology investment cycle ever undertaken. For the quarter ending July 2026, Microsoft was then on pace to spend $190,000,000,000 on AI infrastructure. While its Azure cloud development platform has grown significantly this year, headlines have been dominated by the lackluster uptake in its consumer AI products like Copilot, especially in comparison to the total user base that has Windows installed.

4:16 Polymarket employs an ad hoc group of social media users to boost its presence according to reporting done by Mikhail Cella for his newsletter, ReaderGrev. The program focuses on the prediction market's esports arms with quote over 800 participants and offers ranging from $10 to several $100 per post paid in crypto, end quote. The program is managed via a Discord which includes esports professionals and fans alike.

4:47 Users are encouraged to repost Polymarket posts in a way where it is not always clear they have been compensated, and if so, how much? Cella reports that the program does have quote robust guidelines around disclosure and the kinds of quote retweets the company is looking for end quote. Though explicit reminders that posts must include a paid partnership tag have apparently declined. This comes at a time when several states are looking at increased regulation around betting markets and related products. Following reports done by Jake Pearson at ProPublica, New York announced two new rules that sportsbook apps will have to abide by.

5:28 The first further details the ways in which these services would have to identify and reach out to gamblers exhibiting a signs of addiction, and the second would bar the services from using artificial intelligence to adjust various betting parameters on an individual basis.

5:44Caio Almendra Stop it.

5:46Mike Rugnetta Signal has said that it will not abide by bill c

5:49 22, Canada's new sweeping surveillance law that is making its way through the government. The bill would require various service providers to store metadata about their customers, effectively forcing services like VPNs and encrypted chat programs to undermine their own fundamental value proposition. Signal, a secure messaging app, has said that it would pull out of the Canadian market if the bill passes. The bill specifies that so called core providers who do not adhere to the regulation would be fined up to $250,000 per day. Google has said the bill, quote, undermines the principles of transparency and due process, describing it as highly problematic.

6:34 Stop it. Taylor Swift has a streaming rival. Michael Smith from Cornelius, North Carolina, quote, fraudulently in inflated plays of AI generated music on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube during a period from 2017 to 2024. The Justice Department of the United States writes that, quote, in April 2023, the entire catalog of Taylor Swift received 9,300,000 streams on YouTube music from family plan streams.

7:07 While in the same month, Smith's bot accounts used family plans to fraudulently stream his AI generated music 80,900,000 times. Smith was sentenced this month to eighteen months in prison for using 52 different services to stream nearly 700 songs a day. Using the US government's own approved terminology, US attorney Jamie McDonald said in a statement, Michael Smith exploited super intelligence technology to generate fraud.

7:40 This office is committed to ensuring the integrity of all markets and protecting the public from those who use super intelligence for fraud. And finally, Brazil's incumbent left wing president, Luis Innacio Lula da Silva, won reelection on Sunday after a surprising loss in round one voting to Flavio Bolsonaro, son of disgraced and now imprisoned former president, Jair Bolsonaro. Much ink has been spilled about the role the Internet has played in the win from WhatsApp groups with millions of members to memes to Lula's promise to now regulate meta after accusations of pro Bolsonaro moderation practices.

8:25 After the break, we'll talk with Caio Almendra, writer, podcaster, and organizer with Brazil's Socialism and Liberty Party about the win and how the Internet was one of many tools in their organizing playbook. This last Sunday on October twenty fifth, Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, won a fourth term after what some described as a shocking come from behind victory. The incumbent lost to right wing challenger Flavio Bolsonaro, son to the now imprisoned Jair Bolsonaro during first round voting on October 4 and trailed in polls and projections by only a few percentage points up until the second round of voting last weekend. Regardless of the thin margin media and the right wing discourse machine made a

9:19 Bosonado victory seem inevitable. Meta as well was heavily accused of censoring the da Silva campaign and favoring Bolsonaro, though it says it does not pick sides and complied with all of Brazil's election related laws. The US State Department as well has been accused of attempting to tip the scales, though by now it seems they have no interest in supporting any contestations. Commentators have specifically lauded the Brazilian left's organizing tactics online. A massive WhatsApp group has become a thing of legend. Run by Andre Janones, a 42 year old Brazilian congressman, the chat became a font of cultural Jainanism, an organizing approach defined by urgency, irreverence, and constant calls

10:07 to action. The effectiveness of this digital approach did not, though, soften Lula's criticism of social media. By the end of the campaign, he had gone so far as to suggest it is time for Brazil to more heavily regulate social media. Joining me to talk about all of this is Caio Almendra, an organizer with Brazil's left wing socialism and liberty party or PISAU. Caio is a writer at the Superstructure podcast with Julian Field, the former opinion editor at Intercept Brazil, and through his work with the consultancy Academy and Studio Templo, is a cofounder of the Brazilian Institute of Data Science. Caio, thanks for being here.

10:53Caio Almendra Oh, I'm glad to be here.

10:55Mike Rugnetta For the folks in our audience who might be just

10:58 very unfamiliar with Brazilian politics and know there has been an election, and know that a lot of people are very happy and maybe a little surprised about the results of that election. I was wondering if you could just give us a very broad overview of Lula da Silva's platform versus Flavio Boscenero's platform.

11:19Caio Almendra Lula da Silva was a labor union leader in the

11:23 seventies. The strikes that he led ended the Brazil dictatorship, so he was a really important historical figure in Brazil. Has been a presidential candidate since 1989 and was elected in 2002. He commanded the country for two mandates for eight years. So mainly, he dwelled in extreme poverty. He tried to solve the problem of extreme poverty. The main policy of this first cycle of Bula government was Bolsa Familia, and it was direct wealth transfer from the government to the poorest people in Brazil. This made Brazilian extreme poverty basically end. Then the new Liberal Congress did a coup to impose a more fiscal hawk agenda. After that, Bolsonaro was elected.

12:15 He was also from the dictatorship, but not from the people that fought against the dictatorship. He fought to postpone the end of the dictatorship. He entered politics by trying a terrorist plot to bomb military headquarters, very authoritarian in the small politics of everything. So LGBT rights, future spending, education spending, all of us being cut because of of Jai Bolsonaro.

12:43 Then he lost to Lula. During these four years, Jai Bolsonaro was arrested for his couplat attempt, our our January 6, which happened in 01/08/2023. He was arrested 1000 and... I think, in fact, 1,500 people were arrested with him. The main backers of the of the coup plot weren't. So this kept the historical block of Bolsonarismo alive.

13:11 His older son was the leader of this opposition against Zula. He was considered an especially weak candidate. He was also the part of the family that was more clearly connected to corruption and especially organized crime. His platform was basically... There was... There's a sketch in Brazil that he's dressed like Hitler and say, I wanna make Brazil get better by hiring better people and doing better stuff. He's... Doesn't say anything. Lula, meanwhile, didn't have in the first run a very clear agenda of what he was going to do. But on the last week of the first round, he he banned it by a decree sporting bets in Brazil.

13:58 And people may not be aware, but Brazilian is the greatest market for sporting bets in the whole world. And after during the the second runoff, he... Lula began a really popular fishing agenda. He even said himself, on the second run, I I I learned the the most important lesson of my life is that when the government doesn't know what to do, it asks the people and the people teach him.

14:22Mike Rugnetta You organize with the Socialism and Liberty Party,

14:25 which is a member of the coalition that won on Sunday. Yeah. And it is an offshoot of Lula's own workers party as of, like, twenty five years ago or so. So I'm just curious what your last three weeks have been like between round one voting and round two voting. Like, have you slept? How many steps have you walked? Have you walked a thousand miles? Like, what was that intervening time of organizing like?

14:52Caio Almendra I have twins. They are six years old. They

14:55 were born during the beginning of the pandemic, fourteen days before the quarantine in Brazil. Wow. So being a parent is always very tiresome to me. And during this three... Last three weeks, since I didn't have to to campaign when I was with my kids, being with my kids were like resting. Vacation time. Yeah. Vacation time.

15:17 I have I have to save my kid for eight hours and two six years old make me... Boys jumping on around and say, oh, this is so hassle. Rio De Janeiro is a is a really big city. People come to to Rio and Sao Paulo and and think, oh my god, this is huge. Rio De Janeiro has 12,000,000 people. And there is a reality of militias means that you have to campaign always with a lot of people because they can shoot you all. If you go alone, you can be, you know, tortured or spanked or simply intimidated to don't campaign there. So we have to organize things like caravans to places to to vote. We have huge demonstrations in Brazil, in huge area especially. Every single moment we don't have...

16:08 We didn't make these caravans to go to militia areas and try to to canvas there and so on. We would go to Centrao, that is the central station of the train in Rio. But also during the the second rounds, there was this huge phenomenon of becoming a bot, becoming a Internet bot. You had... Interesting.

16:30 There was this huge broadcast channel called Army of Lula. The guy have missions to do every day. So even when you have rest, when you are going to sleep, you take the cell phone and say, my god, I didn't miss... I didn't share this post. I didn't do this mission and so on. So everyone was really tired and also internet tired because we also had to obey Yeah. You can't not do it.

16:56Mike Rugnetta This is the... If I'm understanding correctly,

16:58 this is the... Is this the WhatsApp group with like a million members?

17:02Caio Almendra 11,000,000 members.

17:03Mike Rugnetta 11,000,000 members. I mean, that is like...

17:07 That is one of the questions I wanna ask is like, how does that even work? So there were missions.

17:12Caio Almendra Yeah. So so let's go.

17:14Mike Rugnetta Yeah. Let's go.

17:18Caio Almendra Andre Chiron is a is a really interesting figure

17:20 because he he started his life in... His political life in p t e m p t, in the workers party, in Lula's party. Then he left to a far right party because he's evangelical. Then he went to a centrist party called Forward and was going to be a presidential candidate. Lula found him and now and after that, he became Lula's first federine.

17:45 He's really good at the Internet and the public, but mainly what he does captured the sense of hopelessness, the fear and so on we were getting. So when the results of the first the first round appeared, we were lost. And suddenly, Janon said, we're gonna win this shit. We... You just have to do this this this this this.

18:08 Go on. Urgent. Blast off. And so he was shouting...

18:12Mike Rugnetta So like very like, you have things to do,

18:14Caio Almendra go do them. Go do them.... If you do, you will

18:16 win.

18:16Mike Rugnetta Very urgent. Yeah.

18:18Caio Almendra So yeah. He became a meme in himself because

18:21 every video he he posted it start with, folks, urgent. And and everyone ended with, bless it out. He was shouting and so on. He's a very energetic person. Yeah. In the beginning, this was small but he started one of the main task was we need to get to 1,000,000 people until Tuesday. We need to get to 2,000,000 people till Thursday.

18:44Mike Rugnetta And does that mean... Is that like we need to

18:46 we need to canvas, we have to talk to 2,000,000 people, or does that mean we need 2,000,000 people in this group?

18:51Caio Almendra In this group.

18:52Mike Rugnetta So he didn't start with a WhatsApp group that

18:54 was already 6,000,000 people.

18:56Caio Almendra Not millions. Probably hundreds of of

18:58 thousands of people. He Yeah. He did a Lulus campaign four years ago. He has a huge contact list. Yeah. But the the... One of the main task everyone has was hit the goals of growing the the WhatsApp group alone. And you can talk. You can't talk in that WhatsApp group. You only receive his message.

19:18Mike Rugnetta So it's a... It's broadcast only and then you go

19:21 somewhere else to have a person to person conversation.

19:24Caio Almendra Exactly. What So he did was this. Well, the first

19:26 task was making the the broadcast channel even huger. And then he has a few rules everyone should do, like don't engage with right wing discourse. It was called block on sight. Oh, they they are gonna talk about x y and z, block on sight. You knew people would just pre block hashtags that the far right would eventually try to to make it viral. He also had a lot of flood zone strategies, like everyone posting the same stuff.

19:59 For the last ten years, the far right in Brazil has been fomenting this environment of a small WhatsApp groups. It's a little bit like a more a more centralized Creoleon because a huge environment, but it has an organization behind that. And this is way more relevant to actually change people's minds than general honest channels. Why? Because this make redundancy in message. You touch the same point... Political talking points different channels with different videos and writings and so on.

20:38 It's one of the main discovery of digital marketing. You know, the the same thing we always complain, like, you search for a shoe shoe in in Google and then you open your Instagram and there's like...

20:50Mike Rugnetta Shows up advertising. Yeah.

20:52Caio Almendra Yeah. So we don't see it's really relevant to

20:54 convince people to change their minds about anything. What Giannis did was not try to convince people. Army of Lula broadcast channel was a way to hamper Internet communication. He would flood every single timeline with the same video.

21:12Mike Rugnetta So you just can't talk about anything else.

21:13Caio Almendra You can't talk about anything else Yeah. Except

21:15 what he's talking about. This wasn't relevant to change people's minds. This was a defensive tactic. What was really an offensive tactic from Lula's army was the daily text reconnected to to changing one vote. Talk to a older guy that you know that don't go to vote because he's too old. Now offer yourself to help him go to the polling station. Talk to one guy that you know is a liberal, economic liberal, a fish cowhawk, but is a little bit scared of Bolsonaro's authoritarian agenda. Talk to one person, do you know, that says that Lula is corrupt and and talk about this, a news piece about Yeah. Flavio Bolsonaro's corruption.

22:00Mike Rugnetta So, like, not only not only find this person

22:02 and talk to them, but, like, here's a little bit of, like, ammunition as it were or, like Yeah. You know, something to help you with how to talk to them and what point to make.

22:11Caio Almendra And it was a it was a one by one. Yeah. It was a

22:14 grassroots mobilization using this this broadcast channel. Everyone has to talk to one person. If 11,000,000 people talk to one person... That's pretty good. Yeah. 11,000,000 votes. Enough to change it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so there was this this multilayered tactics. Grow the group, flood the zone, do DM, grassrooting chemistry.

22:34Mike Rugnetta And so there's there's two things that you

22:36 mentioned that I wanna talk about a little bit more. The first is you sort of suggested it in your conversation, but we talked about it more explicitly before we started recording, which is fighting the sense of doomerism and people being like, there's no way we're gonna win. It's in the bag for the other guy. Like, it's over. It's not gonna happen.

22:58 What sorts of tactics do you develop to combat that attitude?

23:02Caio Almendra I'm a off... Oddball in the subject because

23:06 and are really hopeful message here always because we came from liberation theology Right? Yeah. Marxist Liberation Theology and being a labor union.

23:20Mike Rugnetta There's no there's no other future except

23:22 the future for the workers and it's just a matter of when we get there. Yeah.

23:25Caio Almendra Yeah. Exactly. And Liberation Theology is like

23:27 Christ told us to make this this world heaven. So we have to be hopeful that we can together make this whole. And then also, I'm a little bit of an audible because Benedict Espinosa, the philosopher, he said that fear and hope is the same thing. Because fear is the expectation that something future... In the future something bad will happen. Hope is expectation that in the future something good would happen. Mhmm. Since every expectation has inside it the opposite of the expectation, you know.

24:04 Are not sure something will happen. Every time you have fear, you have hope. Every time you have hope, you have fear. It's the same stuff. It's the same coin with two sides. And fear can be freezing. Right? You can be very paralyzing. Dumerism is fear paralyzing us. But hope is not a solution because every time we're hopeful, you don't necessarily act to to...

24:31 Sure.

24:32Mike Rugnetta It's another kind of paralyzing maybe.

24:34Caio Almendra Another kind of... Exactly. Yeah. Another

24:36 kind of paralyzing. But, you know, the same. However, they can be used and especially they can be used together. Everyone was so scared on Sunday, on on the first round on on October 5. I was in Plaza San Salvador. That's basically the comic corridor of of Eugenieur, polling places where 70% voted for Lula and so on. Everyone was doomed.

25:05 There was too many people there, so the the bill was warm. It sucked. We received the the worst news possible. And what ended up happening is that this fear was a little bit mobilizing because every news... New news about Flavio's agenda, and he was so cocky, so arrogant, he was so sure he was gonna win.

25:26 Yeah. Worked to convince people to do something. But most importantly, everything began with collective organization. Two days later, students in all Rio De Janeiro gathered like 100,000 people in the center of the street, and we had the hugest cycles of mobilizations of of street riots and rallies in the history of Brazil. Wow.

25:50 Greater than the rhythm characterization. Wow. And this all were multi channeled. It was Yeah. The armour of Rule, and everyone on on the rally was talking about the armour of Rule. Hey, did you do the... Your test today, your mission? Yeah. Do you know any any old person I I can help going to the polling station and so on? And this collective sentiment that we can win, and also the fear is like the same the same side of the coin through the sense of social and social strength and collectivization, it get a a snowball effect.

26:26 And I mean, finally, there is the mamification. It's really relevant to to Internet talk, but... Yeah. Oh, I have a boyfriend that that have two that have two friends that vote for Bolsonaro. We are gonna have a barbecue on Saturday on a city closer here, and then I'm gonna slash the tires so that we can get back.

26:48 I'm one vote, they are three. I'm winning. And this became such a huge meme. People talking about weird things to do to to to tip the scales and so on. And also the the whole bring your grandma to to the polling station was a huge more movement. And this end up making Lula wins in place that we wouldn't dare to to believe this this would happen. Yeah.

27:13Mike Rugnetta So I mean, it sounds like the answer is like

27:16 you fight this sort of... It sounds like it doesn't make sense, but it sounds like you fight the sort of pair... Paralyzing force of doomerism by just doing stuff. Kind of no matter how small the stuff is as maybe indicated by... You're gonna tell me if I'm gonna say it wrong. Jainonism? Jainonism. Yeah. Jainonism. Like, write like small tasks, manageable tasks, little things, a couple things a day that it's like that is sort of what gets you out of this sense of like, well, we're cooked, we're done, there's nothing we can do.

27:49 If you just go do stuff, you're you're doing it. You are doing it.

27:53Caio Almendra And collectively doing

27:54Mike Rugnetta it. And collectively doing Yeah.

27:56Caio Almendra I think if if if Genomics channel doesn't have...

27:59 Didn't have millions of people, people would proportionally do less stuff. The fact that it has 11,000,000 people make everyone thinks, yeah, I just have to do one and so we we won. So you need the

28:11Mike Rugnetta 11,000,000

28:11Caio Almendra people to one.... To to be convinced to to be...

28:16 To do one.

28:17Mike Rugnetta To to what degree do you think the success, the

28:20 overall success of the election can be attributed to that WhatsApp chat?

28:27Caio Almendra Alright. I don't wanna don't wanna fall in a

28:33 great man of history, Terry Reese. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

28:36Mike Rugnetta That's why... I mean, that's kinda why I'm

28:38 asking because I don't I don't I don't want to either.

28:40Caio Almendra There's this lady called Erica Hilton. She's a

28:44 trans congresswoman from Sao Paulo. She had a similar channel. 2,000,000 people. Yeah. If there was no Gianonius, she probably would have 11,000,000 people.

28:53Mike Rugnetta Sure. Right.

28:54Caio Almendra There was this huge social pressure. There was

28:58 no formal and old old style organization, classic organization. BT lost its historical block. Neoliberalism was destroying their organization. Yeah. A little bit like what happened to to the democrats during the seventies and the eighties. Like, they used to organize FDR made... Created a huge organization for us. The civil rights movement was a huge organization for us. After the seventy eighties and nineties, this this mobilization capability was lost.

29:27 The idea is that mass politics was lost. Yeah. So there was no channel, but there was still pressure. It's a little bit like tension from any physics stuff. Like, there's a lot of of water in the sky. There's no way to to get it down, then it just floods something. So Jamal Nguyen was relevant because he's smart in how to do it, but he's not the only smart person doing this.

29:56 Like, I mean, Erica Hutton is a trans socialist woman in Sao Paulo and she like she won 3,000,000 votes.

30:01Mike Rugnetta I was gonna... And it's also like, right, the

30:03 most voted woman in Brazilian politics history and like Yeah. Has millions of followers herself online and massively popular.

30:11Caio Almendra Massively popular. Gianluo Nos, for

30:13 instance, he had 78,000 votes. He has less than one... He has about 2%, 3% of her vote. Less than 3% of her of her vote.

30:23Mike Rugnetta So I mean, it it it sounds like what you're

30:25 saying is that, like, there's... It's like people were looking for somewhere. People wanted to be told what to do in a certain in a certain way. They were looking for a place together and it just so happened circumstances colluded and his chat ended up being the place where that happened.

30:42Caio Almendra Exactly.

30:43Mike Rugnetta Yeah.

30:43Caio Almendra I mean, when you're totally lost, there is

30:47 this this one small part of the discussion that we are not talking about. He uses a little bit of military jargon. Right?

30:55Mike Rugnetta Interesting.

30:56Caio Almendra Do it, missions and... The army. Yeah. The army

31:00 and When so you're lost, someone has an idea, someone who is giving orders, you just have to do it and you you can't overthink anything works.

31:12Mike Rugnetta Put aside a bunch of your personal opinions and

31:15 your preferences or whatever. This is something bigger than you. Yeah. The one... The last thing that I wanted to follow-up on that I... That I'm really curious about, that I think Americans in particular could learn a lot from and try to practice themselves is the practice of block on-site. And I'm really curious about how it is that worked. How does that message get delivered? And then how does it spread? Because I think especially at...

31:45 Especially now and especially in the age of, like, social media and ubiquitous metrics and ever present measurement of every kind of piece of communication that you do, it's like you are rewarded. User... People who are using social media are rewarded at every turn for the dunk, for the the forwarding of a talking point that they do not believe in in order to make fun of it or in order to argue against it. And I feel like for a lot of people, it would be so hard to internalize the sense of I'm gonna block and I'm gonna just advertise my point of view, and I'm not gonna respond or add to the notoriety of a counter point of view. So I'm just curious how how did that work?

32:34 How did that go?

32:34Caio Almendra I have a huge following on Twitter. Have a

32:37 huge following on Blue Sky. Probably YouTube, Mike. But it was just hammered down through John On his channel. Just simply every single post is talking with block on-site, don't engage. Block on-site, don't engage. Block on-site. They're gonna talk about that. This is bullshit. We have to talk about it.

32:53 More people will learn about it. Block on-site, don't engage. He even does stuff like... I think he has a a few spies inside Flavio Bolsonaro's campaign. Probably technical people that are lullaboulders that talk to him. Like, I don't know, social media manager blah blah blah.

33:10Mike Rugnetta Yeah.

33:10Caio Almendra Yeah. So he knew a little bit of the tactics they

33:13 were going to use. So he preemptively said, they're gonna talk about it, block on-site. Yeah. The main point was every single post about what to do has block on-site, don't engage on the top. Every single one.

33:29Mike Rugnetta Every single one.... It's like a mantra.

33:30Caio Almendra It's just... It's like a mantra.

33:32Mike Rugnetta Over and over and over again. Yeah.

33:34Caio Almendra So it's like repetition. And, you know, there

33:36 was also a sense of collective collective work because if you didn't block on sites and if you didn't engage and you were left in person, people would spam you. Sure. The meme saying block on sites.

33:51Mike Rugnetta So there were so there were consequences too.

33:53 There were social pressure. Yeah.

33:54Caio Almendra Yeah. There were there was a huge meme that

33:58 was... Look like disappointed to you saying Uh-huh. Why are you engaging in?

34:09Mike Rugnetta You find that attitude impacting your in

34:12 person organizing or canvassing in any way?

34:17Caio Almendra The problem with fascism, with this neo techno

34:21 turbofasions that we live... Every single country has nowadays, It's capable of being in sad and negative effect. This is a true source of our disengagement. Yeah. It's having to deal with the most hateful. And they're all sad and sometimes dumbness is also a sadness effect. Like, you read stuff like, I don't wanna I don't wanna... I I can't even try to fathom how to change this guy idea. This is so stupid. And then you'd...

34:53 Oh, probably this cost is over.

34:55Mike Rugnetta Yeah.

34:55Caio Almendra And when you you start the blocking side thing,

34:58 suddenly your timeline feels so much better. You you get over the stability, you get over the hate, And soon you start like, okay, this is a place I can talk to people again. Yeah. Just a little bit why Blue Sky still captivates a lot of liberals even in The US because it's an anti far right social network, especially because the blocking feature is very strong there.

35:29 However, it's really a problem when blue sky gets a little bit echo chamber when people don't realize the whole picture of the society. So you have to find the good luck spots where you either can... You can talk to different people, but you are not inundated by people that makes you don't want to talk to nobody because that's what neofascism do in the Internet.

35:55Mike Rugnetta Sure. You have to be able to engage so that you

35:58 can operate but not lose hope.

36:00Caio Almendra Yeah. None of this would work on the Internet

36:03 if there was no mobilization in the streets. Right? No one would stay so so much hours on the Internet doing so many tasks and so on. We didn't gather in the streets and had real talk to people to... And and this sense of commonality that we are fighting for something more. I brought my kids to the rallies on the beach every Sunday and my friend's kids were there and so on. We were fighting for the kids. Were fighting for our future. We were fighting for other peoples and so on.

36:36 But also the sense that they were fighting for me too. The Internet is always a little bit of a Diet Coke of sociability. You drink it, you get stuff, but you don't get any nutrition... Real nutrition. Right?

36:50Mike Rugnetta Sure.

36:50Caio Almendra That's the whole problem. You you are more and

36:53 more and closer, you are more and more alone. And then you talk to people online, people think you're like, oh, I have friends. Yeah. We have podcasts. We know how parasocial means people can get crazy about it. The idea that anyone that says anything hope... Hopeful was the leader, the shining guys and so on. But afterwards, this shifted from the parasocial to the social. People met people on the street.

37:22 People made friendships. People would leave the rallies and would drink a beer with their friends. If people they met, they're alone and so on. So this was the the real solution. It was redundant. It was not only redundant on Giannis. It was redundant through different actions everyone was was taken every day. Yeah. One of the

37:42Mike Rugnetta things that I've one of the things that I've seen

37:43 people talk about is the idea of using WhatsApp, right, which is a meta product, as a way to kind of defeat what it seems like, you know, Meta and Facebook and WhatsApp want you to do, which is to just stay on the platform. And that really is like the beauty of... It sounds like how these tools were used that is used to gather a bunch of people to sort of organize them, give them direction, you know, give them... Put a force behind them that ultimately says to them, close the app and then go and do something, you know, with people outside.

38:20Caio Almendra Yeah. And this is the the weird part of of

38:24 Brazilian politics. I... We don't talk a lot about this this part of the stuff, but Lula would never touch meta. He was... Wasn't going to regulate meta. But meta was so so so messy this this second runoff. They try to to to destroy the channel a lot of times. There's this weird stuff about Nicolas Ferreira, it's a far right congressperson. He had a a video with a lie saying Luma was going to tax PIX.

38:55 That's the public automatic payment system in Brazil. It's a really important thing in Brazil because it's first in this... In in the world. In fact, India has also one. But it means that you can't sanction people in Brazil. In fact, you can take their credit card and Visa and doesn't mean they can't pay stuff, they can't use the bank and so on.

39:18 But it's also very popular because you don't have to have cash. It can be, you know, the the guy that sells candy on the streets, the guy that sells cookies on the on the beach. They accept pigs. Since that... Nicolas Perjera said Lula was going to tax pigs in Brazil. And that video had more views than people that speaks Portuguese in the whole world.

39:46Mike Rugnetta And... Wow.

39:49Caio Almendra And, you know, not everyone understand

39:52 Brazilian Portuguese. Brazil to to Portugal is already difficult, but Brazil to Cabo Viejo, Brazil to Angola, and especially Brazil to Macau, to to people of the Asian or to Morejalejti, to the the Asian parts of the the the world that speak Portuguese. They... We don't quite understand each other. So it was a really weird phenomenon.

40:13 Yeah. And Meta would do the opposite with Vula. And the reason is is quite simple. In fact, it was not exactly about hating Vula or fearing Vula. It was more about loving Flavio Bolsonaro. He said that he would probably end picks. He was against Christian de Jumanas. It was a guy that banned x for two weeks.

40:38 And after Brazil banned x for two weeks because x was refusing to to apply with a judicial order. Brazil suddenly entered the world stage as the country that could regulate social media. The United States would never. The European Commission was famously one of the the ways, it has been losing power and the Trying, far

41:06Mike Rugnetta but... Yeah.

41:07Caio Almendra But it's losing power. It is Yeah. Also shifting

41:10 towards big tech. And there are other countries that are outside the Silicon Valley, like China and Russia that have their own ecosystems and so on. Brazil was the was the the new beacon after that decision. And Roland and Alesha de Morais are somewhat alive. Because Alesha de Morais prosecuted Jahi Bolsonaro and so on. So this made Mana be extremely evil, extremely messy in the in the second round. And it have a a really weird effect. This is just the same thing that he said, go to the platform to try the platform.

41:47 Because the result was Alula saying, I think we have to regulate social media. He would never do this. It's a little bit like a a a Greek tragedy. And this is a little bit like the same thing that happens individually because we would never leave WhatsApp. Yeah. Brazil... WhatsApp is Brazil number one number one app. So they have like five... Million users in Brazil. I think like one fourth of the the country use WhatsApp.

42:21 We don't phone people. We use WhatsApp phone calls because phones are... We we use so much robot calls every day that... And you can't robot call via via via WhatsApp. So we only use WhatsApp. Yeah. But meanwhile, this process make people think, yeah. You know what? Meta

42:41Mike Rugnetta should leave the company. Why?

42:43Caio Almendra How can't it be to do it? My my my worker asked

42:46 me... My my employer asked me things through the WhatsApp. How can I Yeah? How can I I leave it? But if everyone leaves, if it's banned from Brazil, oh, now I can't leave WhatsApp. Especially... And and even the the funny stuff, like, people say there is another meme, but another popular meme that after the the Giannis ruler's army, everyone is so tired of what's happening because they had to stay stay so many times. Yeah. For a

43:18Mike Rugnetta for a country that uses it constantly, you've

43:20 now used it constantly. Exactly.

43:24Caio Almendra So people are so tired, they say, oh my god. I

43:27 can't wait for Lula to ban one second ahead. And I can't leave Lula's army. That's kind of funny. Broadcast jam.

43:35Mike Rugnetta Kyle, this has been great. Thank you so much

43:38 for joining us and for chatting with us about your experience, about the last three weeks. And beyond that, congrats to you and to everyone else. It sounds like it was an incredible amount of work, but, know, it happened.

43:51Caio Almendra Oh, I had a blast. And and also, Brazil can

43:54 be the first domino to a series of defeats of the far right. And this will only happen with sharers hours experience. So I'm really glad I can talk to you all. And I hope you learned from Giannis, Rula's army. But also, I hope we can learn from you too so we can do a lot of of exchange programs and learning programs. So again, far bright and so on. We should do the same.

44:22Mike Rugnetta Yeah. To that end, if folks wanna follow your

44:26 work either personally or, you know, the organizing work that's done by the party? Where can they go look online?

44:32Caio Almendra I'm at blue sky, c a I o a l m e n d r a, Caio

44:39 Member. I'm also at Twitter, Caio Member. Don't follow me on Instagram. It's a personal, only my kids photos and so on, please. I'm also at Vira Kazaka's podcast. And if you wanna see my my only content in English nowadays, my regular content in English, is Superstructure with Julian Fields. I'm finishing in the script about the history of Lula. Alright. From his birth in really region... Poor region people who work a part of the country in Penobuco until his election last Sunday.

45:13 So if people will enjoy the the... This episode, I think they will love this this... I don't know how you call it biopic, and it's not a pic, biopod. Yeah. Biopod. Sure. Biopod. It's probably on November that they they will launch it.

45:27Mike Rugnetta Okay. Great. We'll we'll put a link to the

45:29 show in the show notes and then once it's out, we'll share it with everybody.

45:32Caio Almendra Okay. Thank you so much.

45:33Mike Rugnetta Thank you so much, Kyle.

45:35Caio Almendra I had a blast. Thank you so much.

45:41Mike Rugnetta That is the news that we have for you this month.

45:44 We're gonna be back here in the main feed next week on or around Thursday, November 5. Did you know that we released a Wygo last week. Mike, you are maybe asking, what is that word that you just said? I don't know what that means. I will tell you. Wygo, w I g o. What is going on here? A members only segment in which each member of the staff brings something to the group about which they are positively flummoxed. We share it.

46:20 We ask what is going on here, and then we all find out together if you would like to join in on that fun, on this fun, on the most recent why go fun during which I nearly completely incapacitate Hans and Georgia with a horrible sound, during which Hans and I wonder if perhaps we know the subject of a very catchy love song, during which Jason asks me how to make beats. You can go ahead and become a member at neverpoe.st for $4 a month, and you too will know the beat secrets. And you too can hear this horrible sound. If you want to, you can skip that part very easily, or you can use it to make beats. I'm not the boss of you.

47:04 Neverpo.st. Access to the Wego, $4 a month. It's a lark. Never Post's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the mysterious, doctor first name, last name. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer. The show's host, that's me, is Mike Rugnetta. It is a day. Excerpt of nine eight by Marc Ducharme. Never Post is a production of Charts and Leisure, and, hey, it's distributed by Radiotopia.