10 ms·
Brazilian here. After the horrible very bad choices we made on last election here, thanks to WhatsApp, I fear that "digital democracy" looks each day more like
by diego_moita 8y ago
Brazilian here.
After the horrible very bad choices we made on last election here, thanks to WhatsApp, I fear that "digital democracy" looks each day more like mob rule fed by paranoia.
- chadAnon69 8y agoThe big thing nobody talks about with Bolsonaro though is the geopolitical implications with China. US and Brazil could starve China into compliance as they produce around 80% of the worlds soy and corn. Nobody is talking about that aspect,the fact that brazil has non-socialist anti-China leader for the first time in decades, although Trump must be aware because he sent Bolton down to Brazil and invited Bolsonaro to the white house It applies beyond China as well. They could just become OPEC for food and both countries would benefit from being able to jack up prices on crops and livestock.
- omegaworks 8y ago>US and Brazil could starve China into compliance Into compliance with what, exactly?
- baybal2 8y agoTrade blockade, and food in particular. Russian farmers will be happy, once in a blue moon.
- gdy 8y agoThey are not too unhappy even now. https://agfax.com/2018/10/12/global-markets-wheat-robust-russian-exports-in-spite-of-smaller-crop/ https://agfax.com/2018/10/12/global-markets-wheat-robust-rus...
- gdy 8y agoAmerican interests
- omegaworks 8y agoAnd those are?
- gdy 8y agoMoney, keeping China out Here's a snippet about Africa, I'm sure South America is much more important for the US. “We will make certain that ALL aid to the region - whether for security, humanitarian, or development needs - advances U.S. interests,” he said, adding that Washington will also re-evaluate its support for U.N. peacekeeping missions. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-africa/u-s-to-counter-china-russia-influence-in-africa-bolton-idUSKBN1OC1XV https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-africa/u-s-to-c...
- chadAnon69 8y agotrade, IP, muslim concentration camps, illegal island creation in south China sea, the list goes on. Xi's power grab is only accepted because life is pretty good right now in China. He won't be able to maintain power over a billion hungry, angry chinese
- zapita 8y agoI have a feeling that Muslim concentration camps is not on top of the list of issues that Trump or Bolsonaro are worried about...
- chadAnon69 8y agorealpolitik, anything Trump can use to turn the international community against China will be used
- Apocryphon 8y agoMaybe if MBS starts to care about Uyghurs?
- unmole 8y agoMBS doesn't care about Arabs in Yemen. Why would he start caring about Uyghurs half a continenet away?
- Apocryphon 8y agoSome of them form Salafist militias in Syria.
- ocschwar 8y agoImagine a timeline where both Brazil and the USA had human beings as presidents. That would probably get the Uyghurs rescued
- pvaldes 8y agoChina is fishing in all the planet and can exert a lot of influence over many countries in Africa. Chinese investors had spent more than $23 billion in Brazil in the last three years investing in energy and entering in the development of infrastructures. Would not be a wise move for the brazilian government.
- chadAnon69 8y agoBolsonaro's big quote is that "China isn't investing in Brazil, it's buying brazil". If Trump offers Bolsonaro a good trade deal I wouldn't be surprised to see him take it to get away from China's influence
- oh-kumudo 8y agoWell, Brazil had to sell those soybeans somewhere. Their economy is half bankrupt already anyway. If not China, where are going to send all the natural resources to, with its current price? Presumably not US, who is also desperate trying to sell its own gases/agricultural products to the world. They are competitors, not friends. In worst case, China can just reduce the consumption of livestock, after all that is what soybeans had been used for, while finding replacements somewhere else. As long as they have enough rice, China will be fine.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cududa 8y agoIt’s always astonishing to me how many Americans support “direct democracy” as opposed to representative. Mob rule plays out time and time again without representative democracy
- gowld 8y agoWe're tired of representatives abusing their power.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoSure, because that's the problem we have. We forget that the problem we don't have may be worse.
- pvg 8y agoWhat gives you the impression a significant number of Americans support direct democracy?
- redthrowaway 8y agoThe fact that California is nearly ungovernable due to it?
- pvg 8y agoWhether that's a fact or not, it doesn't seem to have much to do with whether lots of Americans support direct democracy. The California process itself is well over a century old.
- mars4rp 8y agocan you elaborate, please?
- dragonwriter 8y agoCalifornia is perfectly governable. There used to be a perennial budgeting problem due to a supermajority requirement which, like all of the CA Constitution, was directly adopted, but that was solved by the people withdrawing the requirement.
- spuz 8y agoIt is interesting that WhatsApp is credited with so much of the fake news and disinformation in the recent Brazilian election as opposed to Twitter. Do you have an idea of why this is? I read this article [1] which mentions that while most Brazilians have mobile phones, their data plans only include free access to Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp and ordinary data is expensive (i.e. no net neutrality). That means that information is spread more often through these apps rather than by people reading news websites. However, WhatsApp seems a very inefficient method to spread propaganda. You have to share each message either with an individual or a group and there is no "news feed" curated by some algorithm to target your interests specifically. Also, given that Twitter is also free for most Brazilians, I would expect that to be a more effective method to find and spread propaganda. One explanation given by the article is that "Since WhatsApp text messages are forwarded and reforwarded by friends and family, the information seems more credible." This makes sense but it doesn't explain why this phenomenon would happen more in Brazil than in the US. [1] https://theconversation.com/whatsapp-skewed-brazilian-election-proving-social-medias-danger-to-democracy-106476 https://theconversation.com/whatsapp-skewed-brazilian-electi...
- lbebber 8y agoSimply pretty much everyone here uses WhatsApp, including people who have no other contact with the internet.
- hervature 8y agoI think you are forgetting about six degrees of separation. It doesn’t take many shares/forwards to reach every one. As for the news feed part, I think people would more readily believe something their friend/family sent in the group chat as opposed to on a news feed. But that second point is just my opinion.
- lozaning 8y agoFriends and family sharing things that pertain to a field I know they're knowledgeable in sure. However I've got plenty of family (thankfully not too many friends) that are happy to amplify the signal of things that they're not qualified to speak to. Aunt Anti-vaxx if anything gets more scepticism about anything she tries to tell me.
- rayiner 8y agoI'm pretty sure WhatsApp didn't cast any votes.
- kodablah 8y ago> After the horrible very bad choices we made on last election here, thanks to WhatsApp For those of us unfamiliar, can you share info on what WhatsApp did? Also curious how results are attributed to it. In the US many found big-web tech as a convenient scapegoat but evidence of its overarching effect is tenuous.
- starbeast 8y agoIt is a public bus with a steering wheel fitted to the back of every seat, that is sold as an improvement to the terrible oppression of having bus drivers. edit, to be fair, I should have clarified this with 'the majority of implementations appear to be', I am not philosophically against direct democracy in principle, just most of the ways it is generally attempted.
- quotemstr 8y agoBecause of WhatsApp? That's like blaming the telephone or the printing press. WhatsApp is just a communication channel. If your democracy depends on people being unable to communicate, it's no democracy at all.
- souprock 8y agoI don't recall any "horrible very bad choices". The country voted against corruption, against being like Venezuela, against being bought by China, against letting criminals have defenseless prey, and against being pointlessly hostile to the USA. IMHO, things are really looking up for Brazil.
- madrix999 8y agoYou've got to be joking... He's a genocidal, homophobic, racist piece of shit, borderline dictator. Read this: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jair_Bolsonaro https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jair_Bolsonaro, if you agree with anything on there, you really have to rethink your entire life
- Pmop 8y agoI wonder how one can be genocidal without having killed anyone, homophobic without having persecuted LGBT, racist without having defended racial thesis. Has Bolsonaro said ugly reprehensible things ? Yes he did. But that is his opinion at best. Bringing these empty accusations wont prove your point neither add to the discussion.
- AlexandrB 8y ago> Yes he did. But that is his opinion at best. What does this mean? We're not talking about a random Youtuber here. He's the leader of the country. Presumably his opinion will influence his policy decisions (in fact he's promised as much)[1]. When somebody tells you they're going to kill you and they're holding a gun - it's wise to believe them even if they've never murdered before. [1] https://globalnews.ca/news/4606489/jair-bolsonaro-beliefs-brazil-military/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4606489/jair-bolsonaro-beliefs-br...
- _Tev 8y agoHave you read his quotes? This guy really does not shy from calling for blood. That's pure Nazi shit. "empty accusations" is quite dishonest as he literally calls for death of _thousands_ of his fellow citizens.