YouTubers Will Enter Politics, And If They Do, They're Probably Going To Win (buzzfeednews.com)

A group of twentysomethings leveraged their huge YouTube audiences and actually won seats in Brazil's federal and state elections. What happens next is anyone's guess. Ryan Broderick, writing for BuzzFeed News: Kim Kataguiri is known in Brazil for a lot of things. He's been called a fascist. He's been called a fake news kingpin. Is he a YouTuber? He definitely uses YouTube. He's definitely a troll. A troll with a consistent message, though, he points out. Maybe he's Brazil's equivalent of Milo Yiannopoulos. His organization, Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL) -- the Free Brazil Movement -- is like the Brazilian Breitbart. Or maybe it's like the American tea party. Maybe it's both. Is it a news network? Kataguiri says it isn't. But it's not a political party, either. He says MBL is just a bunch of young people who love free market economics and memes. One thing is very clear: His YouTube channel, the memes, the fake news, and MBL's army of supporters have helped Kataguiri, 22, become the youngest person ever elected to Congress in Brazil. He's also trying to become Brazil's equivalent of speaker of the House.

[...] Kataguiri's political awakening is a textbook example of the way algorithms beget more algorithms. During his last year of high school, his teacher started a debate about welfare programs in Brazil. So Kataguiri started googling. He discovered Ron Paul and the Brazilian libertarian YouTuber Daniel Fraga. "Then I did a video to my teacher and my friends at school to talk about what I had found out," Kataguiri says. "There was one problem: I posted this video on YouTube. So it was public and it went viral." He says people kept asking for more videos, but he didn't know anything. So he went back to googling, and then made more videos about what he learned.

Comments

Re:Maybe in Brazil

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the purposeful deterrent of non-white people in the South. Like the 53,000 voters barred from voting in Georgia, almost all of them black. This happens so often it's not funny.

Re:Trolls get old fast.

[110010001000]

I never understood what people mean by "troll". What is a "troll" exactly? Is Alex Jones a "troll"? Is Breitbart a "troll"? They may be misinformed, or incorrect, or just out to grab money, but that isn't trolling.

Wrong question asked

[sinij]

The question should be is this is the end of leftism and identity politics no longer hold absolute power? I hope so.

Georgia is purging them from the rolls

[rsilvergun]

left and right while moving polling away from campuses. This isn't propaganda, it's fact. You know what HuffPo is and you know their anacronym so you're pretty politically aware. That means you don't get to plead ignorance. Listing facts isn't going to change your mind. You're complicit with voter suppression, having decided that some people shouldn't be allowed to vote because they disagree with you.

What I hate about folks like you is you won't just come out and say "I don't like Democracy". You hide behind talking points to fool people. You need to be called out more often. Democracy is good, but only when _everyone_ votes. Otherwise it turns into oligarchy. Maybe that's good for you, but not most of us.

Re:Depends on how you ask the question

[Anonymous Coward]

Maxine Waters telling people to not serve, yell at, attack and tell them they are not welcome for... voting for Trump.

Its the DNC that acts irresponsibly, not wedding bakers. Its is YOU that support actions like this. You will note I did not list a radio person, a TV commentator, but I listed one of the TOP DNC members of Congress acting this way. The DNC is the party of hate, the party that runs on abusing government power to abuse people, and the party against the middle class.

We don't want to hear your ideas on civility, we have them in Waters' statements.

We go out of our way

[rsilvergun]

to prevent informed people from voting. This is why older folks are such a valuable demographic.

I've told this story before. Where I am the local power company wanted to end the practice of paying solar power users for their extra power. Only thing is, that was very, very popular. Their law didn't have a chance of passing.

Well pass it did. How you ask? They ran these ads see. There were a bunch of older folks sitting around a table talking about something. Something scary. At no time during the advert did anyone say what it was. At the end was an impassioned plea to vote yes and proposition such-and-such. It passed with room to spare, and the power companies no longer had to pay for the free solar.

Those are your "informed" voter. Meanwhile you need only spend a bit of time on google to see how bad voter suppression is in this country.

It's harder for the left because we _don't_ have propaganda. We've got no Rush Limbaugh. No Fox News. No CNN pretending to be middle of the road and then pushing trickle down economics on the sly. We've got no Sinclair media buying out all the stations.

Again, I don't think I can reach you. You've got the talking points from your right wing think tanks too down pat. You were ready to go with a rebuttal because they've given you all the answers. It's tough for me to compete with a multi-billion dollar right wing propaganda machine. And again, maybe I'll get to a few you're trying to mislead. Maybe even some day you'll follow that google search above and figure out Rush is lying to you. Or maybe the American empire will just carry on it's slow, Romanesque decline...

One things for sure: I definitely pushed your buttons. Somewhere in the back of your mind you know something wrong with that propaganda you've been spoon fed. I guess I'll chalk that up as a win.

In case anyone wonders why this AC seems so odd

[rsilvergun]

It's an old Soviet Era attack. Take your own party's faults (in this case a reliance on violence and oppression) and accuse the other party of them. Karl Rove of the GOP perfected it and used it to win election after election. The most famous example was when he got a draft dodger elected over a vet who was missing his legs.

You can't win against it. It's a play on emotions. Best thing to do is just call it out when you see it so folks will learn to recognize it.