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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.

18 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. No, they really won't. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isolated cases where You Tube may or may not have influenced elections does not mean that You Tubers in general have all that much power. I really doubt many people will vote XYZ just because someone on You Tube told them to.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    1. Re:No, they really won't. by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Isolated cases where You Tube may or may not have influenced elections does not mean that You Tubers in general have all that much power. I really doubt many people will vote XYZ just because someone on You Tube told them to.

      And why should we care if someone on YouTube "influences" an election anyway?

      We're supposed to "influence" each other politically by communicating ... that's literally how its supposed to work.

      Sure beats influencing each other via violence, firing people for their political opinions, and other popular methods of the day.

  2. well by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now you know that if the politics were of a different slant, this would be celebrated.

    1. Re:well by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Informative

      He's suggesting that we'd be less horrified if he were a liberal rather than something resembling a fascist, which I can't argue with. Far-right ideologies have proven to be harmful every time they've been tried, so we should be horrified by them.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  3. stand up and salute by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Funny

    I, for one, welcome our new Pewtie Pie overlords.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  4. Re:Trolls get old fast. by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The problem is that for every sane Youtuber with a halfway decent following, you have an army of idiots that BLOW YOUR MIND, can count to 10 and show you a million things to do to your hair (with a link to buy the crap in the description, either as a promo-link to Amazon and the like or they run their own crap already and bypass the middleman when it comes to swindling teenies out of money).

    Not to mention the criminally insane, from apricot-core eaters to flat earthers to the politically-religious, ranging all the way from the kill-the-fags right wing nutjob to the kill-the-cis-males left wing nutjobs.

    My only hope is that they are SO many and fracturing their user base SO widely (because they themselves can't get along) that they splinter it up into so many insignificant groups that they in total don't matter.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Re:Maybe in Brazil by nwaack · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh please. They ARE allowed to vote. They filled out the registration form wrong and need to correct it within a certain period of time. That is all.

    Given how easily you're fooled by HuffPo-like propaganda, you should probably just stay home instead of voting.

  6. Republicans BANNED By YouTube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, when any politician or person running for office is banned by youtube, the company can be charged with Election Tampering ?

  7. Re:Maybe in Brazil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Voting is mandatory in Brazil.

  8. Re:Why is voting optional? by burtosis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How about we start with a mandatory by law 2 hours off work paid on voting days when part or all of your shift intersects voting hours? We can follow up with making a reasonable number of polling places within reasonable reach of the local population accessible by public transit and prohibiting gerrymandering by appointing independent governing boards and straightforward districting. Even the requirement for an identical name on all government records is BS; is a clerical error on one of the 318 government documents on me get me out of paying taxes? Right now a large portion of voters are disenfranchised or about to be disenfranchised due to one of those reasons.

  9. Re:Wrong question asked by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you don't like identity politics, you REALLY won't like the modern right with their constant appeals to the straight white male persecution complex/privilege loss anxiety.

    And I think this is less likely the end of leftism than it is the violent, desperate death throes of the right as a mainstream political force. Leftism hasn't become any less common or made any sudden moves in the last few years. It's the right that has taken off its gloves and mask, taking the complacent left by surprise, even as it has become less common. Leftism appears to be losing right now because it's still marching in formation against an enemy that's suddenly started using ISIS-level guerilla tactics.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  10. No proof, no reality by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As for removing polls from campus, google.

    Not one of the search results says anteing like polling places are *moved* off campus, and ignores that most colleges across the U.S. HOST polling places for the reasons I specified. Hell, one of the links talks about free buses from one campus to a polling place... making it easier for students to vote, not harder.

    I said this elsewhere in this thread but, well, nothing I say is going to convince you.

    You are going to have to try reality based arguments instead of describing things you imagine are true but are not.

    The best we can hope for is that you're in the minority and that as more folks become aware of Voter Suppression it will be ended.

    Don't worry, all of the folks pushed away by imaginary voter suppression are made up for by imaginary dead and illegal votes.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  11. Re:Trolls get old fast. by e3m4n · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I used to think this. Recently, the way the Democratic party is running, I feel we are now in an era of Minority rule. Take any hot topic item, whether its abortion, gay marriage, forcing a baker to make a gay wedding cake, etc. Lets take the gay wedding cake one.. Now look at the demographics of the democratic party. While the LBGTQ(insert-more-letters-here) group is solidly democrats, so are the black southern baptist and blue dog democrats. Latinos are typically very devout catholics. These groups have a very different set of ideals when it comes to certain social issues. Now if this was a national vote where it was not party driven, you would probably see only 15% come out and say "Yes, a baker should be FORCED to make any cake he or she disagrees with, regardless of religious belief". But because this 'coalition' exists to force all its members to tow the party line, this 20% suddenly jumps to 47% of the population, and members are being represented against their beliefs. As if there was some shortage of gay bakers to make a cake. This is why we are now a country of minority rule. We keep making exception after exception for every minority group instead of demanding people be treated exactly the same. Same means Same, not "All Animals are created equal; some are more equal than others".

    The same thing happens in the Republican party, but its not quite as fractured as the Democratic party. There is a large number of people that vote republican that identify as libertarian, so they don't agree on social issues nearly as much as they do on fiscal and economic ones.

  12. Re:Georgia is purging them from the rolls by nwaack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Georgia is purging them from the rolls left and right while moving polling away from campuses. This isn't propaganda, it's fact

    No, it's propaganda. The people who filled out the registration form incorrectly have 26 MONTHS to fix it, and they can vote in this upcoming election. Your "facts" are disingenuous at best and are therefore propaganda. Also, I never said anything about moving polls. I didn't comment on that so why are you bringing it up?

    That means you don't get to plead ignorance.

    I'm not.

    having decided that some people shouldn't be allowed to vote because they disagree with you.

    When the hell did I say any of this? You sure are good at putting words into people's mouths.

    What I hate about folks like you is you.

    Folks like me? You mean, folks who can read between the lines and critically think? Folks who aren't sheep?

    you won't just come out and say "I don't like Democracy"

    Because I DO like democracy.

    You hide behind talking points to fool people.

    What talking points are those? I simply called you out on your totally incorrect statement about the 53,000 people not being allowed to vote.

    Democracy is good, but only when _everyone_ votes.

    False. Democracy is good when INFORMED people vote. Not sheep who just look look for the little "R" or "D" behind the name. Sorry I triggered you by pointing out your B.S. statement. Get out of your echo chamber a little more often and maybe you'll toughen up a bit. And please, for the sake of all of us, get informed before voting.

  13. Re:Georgia is purging them from the rolls by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As far as the 'rich' not paying their 'fair share', the top10% of Americans in income pay two-thirds of Federal income taxes while the bottom 50% pays ~3%..

    I hate this argument because of the wealth distribution in the US. Granted this is just one of the first easy to read sources I found but you'll notice that the top 10% hold 75% of the wealth while the bottom 50% hold 1.1% (according to this chart). Given that, one could argue that the bottom 50% pay too much and the top 10% pay too little.

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/

  14. Depends on how you ask the question by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ask "Should the Baker be FORCED" then you'll get a lot of 'No's'.

    ask "Should the Baker be allowed to refuse service" and you'll get a lot of 'No's'

    The end result is the same. LGBTQs are denied access to a public resource (in this case a publicly available bake shop).

    Me? I just replace the word "LGBTQ" with "White Male Christian" and if I would say "that shouldn't be allowed" then there's my answer. Once you can use religion to discriminate you can do damn near anything. It'll start with baking cakes and end with riots and apartheid.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  15. YouTuber President... by fbobraga · · Score: 3, Informative

    Kim Kataguri and MBL are just a small part of the problem, here in Brazil: the likely new president, Jair Bolsonaro, is "an YouTuber": he just spread videos from his social networks, but he already tell everyone that he will not participate on TV debates - more info: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1...

  16. Re:Leftism doesn't eat it's own by sinij · · Score: 3, Insightful

    White privilege is an idiotic concept. It is group identity forced on individuals. That white hobo Vietnam vet living under the bridge and burning trash in a barrel to stay warm in the winter and try to explain to me how he is somehow has more privilege than, for example Oprah Winfrey? While you are at that, also explain to me how patriarchy could be worked into all that.

    Another problem is who exactly counts as white. Are Irish white? Are recent Eastern European immigrants white? Are pale-skinned Latinos white? Are pale skinned Turks and Arabs are white? Are Jewish people are white? Are Chinese white? Do they all have the same white privilege?

    At least I agree with you that Democratic party today has f-all to do with progressiveness or classical liberalism. I don't know who to blame this on, I think it is much more complex than "Clinton did it". However, I know that all that effort currently being spent on identity politics is a wasted effort while real issues, like catastrophic wealth inequality or collapse of unions, go undressed.