Leandro Demori is the editor of the newsletter “The Great War” – A Grande Guerra and hosts video shows on Youtube focusing on politcs. Leandro Demori used to be executive editor of The Intercept for five years. Netopia met him at World Expression Forum in Lillehammer, Norway, and asked three questions:
What is the situation for free speech in Brazil today?
It’s not an easy issue to say because we have a huge and big country and there is a difference between regions. if you live in a small town inside the Amazon forest, and you talk about dangers of environment or new hydro-electric industry, you have a great chance of being shot dead.
Talk about dangers of environment or new hydro-electric industry, you have a great chance of being shot dead.
At the same time, for journalists living in big cities and main capitals, it is not common to get shot at. Power uses another tactic against you, basically using the judicial system: manipulation of prosecution, trying to hurt your reputation. Doing tons of processes against you, in ways you can barely defend against. Trying to grab all your money and all your time with these judicial wars. So there are two ways to be harmed as journalist – or activist – in Brazil.
Is social media more a tool for activists or power?
Power. They are the power in fact. I started using the internet when it started commercially in Brazil in 1996-97. It’s not only a topic I know very well, but I love it!
I love the internet, why I am speaking here at Wexfo. But we are not talking about internet but platforms – it’s not the same thing. The platforms want us to believe that they are the internet but they are not. They are huge, big companies. Probably the most successful companies in history of capitalism. If you can take for example the great Portuguese or Spanish expeditions, or the industrial revolution, or the automotive industry, the petroleum industry – all of them needed tons of workers and capital, but the platforms don’t need it. You can run a platform and grab billions of dollars in the market with 10-12 or 15 persons in a room.
They are very profitable and they spend tons of money lobbying in all the parliaments – in United States, in Europe, in Brazil. In Brazil we saw it two weeks ago, when we tried to approve a law, basically it’s called the “project of fake news”. It’s just saying to the platforms – we want platforms to be responsible for content that is posted.
We want platforms to be responsible for content that is posted
We tried to approve that project and the platforms created tons of misinformation and fake news, and lobbied all the congress, and we were not even allowed a vote.
They are so powerful, they created an association in Brazil – Meta, Alphabet, you name it, they are all associated with this association –
Fake news officially [created by Platform backd] associations saying that the “project of law” will forbid you to post texts of the bible on the internet
and they created and distributed fake news to congressmen who are linked to protestant religion, the new Pentecostal (which is very strong in terms of votes). They created a fake news officially by the association saying that the “project of law” will forbid you to post texts of the bible on the internet. That is totally fake! They created that, they distributed that to these congressmen. The press discovered fake news, and they admitted it. And it was just a fake news distributed like a Whatsapp message, without date, without name. Pure fake news. They are very powerful, in general don’t care about activists, journalists and local politics.
Are you an optimist or pessimist for the future of free speech?
I need to be optimist, because if not I don’t see myself doing what I’m doing for the next ten or fifteen years. But at the same time, it’s like I’m watching a live show of the power of the money of the big platforms.
It’s like I’m watching a live show of the power of the money of the big platforms.
I know that it’s very difficult to confront them. You know they can’t only manipulate with money, but they can use the algo to manipulate the discourse. It’s a new Leviathan. We don’t know how to fight, that’s the problem. In Brazil people don’t know or understand why it’s important to regulate social media or platforms. People think it’s third or fourth thing we need to discuss in Brazil, but it’s not. It’s about the life of everyone in the country. I’m optimist doing the fight, but I think we’re losing and continue to lose so many battles in the future.
