A Brazilian influencer warns how social media algorithms may help predators target children

In four days, a video published by a Brazilian influencer at the beginning of August reached over 26 million views, became a topic of discussion online and offline, and brought a new angle to the discussion on the regulation of tech platforms in the country. The subject: children emulating adult behavior online, and who profits from it.

“Felca,” as Felipe Bressanim is known on the internet, has 17.9 million followers on Instagram, 6.8 million on TikTok and 6.2 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. The video “adultização” opens with a trigger warning for content such as child sexual abuse, pedophilia, and early sexualization. As TV channel Globo News defined, the term is used to describe when children and teenagers are prematurely exposed to adult behavior, responsibilities and expectations.

In the video, the influencer presents cases of individuals who often feature underage people in their posts. One of them is from a mother who sold graphic videos and pictures of her teenage daughter, on Telegram, after followers asked for more content of her, he says.

Another one is Hytalo Santos, an influencer who had over 18 million followers on Instagram, known for frequently recording content with children and teens. One of the girls who became famous on his profile first appeared there when she was 12 years old, according to Felca. He claims the more the audience engaged with her, the more often she would show up in Santos’s videos, in situations such as dancing, sleeping with her underage boyfriend or after her breast implant surgery. Now 17, she grew up in front of a camera and the internet.

Both she and Santos, who was already under investigation by the public prosecutor in the state of Paraíba, had their accounts suspended by Instagram after Felca’s video. Santos was also arrested on accusations of human trafficking and exploiting minors. Parents of teens and children who authorized their appearances are under investigation.

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The test

To test and show how social media algorithms help predators search for content related to pedophilia, Felca created a new account on Instagram. He searched for keywords that he felt were likely used by these types of individuals, and liked random content that appeared and seemed, in his words, “suggestive.”

Scrolling down his feed after that, he was delivered a curation of videos featuring children performing common everyday activities, such as jumping into a pool or dancing, and comments sections flooded with users saying “link in bio,” “trade in Telegram” — usually posted as GIFs, instead of typed sentences.

As Felca showed, once you visit these profiles, you find links in their bios leading to Telegram groups that share content featuring children and teenagers:

To regulate or not regulate is the question

The video burst a bubble at a time when regulation for big techs and their responsibility for the content shared by users have been a polarizing topic in Brazil. It is one that generally divides left and right, and is among the demands presented by US President Donald Trump in the tariff wars he’s waging, mashed up with increasing tariffs between the two countries, amnesty for former president Jair Bolsonaro (currently under investigation for allegedly attempting a coup d’état), and the interests of Big Tech.

The video also seems to have created momentum. On August 11, less than a week after it was first published, federal deputies presented 17 bill proposals in the national congress to tackle issues raised by the influencer.

On August 20, following the public backlash around the video, the Deputies Chamber voted and approved the bill 2628/2022, which creates rules to protect children and teens regarding apps, electronic games, social media and computer programs, according to the Chamber’s website. The proposal, which returned to the Senate to be analyzed, foresees obligations for servers and parents in controlling access by minors.

Last year, the Alana Institute, an organization focused on children’s rights, published a note supporting the bill, “considering the hyper vulnerability of children and teenagers facing the commercial exploitation practiced by providers and servers of tech information in the digital environment.”

In June, the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court (STF), the top court in the country, voted in favor of social media platforms being held accountable for illegal posts made by their users. The justices determined that Article 19 from the internet’s Marco Civil, which is part of the “bill of rights” for Brazilian internet legislation and addresses the accountability of platforms for content created by third parties, is only partially constitutional.

The court is also a subject of political polarization now, under fire by Trump’s government. One of its justices, Alexandre de Moraes, was deemed a human rights violator and sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act for the investigations into the coup attempt led by Bolsonaro’s supporters. Among Moraes’s orders in past years were the suspension of accounts that spread disinformation, hate speech, and even of X itself for not complying with legal orders in the country.

To some people more aligned with the right of the political spectrum, regulation is synonymous with censorship. Profiles on X have been questioning Felca’s video, suspecting there is a pro-regulation intent hidden behind it.

On a podcast, the influencer said he had the idea a year ago, and it took him a while to prepare the 49-minute video. He also said that he currently rides in an armored car with security personnel because of threats after he published another video criticizing betting companies and the influencers sponsored by them in Brazil. With this latest viral video, he said there are already threats of suing him.

This article is republished from GlobalVoices under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(GobalVoices/NS)

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