In the 2018 elections, we discovered that hate and disinformation win votes…

Candidates and parties have been running campaigns based on discrimination, spreading fake news, and attacking the candidacies of marginalized groups and those defending human rights. This only harms our democracy.

Brazil is one of the countries that kills the most human rights activists and politicians. These attacks on politicians through hate and disinformation are a form of political violence. It can happen before, during, and after elections, affecting candidacies or elected mandates. These attacks can range from explicit acts of violence (physical assaults and threats) to attacks in the media and on social networks. Those who attack want to silence or drive others out of politics. Those attacked are precisely those who do not hold power: women, black people, indigenous people, youth, and LGBT+ individuals.

To counter this, we created TretAqui.org, a platform that collects reports of candidacies being attacked with hate speech and disinformation. And what do we do with this information? In 2018, we forwarded these reports to the Organization of American States (OAS), an international organization that Brazil is a part of, and which closely monitored our elections. Here you can check out the report we sent and the OAS electoral mission report.

What did we do in the 2020 elections? We generated data on the different forms of attacks during the elections, both online and offline, and demanded responses from electoral authorities.

Explore the platform here. You can also watch the launch in the video below: