Twitter Files Brazil 2 - The influencer leverages his influence

By @EliVieiraJr | Translated by @tupireport

Felipe Neto Rodrigues Vieira has been a prominent figure in the Brazilian public sphere since rising to fame on YouTube in the early 2010s, criticizing the musical taste of teenagers and using harsh words against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the Workers' Party. In an ideological shift, he became a campaigner for Lula in the 2022 race, which led to the petista's third term as president.

This realignment culminated in the invitation from the Lula government for Felipe Neto to join a working group at the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship in February 2023, dedicated to "combating hate speech and extremism," with a special focus on regulating social media. In the same month, Felipe spoke to UNESCO on the same topic. The group was dubbed the "Ministry of Truth" by government critics.

Neto is the founder of Instituto Vero, an NGO partner of the TSE's Program to Combat Disinformation. The institution also sponsored events held by the TSE against disinformation.

We (@shellenberger, @david_agape_, and I) are revealing today that Felipe Neto had privileged access to Twitter, to the extent that a senior employee proposed a private conversation between him and Yoel Roth, then head of security at the social network. This invitation was made in the context of sanctions imposed by Twitter's content moderation on journalist Allan dos Santos, now exiled in the United States, protected by the broader standard of freedom of expression in that country.

Head of Public Policy at Twitter asks head of security for special attention to Allan dos Santos and meeting with Felipe Neto

On June 14, 2021, the then Head of Public Policy at Twitter, Fernando Gallo (who now holds a similar position in the Brazilian office of the social network TikTok), sent an email to Yoel Roth, head of security at the social network. The subject: Gallo asked Roth in person to investigate journalist Allan dos Santos's Twitter account in a "holistic" way. The journalist "has been very problematic for us in Brazil" and increasingly difficult to deal with, commented Gallo, detailing that Santos "insists on posting very controversial things about Covid and other abusive content".

Gallo wanted Roth — involved in the decision to ban Donald Trump's account — to permanently ban Santos's account and to reconsider keeping online a tweet in which the journalist "speculated about someone's health condition, making a connection between a vaccine and health problems, thus creating doubts about the vaccine's safety," in the words of the social network's head of public policy. The topic is not new in the Twitter Files: in the United States, the social network collaborated with the government and think tanks to remove content critical of pandemic response policies, which in the country violates the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The decision by Roth not to delete Santos's tweet greatly irritated Felipe Neto, who at the time cultivated an image as a defender of lockdowns and other sanitary measures. As a "request number 2," in the same email, Gallo said that the YouTuber "has been an antagonist and opponent of the current government" of Jair Bolsonaro and "a strong critic of Twitter for what he considers leniency on our part in applying our Covid rules." In other words, Felipe Neto was pressuring for a tougher approach to content removal.

"He's pretty angry," Gallo reported, referring to Neto, "and getting louder, to the point of starting to tweet about his conversations with us." There is thus a suggestion of privileged access for the influencer to lobby for his causes within Twitter, in the form of private conversations that Gallo feared would be exposed.

Gallo then invited Roth to another conversation with Neto: "although there are some risks, we and the communications team wanted to see if you would be open to an off-the-record conversation with him, so that he feels he has been heard" and "hopefully, tensions will ease a bit."

Yoel Roth accepts the invitation and analyzes Allan dos Santos's tweet in detail

With a copy to the legal director Vijaya Gadde, Yoel Roth replied six hours later. "The easy answer first: I would be happy to talk with Felipe Neto," said Twitter's Head of Integrity. "Let's continue in a separate thread regarding the logistics of this, but if you tell me this is a high-value conversation for me to participate in, I'm happy to do so," he added, with a smiley emoji.

In the same 2021 message, Roth then thoroughly examines the case of Allan dos Santos. He admits that the case was "a mess" because the content moderation team, using a "ticket" system (similar to customer service on websites), miscounted Santos' violations.

Regarding the tweet whose online presence irritated Felipe Neto, Roth provided context that the post referred to the cardiac arrest suffered by Danish footballer Christian Eriksen on June 12, 2021, two days before the exchange of messages. Roth said that the "entire narrative" about the cardiac arrest was "challenging". "On one hand, our policies do not cover speculation about the health status of individuals or potential individual side effects of vaccination," on the other hand, the player "was not vaccinated, so the tweet is misleading regarding whether vaccination could have contributed to the issue."

Allan dos Santos' post would fall into a "gray area", as "the author speculates about blood clots and myocarditis (both narratives associated with Covid vaccines), but explicitly notes that there is no direct connection to the vaccine. It does not meet the strict criteria we have for fear-mongering based on an explicit false claim," explained Roth, who concludes his analysis of the tweet recommending labeling it and suspending the account due to other violations. As I explained in Gazeta do Povo, multiple studies point to myocarditis and blood clots as true side effects of vaccines, usually at low frequency, with risk varying from vaccine to vaccine and by demographic group. The word "narrative," therefore, especially as a justification for sanctions on user expression on social media, does not give the subject the deserved seriousness.

Yoel Roth expresses concern about Allan dos Santos' temporary legal victory at the time against censorship on YouTube. "I worry that the inherent disorder of this issue could make it challenging to explain the basis for a suspension action, if we were to do it now."

Twitter's legal team compares Allan dos Santos to Alex Jones

After internal discussions within Twitter's legal team, the following day, senior legal consultants Rafael Batista and Diego de Lima Gualda issued their opinion regarding Allan dos Santos and the proposal for a meeting with Felipe Neto. As suggested earlier by Gallo, Batista and Gualda agree that Allan dos Santos is comparable to Alex Jones, an American influencer later convicted in the local courts, among other reasons, for claiming that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax.

The experts recommended that it was best to let the violation counting system "take its course, especially because we have concerns in Brazil regarding litigation questioning account suspensions, given the consumer-friendly focus of local courts," meaning lower courts that would tend to favor the claimants rather than the social network, upon which they would impose "the burden of presenting copies of the infringing content in court."

Batista and Gualda accused Santos of manipulating the social network system with the intention of spreading misinformation, "but in a context where, for some reason, we failed to strictly apply relevant policies appropriately." For them, the journalist "includes in his most controversial tweets phrases with an air of speculation, when in fact they are deliberately disseminated to deceive." The consultants also expressed concern about Santos' victory against YouTube and what it meant for Twitter, which is why they had to provide a strong basis for terms of service violation to punish him.

Email signed by Rafael Batista and Diego de Lima Gualda

Finally, the senior legal advisors proposed that Twitter could "take advantage" of decisions from the Supreme Federal Court for the global suspension of one of Allan dos Santos' accounts, as well as utilize "media materials" that corroborated "the profile of a conspiracy theorist" of the journalist. The experts also indirectly mentioned taking advantage of the investigations by the Covid CPI against Santos, expressing suspicion that he was already living in the United States for "libel tourism," to escape the laws of his home country, and considering whether they could frame his behavior of creating new accounts as "bad faith in the use of the service." However, there is a difference in treatment of freedom of expression between the two countries, as discovered by the Ministry of Justice of Flávio Dino in a meeting with the FBI where a representative said that Allan dos Santos' alleged offenses were "just words," as reported by Folha de S. Paulo.

In fact, it was later possible to take advantage of decisions from the STF, as shown in an email from a Twitter lawyer (not senior, hence anonymized here), dated June 6, 2022, where she mentioned that Justice Alexandre de Moraes had ordered the suspension of six accounts belonging to Allan dos Santos, as well as the collection of data associated with them. Moraes also wanted monitoring to prevent the creation of new accounts. The lawyer did not question the order and stated that "we will inform that, if we identify any new related accounts, we will report them to the Supreme Federal Court." To this day, Santos' accounts remain suspended in Brazil, despite Elon Musk's promise, owner of X (formerly Twitter), to overturn Moraes' orders. The same message includes the case of censorship imposed by Moraes on the communist party PCO in the context of the Fake News Inquiry.

“Felipe Neto is someone we cannot trust to keep off-the-record conversations”

Batista and Gualda concluded their June 15, 2021 email recommending that Yoel Roth not meet with Felipe Neto. The meeting "presents additional risks to our strategy" because "Felipe Neto is someone we cannot fully trust to keep an off-the-record conversation" (outside of official records and away from the public eye). The consultants warned that the influencer might try to take advantage of both the scenario of Allan dos Santos' banning and the profile's remaining.

Second part of the email signed by Batista and Gualda

The two legal advisors expressed awareness that the meeting, if it were to occur, would create "an opportunity for any narrative alleging that Twitter is biased by opening a specific channel of communication with Felipe Neto that is not open 'to the other side,' that Twitter is not following its own procedures/policies consistently," instead "responding to pressure" from a famous user. They also warned that the meeting could be used by Allan dos Santos in court against them. "So, in our opinion, the risks of having this conversation with him [Neto] outweigh the potential benefits," they concluded. However, as Fernando Gallo's initial message made clear, the communication channel with Felipe Neto was already open.

From Twitter's archives, it was not possible to determine whether the meeting between Yoel Roth and Felipe Neto took place.

The report spoke with Allan dos Santos and reached out to Felipe Neto, Gallo, Batista, and Gualda, who have not yet responded. Look for Santos' comment soon in Gazeta do Povo's coverage.

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