Pix — in the shadow of fake news

Image: Hatice Baran
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By LUÍS FERNANDO VITAGLIANO*

To understand what happened with the crisis surrounding Pix and the explosion of catharsis, it is necessary to remove the fake news of account

The controversy over the change in rules regarding Pix was the most debated fact at the beginning of this year. Transactions above R$5 would be reported to the IRS – which was already being done, but did not include FinTechs – the so-called virtual banks that have exploded in Brazil recently, such as: Nubank, Mercado Pago, PicPay, Banco Inter, Stone, Catarse, Vakinha, GuiaBolso, Quinto Andar. A technical update that improves the system, makes it less vulnerable to fraud and foreign exchange evasion and that should have been something welcome has turned into a political battle. Why?

Even the opposition should be left wondering whether this should be politicized. In any case, the government backtracked. It revoked the measure and absorbed the damage. It was right to back down and recognized that it would not reverse the situation in a short space of time, recognizing that the confusion was already reaching harmful proportions, with the overall movement of transfers via Pix falling by more than 15%. The government's communication diagnosis was accurate: they were not prepared for the opposition's reaction and the people's impatience.

Perhaps even the opposition was surprised by such a capacity for mobilization in this regard. Of the many disputes and topics discussed on social media, the majority flop and only a few gain intensity. The art of getting mobilization right is not a precise science. It is a game of trial and error that promotes a kind of natural selection that refines socially relevant themes.

Regarding this digital world, while we recognize that the right wing has the best methods and is more competent in strategy, it is also true that it does not have control over the agenda of what it mobilizes or not. Although the general feeling is that they control the agenda of the networks, control of the political agenda is still a dispute that does not always lead to political hegemony.

Regarding the specific issue of Pix, insisting on the measure could drag the agenda out for longer and contaminate other issues. When the situation reaches such a level of engagement, it is not the fake news, misinformation, boosting, algorithms and mobilized robots, which provoked an avalanche of criticism. The case went beyond the artificial mechanisms of controlling the agenda. This situation in this case can only be explained by digital catharsis. A recent phenomenon that involves, but is not limited to, viralization.

I call “digital catharsis” the ability that social networks have to create a single event within a given point that unifies the discourse that is multiple and varied. The strategy of the far right is to attack everything, correlate themes that are not necessarily connected, abuse experimentation. Suddenly the population takes over the debate according to its own connections. And something happens that extrapolates that fact, affects other events, goes beyond the digital limits, provokes mobilization and general reaction and concrete attitudes in social life; in more colloquial Portuguese: catharsis begins to happen when it gets people off the couch and makes them protest – whether in the kitchen, on social networks, or in the streets, but it mobilizes them and takes over the daily debate in unison.

There are three criteria for this extrapolation that define a digital catharsis: it goes beyond viralization, the bubble and goes beyond the networks, becoming a public issue; two: the population takes on a debate that goes beyond the initial subject, it doesn't matter if this topic is specific or not, technical or not, the issue is broader and becomes a public debate; and, finally, it goes beyond the network issue, reaches people who are not on the networks, changes opinions, provokes real mobilization: protests, boycotts, marches, lockdows, camps etc.

Something similar happened in 2013 with the change to the 0,20 cents fare. “It’s not just the 20 cents,” it was much more than that; suddenly, that was all anyone was talking about and it contaminated anything that was called a public service; finally, it led a majority of people who don’t use public transportation and don’t know about turnstiles to join the protests; it brought people to the streets and a change in approaches to politics and their priorities. Regarding digital catharsis, it’s still important to note one fact: there’s no point in arguing, if it happened, it’s because it’s passed the point of no return. The wear and tear has already happened, the question is how to deal with its consequences and, in this case, insisting means more wear and tear and not winning the public debate.

Is it possible to reverse a catharsis? The only known way is with powerful tools and a weapon called memes – very well-made memes that confront the assumed narrative by ridiculing it. However, this is a risky response that requires a good network presence from the interlocutors, as large as those who attack, time and the ability to produce irony. If this is not possible, as was the case with the government, the best thing to do is to dissuade the origin of the attacks.

That is why the government was right to backtrack, even if it meant giving up on the strategy of combating illicit businesses that are growing through tax evasion and money laundering. And this is a warning sign because the population is more willing to tolerate financial banditry than to the controls exercised by the State. As the debate has been put, we are facing something that is bigger and more important than the fake news. In fact, calling the campaign against pix tracking fake news It is a complete lack of knowledge of how politics on social media works. What was masterfully executed was a dispute of narratives in which the opposition accuses the government of excessive taxation and taxes.

To understand what happened with the crisis surrounding Pix and the explosion of catharsis, it is necessary to remove the fake news of the account and focus on the strategy that groups adopt to construct political narratives. In Habermas’ theory of “communicative action,” there is no lie as a way to achieve the objectives of social interaction through communication. Rational communicative action aims at objectives. False posts on social media are not an opposition to the truth as the absolute master of reason; they are counterpoints to the official narrative and become strategies to access the political subsystem through communication mechanisms that range from supposition to accusation, passing through conspiracy.

In other words, there is intentionality and narrative campaigns have a strategic orientation. If there is a strategy, there is no misinformation and lies serve as a mechanism to confuse and seek shortcuts for the narrative. The sum of false information, exaggerations, and conspiracy theories are part of the arsenal that subsidizes a narrative that disputes politics and, therefore, seeks to build ideological hegemony on that subject. What the opposition wanted to do was to give the government a purpose, attributing to it the characteristic of a tax collector who wants more money to spend public resources poorly.

Therefore, we reached the catharsis against Pix not as a result of a disinformation campaign, but as an epiphany of a narrative strategy that places the State as the enemy, because it charges exaggerated taxes on workers and people who try to make a living with small businesses.

Taxes have never been a popular topic. Furthermore, it is one of the characteristics that distinguishes liberals from progressives. Progressives tend to approve more tax increases. This is not necessarily true in the case of Brazil. However, activating this understanding and bringing light from the collective subconscious was what generated the success of the campaign against Pix.

Defending oneself by saying that one will not tax or that the measure was not a supposed escalation of taxation is futile. It would be necessary to fight against decades of construction of the collective subconscious where the images are popularly defined. That is why the campaign that maintained that inspection was the antechamber to taxation was so successful, because it is a narrative that triggered several preexisting triggers in part of society.

Não podemos afirmar ao certo se temos maioria ou não que defenda menos impostos. Se temos uma maioria silenciosa que quer pagar menos e ter menos serviços públicos também não é hegemônico. Mas, diante da avalanche de manifestações tendemos a achar que essa é uma disputa perdida. O que também é uma narrativa forte da extrema-direita e não necessariamente seja uma verdade. É exagero afirmar tamanha coesão social sobre esses assuntos polêmicos, porque as opiniões se constroem no cotidiano do mundo da vida e as informações distorcidas fazem diferença.

Success and failure in this case is to spread ideas to support ideologies. fake news follow the trail of narratives, fighting them is like mopping up ice. They are not the epicenter of the crisis. fake news They are a short-lived element that cannot sustain itself. They need to be anchored in a stronger narrative. If they cannot circulate freely on the networks, they will circulate in alternative circuits and add to the narratives.

That is not what makes the right powerful. It is the algorithms and the ability to construct narratives that give more visibility to ultra-liberal values, allowing for a better evaluation of what is pasted and generating less access to progressive content. Furthermore, they are not efficient. When associated with more powerful narratives, they are a subtle mechanism that can boost discourse and shed light on what is in focus in order to silence topics that are not wanted to be explored.

Os recursos da extrema direita nessa guerra de versões são mais sofisticados que simples noticias falsas. O meio digital (com algoritmos aprendendo variáveis para selecionar temas) permite que a extrema direita seja mais capaz de provocar catarses que as pautas de esquerda. Mas é importante entender o que está em disputa, que não é a hegemonia nas redes sociais, é a hegemonia na sociedade. Para isso, o que importa é a narrativa, a pauta, a visão de mundo. A batalha nas redes é apenas meio, não um fim em si mesmo. Bloquear e revidar narrativas é a disputa que importa.

*Luis Fernando Vitagliano holds a PhD in “Social change and political participation” from EACH-USP. Author, with Marcio Pochmann, of the book The delay of the future and the “cordial man” (Hucitec).[https://amzn.to/3CRWcNw]


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