Intro I kind of wish we
had just band it in America, to be honest. Wow.
I just don't like like,
let's just move on. Fuck TikTok. Let's ban Twitter. Elon Musk's social media network,
X has been officially banned in Brazil after feuding
with the Brazilian government for months, refusing to suspend a small handful of far
right accounts or hire a local lawyer,
which is required by law in Brazil. The country's Supreme Court voted
unanimously to ban the app nationwide. Today we're going to discuss stan culture,
the impact of Brazil on the Internet as we know it, and the effects of suddenly
losing tens of millions of voices online. To do that,
I brought in one of my favorite Internet culture reporters and former
resident of Brazil, Ryan Broderick. He writes a must read newsletter
about the Internet called Garbage Day. Ryan, welcome to Power User. Hi. Thank you for having me. How Elon’s feud with Brazil began Okay. So I want to break down exactly what
is going on between Ireland and Brazil. Tell me a little bit about what happened and when this feud between Ireland
and the Brazilian government began. Well, it's been going for a while. They have been forcibly enacting across
multiple platforms since their insurrection last year. They had their version of January six
in their capital city of Brasilia. And unlike the U.S.,
their federal Supreme Court has been very strict
with particularly foreign social media platforms,
you know, threatening to find them hundreds of thousands of dollars
a day for misinformation. They were very strict with YouTube. The current conflict between Musk
and the federal Supreme Court in Brazil is based around the removal of. We've since discovered seven accounts
that Musk did not want to suspend. And so over the weekend,
the federal Supreme Court in Brazil was like,
that's enough, We're going to block it. And they had initially imposed
a fine for any Brazilian using a VPN to access the site, but that has since
kind of been knocked back a bit. So as of recording this, right now, Brazilians are still not allowed on X. Brazil’s X ban is a huge loss for Elon Brazil's obviously a significant portion
of Twitter's user base. I think it was estimated around 40 million people
now don't have access to Twitter or X. How big of a loss is this for Elon? It's big. I I've seen the 40 million figure as well. Most times I've ever looked into this. I've seen Brazil like the third
biggest country represented on the site. So it's a massive amount of users
that are now no longer able to access it. And Brazil is also a long term
holdout on X after it became X. There really was not anywhere else
the Brazilians who were on Twitter were interested in going to. So up until now, they've really sort of
fought the transition and now they're they've been forced off. How Brazil’s X user’s differ from others How do Brazilian Twitter users
differ from, you know, other users around the world? I mean, the short answer is they don't. But they use it a lot
and they're extremely engaged. Well, that's a difference. Well, yeah, but it's not like, say, Japan,
where they're using it in a completely different way that would like
be totally out of place in the U.S. or even like the U.K., who they use
it totally differently. Brazilians are pretty much doing
the same things we're doing on it. They're like fighting with politicians. They're updating each other on their
favorite, you know, pop culture events. And they're sharing a lot of fan fiction
and fan art. Like,
they're doing all the same things we are. But because they
have just a sort of different level of importance on Internet
culture in Brazilian society, in Brazilian pop culture,
it feels very different. It feels almost like the way Twitter did
in America in 2013. But that just never ended. The glory days. Yeah. Like,
imagine Miley Cyrus twerking on the VMAs, but it has been that way every day
for almost 20 years. Amazing. Speaking of Miley Cyrus,
I think Brazilian Twitter Brazil’s stan culture explained has always played a really significant
role in pop culture and music. You had Brazilian Twitter
playing a really key role in, I think, the launch of Lady Gaga's
career. Obviously, Bts's stand of is strong. Elon Musk's ban of acts in the country
was called 911 For certain accounts. People were comparing it to the burning
of the Library of Alexandria. Can you talk a little bit about the Brazilian Stan culture universe
and what role AX plays in that? Yeah, so I've I've definitely asked
Brazilians and Brazilian bloggers. I know. And Brazilian Internet
culture experts like why
they are so interested in culture. And like, the best explanation
I've ever heard is that Brazil is it's sort of like a hegemonic island
in South America. It's like the only country
in South America that's rich Portuguese. So it has its very distinct culture. It is extremely curious
about sort of global pop culture at large, but they have their own way of sort of
talking about it and socializing about it. And it's also a place where pop artists
never go. Yeah. So like the first big meme that sort of,
you know, came out of Brazil and crossed the ocean was come to Brazil
in the bottom of every reply on Twitter at the time you'd see come to Brazil.
And that is like a very real thing. Like artists
don't go to Brazil. It's hard. It's tricky to go there. So it has sort of created, I think, this
very intense digital reflection of that. So, you know,
your favorite artist might not show up, but you're going to spend all day long,
you know, fighting with other people who don't like them or talking to them
in their mentions or whatever it is. How the entertainment industry feels about this ban I was talking to a bunch of people in L.A. that work
and sort of the entertainment world in the music world
about how they thought of this. And I mean, they were definitely like
worried about its impact on their artists and kind of trying to assess, you know,
how much of their different artists fandoms were Brazilian. If if, you know, this was going to affect,
for instance, like merch sales or, you know, like the sort of the unpaid
promotional work that a lot of these users do for American pop music
artists and actors and things like that. I wish those people would go to Brazil. I wish I wish they weren't using Brazilians
as unpaid promotional tools for them. But yes, I think you are going to see
a serious drop in, you know, how the Internet looks and feels,
especially on X. The cons of losing pop culture's most diligent archivists Yeah. Another thing
that somebody noted on Twitter is that a lot of these accounts
are sort of unofficial, unpaid pop culture archivists. They're keeping track of celebrities,
public appearances, photos, updates and things like that. If that goes away tomorrow, you know,
what effect do you think that will have on sort of like the way that we archive
and catalog pop culture? I think, you know, if you are using X for that sort of thing,
you're going to notice it. That said,
this is not the first time like this sort of thing
has happened to Brazilian Internet users. I mentioned this in a piece
I wrote this week about this on my newsletter, Garbage Day. But Brazil for a while
was like one of only two countries that were still using
the Google Social Network, Orkut. And it
was like so popular that pretty much almost every Brazilian at the time
had an account on there. Orkut: Google’s myspace “killer”, explained Explain what Orkut is to people
that have never used it. I mean, the the easiest way to explain
it was like it was Google's kind of like half baked MySpace competitor,
but it had this ability to organize by communities or groups
which like even at the time, Facebook in the early to mid 2000
didn't have that capability. And so, like Brazilians were just using this like
for years and years and years and years and then they all sort of started
moving over to Twitter and they found each other very quickly. And I've already seen
that effect this week where like at least in my own experience, like every Brazilian
I know is already moved over to blue sky or they're making accounts on threads
that they're not using. So it is happening. And I do think a lot of the things that we liked about
Brazilian Twitter were not super specific
to what Twitter is and does. So you'll see this effect. I mean, I'm a Tumblr user still in the year 2024
and they're all over there to now What is “Zuera” and how it relates to the Brazilian internet you use. This word in your piece called This is where I might be pronouncing it
wrong. Can you explain what that means
and kind of how it relates to the way that Brazilians use the Internet? Sure. It comes from the Portuguese word zou. Ah, which means to joke
or fool around or mess around. And Zuwara is. I mean, the easiest way to describe
it is like if you've ever made a typo in a group chat
and then all your friends repeat the typo over and over again
and start putting it into memes and just like making fun of you,
stop that zuwara. And so it is this thing
that, like Brazilians, it's not is it's kind of like a millennial term. I don't really think Gen
Z is using it that much, but it was this sort of way of describing
the feeling of being on Brazilian internet and some of the feedback I've gotten from
Brazilian readers actually this week was that one of the reasons threads isn't good for that
sort of experience is not only just the algorithm breaks
the entire flow of conversation, but also it's tied to your Instagram. And in Brazil, Instagram is now sort
of the de facto replacement for Facebook, which means your friends and family will see you being a complete psycho
on the Internet and they don't want that. Why Brazil is not embracing Threads Yeah, let's talk about the different
like competitors and where people are going,
because as you mentioned, I think a lot of people on threads
seem very upset that Brazil is not embracing threads. Good people in threads
who like threads should be upset forever. They are the lamest people on earth. It's sub LinkedIn to me. Okay, so blue sky is the winner in terms of just like sheer
amount of users moving over there. Threads is now in second based on
sort of some reports I've seen this week. But the Brazilians once again,
this is totally anecdotal, but the Brazilians that I know,
the bloggers, the influencers that I followed forever on Twitter, they're going over to threads,
they're setting up an account. There's like no profile picture. They're not doing anything with it.
They're complaining about it. I've seen a lot of angry Portuguese
threads, posts about how it sucks. Meanwhile, on Blue Sky,
they have just sort of slid right back into what they were,
whatever they were doing on Twitter, on X. So and then I've seen some users on Tumblr
reactivating or sort of moving some of their stuff over to Tumblr, but that's always going to be very small
and that's pretty much just for like the super duper
niche fandoms probably. Yeah, it seems. And why BlueSky is so popular in Brazil I mean, blue Sky, I think
got reportedly over a million new users in the first 72 hours or something
after this switch happened. Why is blue Sky such a winner? I mean, blue sky I they still don't even
have video capabilities on there. So Blue Sky was already pretty popular with Brazilians
when the first Twitter exodus was starting and people were moving over to Blue Sky
when it opened up for the public. There is already a massive amount
of Brazilians and also Japanese users and sort of the other sort of cultural
power user groups were already over there. So that definitely helps. The other thing is that it doesn't
tie to your Instagram, so you know, your family isn't going to see you posting
nonstop about Miley Cyrus or. Whatever is freely on there. Yes. And there's no algorithm. In fact, it's the only thing left that has
that is the default. Everything else sort of tries to obscure it
with a, you know, a for you page knockoff. So the kind of classic
Brazilian Internet culture of, you know, organic conversation
spreading out into different sort of subcultures and groups and communities
that used to happen on Twitter can happen very naturally on Blue Sky. Will BlueSky be Brazil’s permanent new home? How much of blue sky
is really going to replace Twitter? Like will these Stan accounts
move out of blue sky? Will they? Well, people turn to it
the same way, like blue sky. The fact that it's chronological
and it's a little bit more complicated. And the fact, again, that they don't have video doesn't
really have much multimedia in there. It seems like that's the way that social media platforms
have really gone in the past few years. I mean, do you think this is something
that is going to be a long term plan or do you think it might just end up
where a lot fewer people, like people, will use it for the first couple of months
and then fade off? Well,
I think the uncomfortable thing is that the desire to use a website like Twitter is inherently something that
people under like 33 don't care about. Don't tell me that, Ryan. Like, that's just not real
is is not coming back. So what we're talking about is like,
where are we housing like millennials for the next couple of years until, like,
they give up. Until we get into our irrelevance. That said, like tick
tock is not at the same level of cultural importance in Brazil. It is popular, but it has a competitor. They are called Kwai, and the difference between TikTok users
and Kwai users is very class based. So typically, like the upper middle class,
you're going to see them on Tik Tok and, you know, working
class lower income users there on Kwai. Even still, though, it's
not like a situation that we have in America where Tik Tok is leading
the discourse of the country all the time. That is still that was still very much ex. So what will be the deciding factor is where the upper crust of Brazil lands. Like where will the politicians go? Where will the editors, where,
where will the celebrities and then everything else are kind of,
you know, fall downstream from there. And we don't. Even see that happening.
Like where what? Like I don't see it happening.
I'm blue sky. That's Riccardia, I'm sure. I mean, I don't see it. Look,
if you make over half a million dollars a year, like you should not be on blue sky
like that is not a place for people who have, like, disposable income. There's a place for, like everyone else. No, I assume it will be some version of what
we've seen here in the U.S., which is that it'll be some people on threads,
it'll be some people on Blue Sky, some other website. It'll just sort of break up a bit. Although the question of like,
how do we all come back together again, or at least create a feeling that we're
all back together again on the Internet that might be solved
in Brazil faster than in the U.S. just because their society is different
and there's sort of like desire to like, communicate with each other
as a culture, as a country. Online is a lot stronger, I think, than,
you know, what you would see in Europe or even the United States. Why Threads will never be Twitter’s true successor So speaking of threads,
you know, Instagram and Meta have politicians
that have Instagram accounts. They've set up threads, accounts. They have the celebrities on Instagram,
like you would think that threads would be this natural,
I guess successor to Twitter. And yet, as you mentioned,
people are so hostile to it. Why is threads such a bad place and why aren't people adopting it
more Brazilian or otherwise? Yeah, I mean, so there's definitely
like global level issues with threads and then there's some specific Brazilian
quirks to start with, the Brazilian ones. Instagram
in Brazil sort of has a different role in society, in culture than it does like
maybe in the US, where Instagram, for instance, is like the first place you go to check
if a if like a restaurant looks good, Instagram
feels much more like a directory, kind of almost closer
to like a Google Maps replacement. It's a it's where you're seeing
what your friends are doing, but it's also where you're seeing
what's going on. It feels a little more active, less sloppy as in full of slop than it does
like when I'm in the U.S. and I turn it on. But that makes me think that it would be
a good Twitter replacement then. So the problem is, it's also
where your friends and your family are and most Brazilians do not want, let's say, their grandmother
to see what they're posting about. Timothy Shalal So you. Think it's just that like
I mean, can't you set up a burner account speaking of the Timothy Charlemagne,
right. Like, yeah, whatever. That Timothy Shalvey account
that, you know, said goodbye last week, couldn't they just set up a burner
threads account and start posting their Timothy
Charlemagne updates on threads? I mean, there's tons of Stan accounts
on Instagram too, right? There are some, yeah. If they did and they could. It's a little complicated,
but you can. I have to. Instagram accounts. It's kind of annoying, but it works. They don't sync super well with threads,
but you can. And once you do that though, then you get
into the global problems with threads. So first you have the fact that
the initial users in almost every country I've seen were all kind of either media
people or academics, which are even worse. And so the initial users
are pretty boring. It also doesn't have a good discovery,
like still the search is kind of broken. The hashtags don't really work.
I don't even know if they are hashtags. I don't know what they're like. There's a like autofill category,
things that are kind of miserable. Sometimes and you're like,
Yeah. It's super cool. Yeah, it's super dorky and weird,
and then it defaults to the For You tab, which is still not very good,
even though there is a following tab in. It also is the fact that to bring it back
to Brazil, the Brazilian media culture sort of being online and being
and you know, the transformation that we went through in the 20 tens
where like the media became kind of part of pop culture
in this arguably problematic way, happened less in Brazil, for there is still very much
like the old newspaper guard. There is still very much like
the major news channels and they aren't really having a good time
online. You know,
they might get in fights with each other, but like I said, it
still feels a bit like 2012. So if you gave let's say, young Brazilian users
the option of blue sky or threads, I think they're probably going to go
towards blue sky just because it seems a little less old
and a little less fuddy duddy. Google and YouTube’s role in Brazilian internet culture What about YouTube? I mean, they have like status
updates on YouTube channels. Like, I don't know, is
Google playing a role there at all? So the big problem with video
streaming in Latin America, in South America
is that the ad rates are horrible. That's why the largest Spanish
speaking like Twitch streamers, for instance, are all based in Spain
because they're getting European ad rates. So, you know,
I know YouTubers in South America who are like very popular even by U.S. standards, and they're making a fraction,
even even in their currency, they're making a fraction of what
you would make in the U.S. or Europe. So I think that's always going to be
a hurdle for video creation in South America,
is that the advertisers are just like not interested in South Americans
seeing their content. They can't get the pop stars. They can't get the advertisers. They're getting the short
end of the stick. It's tough. Look, man, it's tough. The Internet is like a
is a capitalistic nightmare. And it is screwing over the Internet's favorite people,
which are Brazilian stan accounts. Like, they just need some support
and they've been once again screwed over by a bunch of rich people
fighting over stuff that does not matter. How long will this ban last? How long lasting is this? I mean, it seems to me
this is totally untenable. Like, I cannot understand why you want
to just ban these seven accounts. He's caved for, you know, requests from every other authoritarian regime,
whether it's Turkey or India, etc.. Like, do you see this lasting
or do you think Brazil will cave? I mean, Brazil. So that Brazil started with the VPN ban,
realized that was completely impossible to enforce and has walked
that one back in the last couple days. One of the accounts, one of the seven that was like
included in the court order doesn't even exist anymore, like they deleted
it themselves or whatever. So there is a good chance that this solves
itself. That said, I never see a situation
happening where Elon Musk plays ball because you mentioned India,
you mentioned Turkey. Those are right wing,
those are authoritarian governments. He loves those. He does not like
the new president of Brazil, Lula, who is the old president of Brazil,
who is an unabashed leftist. So that is that is the political core
of the of the disagreement there. Now, all of that said,
I still don't think this is permanent. I just I just don't it's too silly. It's possible. But I think Twitter needs
the Brazilian users more than Brazil needs Twitter. And I think there's a chance that Elon
Musk just has this big temper tantrum. It lasts a month
and then quietly plays ball and then all the Brazilians
get to come back. How this ban will impact Brazilian politics Yeah, I mean, speaking of politics, Stan, accounts have traditionally been so active
in political movements. I know you had Brazilian
Stan accounts playing major roles and sort of pushing LGBTQ
rights, environmental activism, etc.. How do you think that the removal
of Brazil will impact the broader sort of political discourse? It will definitely turn down the volume a bit and it will probably make it feel closer to like it's actual social impact. Like, you know,
like we're sort of seeing the whittling down of like what has probably always
been true about Twitter, which is that it's this loud
screaming thing that isn't quite big. I, I kind of wish we had banned
in America, to be honest. I just don't like like, let's go. Let's just move on. Let's let's just move on
because it's sort of. Let's ban Twitter. I'm on board with
I mean. I am curious as well how it will feel. I just I think the overwhelming thing, though, is it's just going to be quieter
and a little more boring. All right, Ryan, well,
thank you so much for joining. Thank you very much for having me.
All right. That's the show. You can watch full episodes of Power User
on the YouTube channel at Taylor Ends. Power User is produced by Travis Larchuk
and Jelani Carter. Our video producer is Brandon Kieffer. Our executive producer is Zach Mack. Power User is part of the Vox
Media Podcast Network. If you like the show, give us a rating
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We'll be back next week. See you then.