Insights

Efforts made by fossil fuel companies and other actors with vested interests in the energy sector to shape the public’s understanding of the climate crisis, the energy transition, and their possible solutions have been documented worldwide, spanning communication campaigns, research funding, lobbying, and direct engagement in policymaking. Rather than promoting the scale of structural change required by the climate crisis, high-impact energy companies have increasingly invest

Data from 2026 indicate that becoming a victim of an online scam — that is, losing money over the internet or through a mobile phone — is among Brazilians’ main concerns, surpassing worries associated with urban violence. Electronic fraud already surpasses robbery in the number of reported cases in Brazil and finds its main channel for reaching victims on social media platforms. The Pix Scams study, conducted by cybersecurity company Silverguard, found that 79% of reported fi

Generative artificial intelligence has made it easier to produce and disseminate non-consensual intimate images, exacerbating sexual violence against women due to the low cost, widespread availability of these tools, and the ease with which images can be distributed across digital platforms. In recent years, NetLab UFRJ has identified the promotion of fraudulent and abusive advertisements on social media platforms, which profit from their distribution and expand their reach t

Fraudulent advertisements can be understood as a disinformation strategy based on paid content and social engineering techniques to generate revenue, causing financial and reputational harm to users. On social media, this type of advertising often relies on sensationalist language, promises of unrealistic results, prices or discounts far below market value, and AI-manipulated images. Scammers also create fake profiles that imitate official pages or pose as qualified professio

Nos últimos anos, o Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), especialmente na figura de seus ministros, tornou-se um dos principais focos do debate político online no Brasil, refletindo a crescente polarização em torno de temas sociais e institucionais. As plataformas de redes sociais, especialmente por meio da publicidade paga, passaram a desempenhar um papel central nesse processo, permitindo que diferentes atores ampliem o alcance de campanhas, narrativas e disputas em torno da Cor

NetLab UFRJ was invited to provide technical contributions to the legislative debate on two bills aimed at addressing misogyny and violence against women in the digital environment: Bill 2273/2026, brought by Federal Deputy Sâmia Bomfim (PSOL-SP), and Bill 2/2026, brought by Senator Randolfe Rodrigues (PT-AP) with Senator Teresa Leitão (PT-PE) as rapporteur. The laboratory presented recommendations aimed at strengthening digital transparency mechanisms and knowledge productio

In recent years, NetLab UFRJ has been analyzing the evolution of debates surrounding sexual and reproductive rights on digital platforms in Brazil, in partnership with civil society organizations. In this new report, we analyze how developments surrounding abortion rights reverberated in online discussions between October 2024 and November 2025. The report “This Damn Machinery of Evil”: Judiciary and Legislature Shape Discussions on Abortion on Digital Platforms in 2025 highl

The Social Media Data Transparency Index is an initiative of NetLab UFRJ, developed in partnership with the University of Cambridge, which systematically and complexly assesses the level of data access offered by large digital platforms. The research analyzes 15 platforms in three different regulatory contexts—European Union, United Kingdom, and Brazil—comparing environments with different levels of regulation. The index measures access to two central types of data: user-gene

With the rapid development of digital technologies, preserving the integrity of information in the online environment is a growing challenge. This is particularly challenging in election campaigns: between one election and another, numerous technologies and techniques are developed and refined, and if misused, they have the power to substantially impact public opinion. New problems compound those already existent, expanding their potential for harm beyond the reach of existin

This report is one of the partial results of the project “Impacts of the Digital Disinformation Industry on the Health of the Brazilian Population”, developed by NetLab UFRJ with support from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) . The main objective of the project is to provide inputs for understanding the ecosystem of fraudulent health advertising, in order to inform public debate and guide strategies to confront health disinformation in

The report "Greenwashing in the Energy Transition: How LinkedIn Ads Distort the Climate Debate and Legitimize Unsustainable Practices" is a groundbreaking study on the presence of socio-environmental misinformation in digital advertising campaigns on LinkedIn. The study analyzes 2,800 ads from 917 companies , published between 2023 and 2025, and shows how national and international corporations have been using sustainability rhetoric to reinforce a "green" image without pro

In August 2024, Meta—the company responsible for platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and Messenger—discontinued CrowdTangle , a central tool for accessing data from its platforms and for journalistic and scientific investigations into the social impacts and risks associated with their use . The replacement with the Meta Content Library (MCL) , made available at the end of the previous year, represented a structural change in the company's platform data

In recent years, digital platforms have been under increasing pressure to adopt transparency practices for their operations and business...

In recent years, YouTube has become a highly relevant platform for news content consumption. However, the platform lacks transparency regarding the criteria used to define recommendations of this type of content to users. To contribute to this debate, NetLab UFRJ developed a case study in which we analyzed the channels YouTube recommends in its "Top News" section, seeking to discuss the patterns behind these suggestions. The results point to an asymmetrical recommendation pa

NetLab UFRJ has presented its contribution to the public consultation on the sustainability of environmental and Amazon-focused journalism, held by the Secretariat for Social Communication of the Presidency of the Republic (Secom/PR) . The imput consists in a set of recommendations based on scientific evidence and diagnoses produced from our research on the subject, which aims to strengthen environmental journalism's informative and democratic role in a scenario of underfund

On February 27, 2024, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) published Resolution No. 23,732/2024 , requiring digital platforms which provide political and electoral advertising services in Brazil to offer an accessible, user-friendly online repository to archive and make data on political content publicly available. Following the resolution, companies such as Google and Kwai claimed it was technically impossible to implement the required measures and, despite having robust techn

In June 2025, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) reopened the hearing on Article 19 of the Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework, which had been interrupted in December 2024 by a request for review by Justice André Mendonça. Article 19 is one of the most discussed points of Law No. 12,965/2014, and the debate revolves around the liability of digital platforms for content published by third parties. The current text stipulates that internet application providers can only be h

NetLab UFRJ presented contributions to the public consultation launched by the Brazilian Internet Guidance Committee (CGI) , which proposes the principles for the regulation of digital social media platforms in the country. As an academic laboratory focused on research into disinformation and the impacts of digital platforms, NetLab UFRJ brought together evidence, diagnoses, and recommendations based on empirical investigations conducted over recent years, seeking to defend t

In recent years, the discussion about abortion has been at the forefront of the debate on sexual and reproductive rights in Brazil and...

This study aims to investigate how local media outlets in the Legal Amazon Zone report on infrastructure projects that cause major...