Uol - September 18, 2024
On social media, Pablo Marçal and his opponents are locked in a battle between elephants and ants. The problem, however, is not the size of Marçal's digital superstructure. The issue is the elephant's tail, which is always sticking out. It has become difficult, very difficult, very difficult to hide the candidate's close ties to digital doping through paid ads and competitions that pay for the cuts of his videos.
In the penultimate discovery, Netlab, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, tracked 108 paid ads promoting Marçal on TikTok. They circulated between May 1 and September 16. Together, they totaled more than 1 million views. They were purchased through registered users in a dozen countries—from Brazil to Switzerland.