Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Brazil's X ban upends stan accounts + political debates take over TikTok

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Elon Musk’s social media network X has been officially banned in Brazil. Taylor and internet culture reporter Ryan Broderick (Garbage Day) discuss Stan culture, the impact Brazil has on the internet as we know it, and the effects of suddenly losing tens of millions of voices online. Later, as another presidential debate nears, Taylor chats with tech reporter Viola Zhou (Rest of World) about the latest TikTok trend - creators holding political debates of their own, with real cash rewards from their audience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, how Brazil's ban on X is upending Stan Twitter and the internet as we know it. And a little later, political debates are taking over TikTok. I'm Taylor Lorenz, and that's all coming up right now on Power User. 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've 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. Okay, so I want to break down exactly what is going on between Elon and Brazil. Tell me a little bit about what happened and when this feud between Elon 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 6th and 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. 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

knock back a bit. So as of recording this right now, Brazilians are still not allowed on X. Brazil is 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've seen the 40 million figure as well. Most times have ever looked into this. I've seen Brazil at 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 was 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 really sort of fought the transition, and now they've been forced off. 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 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 stand-in-istrong. Elon Musk's ban of X in the country was called 9-11 for Stan 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 X plays in that?

Yeah. So I've definitely asked Brazilians and Brazilian bloggers I know and Brazilian Internet culture experts, like why they are so into Stan 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 reached 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. 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 artists 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. I was talking to a bunch of people in L.A. that work in sort of the entertainment world and 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, you know, this was going to affect, for instance, like March 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 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. 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, what effect do you think that that will have on sort of like the way that we archive and catalog pop culture? Well, 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 Orcut. And it was, like, so popular that pretty much almost every Brazilian at the time had

an account on there. Explain what Orcut is to people that have never used it. 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 2000s, mid-2000s 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 too now. You use this word in your piece called Zwera. 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 comes from the Portuguese word zuar, which means to joke or fool around or mess around. And Zuera 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 your nonstop, that's Zuerra. And so it is this thing that like Brazilians, it's not as, 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. 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. Yeah, let's talk about the different 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. Good. People on threads who like threads should be upset forever. They are the lamest people on Earth. It's sublinked into 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,

The Brazilians, once again, this is totally anecdotal, but the Brazilians that I know, the bloggers, the influencers that I've 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 like, 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, 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 Blue Sky when it opened up for the public. There was 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. You can post freely on there. Yes. And there's no algorithms.

In fact, it's the only thing left that has that as a default. Everything else sort of tries to obscure it with a, you know, a four-you-page knockoff. So the kind of classic Brazilian internet culture of organic conversations spreading out into different sort of subcultures and groups and communities that used to happen on Twitter can happen very naturally on Blue Sky. How much of Blue Sky is really going to replace Twitter? Like, will these Stan accounts move over to Blue Sky?

Will 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 of fewer people, like people 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. It's 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 go off into our relevance that said like TikTok is not at the same level of cultural importance in Brazil it is popular but it has a competitor there called quai and the difference between TikTok users and kai users is very class-based so typically like the upper middle class you're going to see them on ticot and you know working class lower income users they're on kai even still though it's not like a situation that

that we have in America where TikTok is leading the discourse of the country all the time. That is still, that was still very much X. 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 will the celebrities? And then everything else would kind of, you know, fall downstream from there. And where do you see that happening?

Like where, what, like, what? I don't see it happening on blue sky. That's pretty goddamn sure. I mean, I don't see. 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. That is 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.

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 and culture than it does, like maybe in the U.S. where Instagram, for instance,

is like the first place you go to check if a restaurant looks good. Instagram feels much more like a directory, kind of almost closer to like a Google Maps replacement. 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. 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 grandparents, mother to see what they're posting about Timothy Shalame. So you think it's just that. Like you think, but I mean, can't you set up a burner account? Speaking of the Timothy Shalamee, right? Like whatever that Timothy Shalemay account that, you know, said goodbye last week, couldn't they just set up a burner

threads account and start posting their Timothy Shalame 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 two Instagram accounts. It's kind of annoying, but it works. They don't sync super well with threads, but you can. 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 those little like auto fill category things that are kind of miserable. blue sometimes and you're like, I guess this is searchable. 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.

And 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 2010s where like the media became kind of part of pop culture in this arguably problematic way happened less. in Brazil. There's still very much like the old newspaper guard. There's still very much like the major news channels and they aren't really having a good time online. They might get in fights with each other, but like I said, it still feels a bit like 2012. 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. 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 and 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 very popular, even by U.S. standards, and they're making a fraction, 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. Yeah, they can't get the pop stars. They can't get the advertisers. They're getting the short end of the stick. 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 lasting is this? I mean, it seems to me this is totally untenable. I cannot understand why Elon will just ban these seven accounts. He's caved for, you know, requests from every other authoritarian regime, whether it's Turkey or India, et cetera. 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 his wife. 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. There is a good, good chance that just solves itself. That said, I'll, 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 the political core of the disagreement there. Now, that said, 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. Yeah. I mean, speaking of politics, Stan accounts have traditionally been so active in political movements. I know you had resilient stand accounts playing major roles in 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, it will probably make X feel closer to, like, its 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 just banned it in America, to be very honestly. Wow. You know, like, like, let's just move on. Let's just move on. Fuck TikTok. Let's ban Twitter. I'm on board with that. I'm 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. We'll be right back to talk about the hottest trend in politics, TikTok live battles. The presidential debate is Tuesday, but on TikTok, creators are already having plenty of political debates of their own. They're using a feature called TikTok Live Match. It pairs two content creators next to each other in a split screen live stream. Trump all day every day, baby. We got this. Viewers can send real money to their favorite creators in the form of virtual gifts.

Whoever receives the most money after five minutes is declared the winner. TikTok LiveMatch wasn't designed with political debates in mind. But my guest today, Viola Zhao, reporting for the global tech site rest of world, found that's what's happening. Viola, welcome to power user. Thanks for having me. So you wrote this great article for rest of world about the weird world of these TikTok debate live streams. Tell me a little bit about what's going on on TikTok Live.

I feel like we've all seen lots of crazy stuff on TikTok Lives, but it seems like debate content is really taking off. So what's happening on there? So yeah, I came across this weird community of political battlers. So they were using this format, this feature on TikTok cards live match. So basically it pairs up two creators and then it creates this split screen and then each side can take one half of it and two creators they can like battle each other by calling on their own fans to send them gifts. And then whoever gets the most valuable gifts will win. So this format is very, very lucrative in the way that fans, they really feel the urge to spend money for their favorite influencers to help them win these battles.

It seems like a lot of these political debate streams have escalated as the U.S. election has heated up. When did this phenomenon begin and really take off? I came across them pretty recently, but I did get in touch with some of the active batterers and ask them how did they start doing that. So one person said the community really took off about a year ago during the time when Trump announced his presidency. And then people really started to talk about the election on TikTok. And then over time, more and more people saw this as a great way to make money because users are really interested in election. They are really hyped up. So more and more people started to using this theme as a topic to wing TikTok gifts.

Yeah. I think you reported in your article that one woman who's 65 years old spent $25,000 gifting TikTok live streamers alone. Yeah. Like people can really overspend because of how TikTok design. this feature to get money out of users. TikTok is taking half of the revenues. There are all kinds of mini features designed to encourage people to give more gifts.

The more expensive the gifts get, you get this elaborate animation effects. For example, this lion jumps out, it's like rowing. And then this lion costs like $400. Can you jump me a lion? On your head? Yeah, we'll do that right here. Your team's having money for it.

Say, could you? Your team cannot afford a lion dude. And if you give the most expensive gifts, like a TikTok universe, which costs maybe over $500, you will see a banner flowing on top of every single TikTok livestream announcing that you just gave this most expensive gifts. And also the creators, they would do like shoutouts. They would say, like, oh, thank you, Amy for this rose.

Thank you, Mark, for this thing. Do you think that the creators engaged in these battles, and specifically on the political live streams, actually believe the views that they're espousing? Like, are they die-hard Democrats or Republicans, or is this all just engagement bait? I think there's a whole spectrum of them. I talk to people on one end of the spectrum

who are actually really, really invested in politics. They initially got on TikTok because they wanted to persuade the viewers. They wanted to actually talk about politics. And I've seen very constructive debates about immigration, about like abortion rights, about like fracking. But moving to the other end of the debate, there are people who I think they're not lying. They are Democrats or they are liberal. They are conservative.

But they actually didn't care that much about politics. For example, these college students who was sometimes making $7,000 from these live streams, He said he started learning about Biden's policies, about Harris policy, because he wanted something to say during these battles. So they just realized, oh, we can't use this to make money. Although TikTok's user base tends to skew pretty young, it seems like the audience for these debate streams is actually quite older, especially the political debate streams. I think you wrote that 50-year-olds, 60-year-olds, even people older than that are engaging in this stuff. Why do you think that these live streams are appealing to such an older audience? I think there are many reasons they have the money, they have the time to spend.

And then they also really, for example, this woman, she really enjoys the sense of like, I'm helping them with college, they are 19-year-old college students, and then she regards them as people she is supporting. So I think sometimes people enjoy their attention, especially when you, maybe you are in a stage of life where you don't have that much to do career-wise. You are not in school. You have the extra money to spend. And then you feel good about giving gifts.

Yeah. And then some other people, they do enjoy the attention. They enjoy the emotional bonds. They formed with the creators. It seems like TikTok would probably not be super thrilled with the rise of these TikTok debates streams. I know that they went back as far as 2020. but it seems like it's really taken off recently

in the midst of this contentious presidential election. TikTok is on the verge of being banned in the U.S. it seems like they'd want to stay out of politics. Are they responding to the rise of the debate stream phenomenon at all? So actually, there's no hard evidence that they are preventing people from seeing these live streams. I realized after I liked a few, like, politics-centered live streams, I do get recommended more content like this.

And I do think they're in a position where they do not want to be a super political platform. But they also do not want to be seeing that, oh, we are hiding politics because that sounds like censorship. But with these political debates, the official policy is you are allowed to talk about politics, but you are not supposed to just put up two photos and not actually talk about the policies,

and then just be talking to the viewers like, give me gifts because you are blue or you are red. So it seems that they have banned a few battlers for that. I know in China things have gotten so out of control and wild with these debate battles that I think the government has cracked down. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah. So in China, these debates sometimes they get so crazy that the government has to impose new restrictions on it. For example, the police have detained lifetrimers because they did something crazy on camera.

During battles, they get too violence. They started to do what the police called like vulgar acts, for example, like doing some suggestive dances, things like that. Or like they would be like being shrinking. That's also not allowed. And also in 2022, the government's internet regulator, they banned doing and other platforms from showing rankings of gifters, you're not allowed to rank gifters because that encourage overspending.

And in order to protect minors from getting too addicted to these debates live streams, they limit every creator at like two battles during the peak hours of 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. So you're not allowed to keep battling and battling and battling because that's like too addicting. I mean, one thing I've noticed, too, is just people searching for foes to battle with. If you go on TikTok Live now, you'll see people that often put like a controversial opinion behind them or will say, like, women don't deserve rights or something, you know, in text behind them and it says, debate me. And they're just really just trying to sort of like gen up, I guess, attention or try to find people to battle with them to rake in cash, I guess.

Yeah, sometimes their goal is not actually to convey a message or to convince you. of anything. It's a performance and it's political entertainment and then they're using it to get the other viewers to relate to that or to get angry and then to give them gifts. How do you see this behavior spreading out to other platforms? I think this feature came from China. It's very different from what we see American live streaming platforms because usually the viewers, they pay money directly to the creators or they would like subscribe to and then it's a like subscription-based format. TikTok's gifting format is very toxic in a way.

You don't realize you're spending so much money because you first buy coins and then you use the coins to buy gifts and then while watching our live streams or watching a debate, you send those gifts that marks like 40,000 coins and then you don't realize how much money you are spending. So I think I can see other live streaming platforms adopting the same gifting mechanism and also adopting the same debate format just because it really encouraged overspending. And then that generates a lot of profits.

Yeah, and also on the greater sides, where I ask them, like, what if TikTok get bands in the future? Are you going to make your money? A lot of people, they actually, they are on YouTube. They are on Twitch. They don't make as much money there. So they're like, oh, wow, TikTok is around. I should make the most all of it.

All right. Well, Viola, thank you so much for chatting with me today. This was fascinating. Thanks for having me. All right, that's the show. You can watch full episodes of Power User on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Power User is produced by Travis Larcichick and Jelani Carter. Our video producer is Brandon Key.

our executive producer is Zach Mac. Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you like the show, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We'll be back next week. See you then.