President Bolsonaro has the biggest Telegram channel in Brazil which will now be monitored and censored

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL –  With 1.2 million followers, President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) has the largest Telegram channel in Brazil. Poder360’s survey was conducted based on data from the Telegram Analytics and Telemetrio platforms.

According to Telegram Analytics, Bolsonaro is the politician with the third most followers worldwide, behind Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (1.5 million) and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov (1.4 million). Telemetrio does not provide a good filter for politicians.

In Telegram’s own Telegram Analytics, Bolsonaro’s channel appears as the 35th largest in the world. On Telemetrio, the president ranks 135th. The 1st platform updates data faster than Telemetrio.

20 BIGGEST CHANNELS

Jair Bolsonaro 1.234 million followers
Telegram Tips 606 thousand followers
Canal Espiadinha – BBB 22 358 thousand followers
Livros em PDF 279 thousand followers
O Primo Rico 274 thousand followers
NATH ARCURI OFFICIAL GROUP! 270 thousand followers
Wendell Carvalho 235 thousand followers
Erico Rocha – Galera Raiz 232 thousand followers
Mahmoud Baydoun| Sexologist 214 thousand followers
PrimeFlix+™ 205 thousand followers
Canal Antenados – BBB22 200 thousand followers
Grupo Fechado do Professor Mira – 190 thousand followers
Baby Promo Kids – 178 thousand followers
SmallAdvantages with Gavin – 174 thousand followers
NeuroVox – 170 thousand followers
InfoMoney – 163 thousand followers
Matheus Tomoto Polvoado – 161 thousand followers
Promoções Of The Day – 153 thousand followers
DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND MONETIZE – 141 thousand followers
Mairo Vergara Official – 139 thousand followers

Judging by the number of followers, Bolsonaro’s channel will be among those monitored by Telegram.

The app told the STF (Supreme Court) on Sunday (20) that it will monitor the country’s top 100 channels on a daily basis as part of their new censorship policy imposed on the app by the Supreme Court to give an advantage to the Courts presidential candidate, the leftist Lula de Silva.

According to Telegram, these channels correspond to more than 95% of all public views of the app in Brazil. In other words, the monitoring covers much of the content distributed on the platform.

In addition to Bolsonaro, the top 100 channels include those of his sons Flávio Bolsonaro (105,673) and Carlos Bolsonaro (87,947). In three days, from Friday (Mar. 18) to Sunday (Mar. 20), the family gained 128,000 followers on Telegram.

Here is the list of the 88 largest Telegram channels in Brazil. It was not possible to verify the list of 100 with the data available in Telegram Analytics and Telemetrio.

The list of the 100 largest channels does not include the platforms of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), with 51,843 subscribers, and former Minister Ciro Gomes (PDT), with 19,709 subscribers. Both are presidential candidates.

SUPREME COURT THREATENED WITH BAN OF THE APP

In order for Telegram, one of Brazil’s most downloaded apps, to continue operating in the country during the presidential election this year, it already had to censor 20 Bolsonaro posts.

What qualifies as ‘disinformation’ and ‘fraudulent news’ in the eyes of the Justices remains to be seen. Critics say it is nothing more than a fancy word for censorship of dissenting opinions on key political issues.

The banning orders were lifted after Telegram founder Pavel Durov apologized for his “negligence” in contact with the Supreme Court. The company approached the high court to say it had carried out part of the orders issued by a Supreme Court Justice.

On Thursday, 17, the Justice decided to suspend Telegram in the country in response to a request from the Federal Police. The decision was announced on Friday, 18.

TELEGRAM IS CENTRAL FOR BOLSONARISTAS

The Bolsonarists stand for the freedom of the people, especially freedom of expression, against Covid-19 health tyranny, against the Covid vaccines as the sole treatments, against compulsory vaccinations, were against mandatory masks, and are now against the condemnation of Russia.

Jair Bolsonaro is therefore profoundly hated by the Brazilian establishment, most of them left-wing sympathizers, facing not only a hostile press in his own country but also a Supreme Court allied with the left, which has seized de facto government power and is doing everything it can to bring “its” candidate Lula da Silva to power in the presidential elections in October.

Brazil’s electoral court is trying everything it can to impose its official narrative by limiting and controlling the information available to the public and removing any instrument that does not comply with their demands.

“It’s cowardice what they are trying to do,” Bolsonaro told supporters when asked about the possible banning of Telegram. “We are dealing with that,” he added at the end of January 2022.

Social media platforms were vital to Bolsonaro’s election in 2018, and the President still actively uses Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook, where he does a weekly live stream for supporters.

But he and his children have increasingly turned to Telegram because the app, which was born in Russia and is now based in Dubai, does not limit the size of groups or message recipients (mass messaging) and does not censor any content as most other social media do.

Telegram is a thorn in the eye of most global authorities because it usually does not censor any content and guarantees its users total freedom of expression.

The TSE claims there is no way to control the spread of “fake news and hate messages” in Telegram, unlike other networks cooperating with Brazilian authorities.

But the truth is, much of what is considered “preventive measures to combat fake news or disinformation” is nothing other than blatant censorship against any content that questions or criticizes the official narrative.

Bolsonaro, therefore, says that Brazil lives a dictatorship that comes ‘by the pens’.

The TSE has partnered with almost all major social media platforms to curb what it calls “fake news and the spread of conspiracy theories” about the legitimacy of the Brazilian electoral system, Barroso said a couple of weeks in a statement.

In other words, the TSE is trying everything it can to impose its official narrative by limiting and controlling the information available to the public and removing any instrument that does not comply with their demands.

LANDMARK PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN FALL 2022

Brazil’s left follows closely the orders from the globalist in the US and Europe.

Therefore, who will be the new president of Latin America’s largest country and the second-largest U.S. economy in the fall of 2022 is crucial.

If it is Bolsonaro, one can be sure that the freedom of citizens will continue in Brazil to be the standard for all government actions.

If it is leftist Lula da Silva, Brazil will once again become a recipient of orders from the Western powers, as we have known for decades.

At a time when other countries of the South, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and China, are increasingly going their own way and escaping Washington’s dictates, it would be wrong if the food superpower Brazil, as a South American giant, did not also distance itself from the geopolitical interests of the West and remember what it really is: a power to be reckoned with.

With information from Poder360