The Toronto Star from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 32

6 T()R( THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY WEEKEND AUGUST 24 25 2019 WSSSSS WORLD TRENDS In Brazil YouTube uels Rise of ar Right Continued from Page I tem appears to haye system atically diverted users to far right and conspiracy channels in Brazil A New York Times investiga tion found that videos promot ed by the site have upended central elements of daily life Teachers describe classrooms made unruly by students who quote from conspiracy videos Some parents look to You for health advice but get dangerous misinformation Videos have incited death threats against public health advocates And a wave of right wing YouTube stars ran for of fice some winning by historic margins recommendation system is engineered to maxi mize watchtime among other factors the company says but not to favor any political ideol ogy The system suggests what to watch next often playing the ideos automatically in a quest to keep users watching The system now drives 70 DADO CALD1ER1 OR THE NEW YORK TIMES lilt Ml 'i i i eBMBM sSMafeMnMMCTASweggP Many parents watched videos attributing the Zika virus to vaccines and international conspiracies A child who suffers from microcephaly percent of total time on the platform the company say As viewership skyrockets global ly YouTube is bringing in over $1 billion a month some ana lysts believe Company representatives disputed the methodol ogy and said that the systems do not favor any one viewpoint or direct users to ward extremism but conceded some of the findings and prom ised to make changes arshad Shadloo a spokes man said that YouTube has heavily in the poli cies resources and to reduce the spread of harmful misinformation One Video Leads to the Next Researchers led by Virgilio Almeida at the ederal Uni versity of Minas Gerais were trying to understand how You Tube shapes its reality The team analyzed transcripts from thousands of videos as well as the comments beneath them Right wing channels in Brazil they found had seen their audiences expand far faster than others did In the months after YouTube changed its algorithm positive mentions of Mr Bolsonaro in creased So did mentions of his conspiracy theories A team at Harvard Uni versi fy programmed a Brazil based server to enter a popular chan nel or search term then open top recommenda tions then follow the recom mendations on each of those and so on The researchers found that after users watched a video about politics or even entertainment rec MarianaSimoesand Kate Steiker Ginzberg contributed reporting ommendations often favored right wing conspiracy filled channels Crucially users who watched one far right channel would often be shown more The algorithm had united once marginal channels and then built an audience for them the researchers concluded One of those channels be longed to Mr Bolsonaro who had long used the platform to post hoaxes and conspiracies Then political sys tem collapsed just as popularity there soared You far right where Mr Bolsonaro was a major figure saw its audience expand help ing to prepare large numbers of Brazilians for his message ata time when the country was ready for a political shift YouTube challenged the re methodology and said its internal data contra dicted their findings But it declined requests for that data The conspiracies were not limited to politics Many Bra zilians searching for health information found videos that terrified them: Some said Zika was being spread by vaccines or by the insecticides meant to curb the spread of the mosqui to borne disease that has rav aged northeastern Brazil The videos appeared to rise on the platform the same way as extremist political content: by making alarming claims and promising forbidden truths that kept users watching Doctors social workers and former officials said frightened patients refused vaccines and anti Zika insecticides The consequences have been pro nounced in poorer communi ties like Maceio a city in Bra northeast that was among the hardest hit by Zika news is a virtual said lavio Santana a pediat ric neurologist in Maceio have it coming from every di When Zika first spread in 2015 health workers distrib uted larvicides that killed the mosquitoes that spread the disease Not long after You Tube installed its new recom mendation engine Dr San patients began telling him that they had seen videos blaming Zika on vaccines and later on larvicides Many re fused both Dr Auriene Oliviera an in fectious disease specialist at the same hospital said patients increasingly defied her advice including on procedures cru cial to their survival say re searched it on Google seen it on she said Medical providers she said were competing against Google and Dr and they were losing Mardjane Nunes a Zika ex pert said that as more commu nities refuse the larvicide the disease is seeing a small resur gence The Harvard researchers found that sys tems often directed users who searchedfor information on Zi ka or even who watched a rep utable video on health issues toward conspiracy channels A spokesman for YouTube confirmed findings calling them unintended and said the company would change how its search tool surfaced videos re lated to Zika Ecosystem of As the far right rose many of its leading voices offered their audiences a target: people to blame YouTube conspiracists turned their attention to Debo ra Diniz a rights ac tivist whose abortion advocacy had long made her a target of thefarright Bernardo Kiister a YouTube star with 750000 subscribers accused her of involvement in the supposed Zika plots As far right and conspiracy channels began citing one an other recommen dation system learned to string their videos together However implausible any individual ru mor might be on its own joined together they created the im pression that dozens of dispa rate sources were revealing the same terrifying truth Threats of rape and torture filled Ms phone and email When the university where Ms Diniz taught re ceived a warning that a gun man would shoot her and her students and the police said they could no longer guarantee her safety she left Brazil YouTube system of recommending the next video and the next she said had created ecosystem of Video makers also targeted aid groups whose work touch es on controversial issues like abortion Carlos Jordy who joined the City Council of Niteroi in 2017 before rising to the fed eral legislature two years later was untroubled to learn that his YouTube campaign accusing teachers of spread ing communism had turned their lives upside down One of those teachers Valeria Borg es said she and her colleagues had been overwhelmed with messages of hate creating a climate of fear Mr Jordy said that had been his goal wanted her to feel he said a culture war Dictatorship of the Nowhere is the politicization of YouTube more apparent tha at the Sao Paulo headquarters of Movimento Brasil Livre which formed to agitate for the 2016 impeachment of the left wing President Dilma Rous seff Renan Santos the national coordinator gestured to a door marked YouTube and said is the heart of Inside a young man was stylizing an image of Benito Mussolini for a video arguing thatfascism had been wrongly blamed on the right But even some people here fear the impact on democracy Mr Santos called social media a add ing that some people around Mr Bolsonaro to use this weapon to pressure insti tutions in a way that 1 see as The co founder Pe dro said have something here that we call the dictatorship of the Reali ty he said is shaped by what ever message goes most viral Even as he spoke a YouTube video was captivating the na tion Titled for the year of military coup it argued that the takeover had been necessary to save Brazil from communism Ms Borges said it brought back memories of military curfews disappeared activists and police beatings I think I had my last she said Coal Power Thrives On State Subsidies Continued from Page 1 Australian economy dearly When the vote came on May 18 Australians voted to keep the incumbent conservative coalition in power Within days the Carmichael mine gained momentum irst Queensland settled a case that had accused the Adani controlled port at Ab bot Point of dumping excess amounts of suspended solids a category that includes coal around the Great Barrier Reef (The company denied wrong doing and agreed to better water monitoring in the settle ment) Then the state issued a clearance that had long been held up over the fate of a threat ened bird A last hurdle was approval for the plan to monitor the fragile ecosystems that depend on multiple aquifers near the coal seam Experts warned state officials that the mine could permanently dry one natural spring the Doongmabulla held sacred by the Indigenous people and they urged the state not to rush into a decision The im pact they said could be But soon after Queensland approved the Carmichael plan The key to success in India was different There it has thrived with the help of state backing With land from the Gujarat State government the compa ny built the largest private port in the western city of Mundra and next to it the largest private coal fired power plant The compa ny went on to build ports along the Indian coastline It also built a close relation ship to Narendra Modi the man who in 2001 became the top elected official in Gujarat and in 2014 the prime minister of India When coal prices rose a few years ago the company secured an unusual reprieve from Indian regulators: the ability to charge its electrici ty customers more than it had originally contracted The company argued that without the higher tariff it could not op erate the plant Separately the Indian Direc torate of Revenue Intelligence has accused the company of overcharging taxpayers for imported equipment and coal The agency lost its case in a customs tribunal and is now appealing One of the biggest boons for the company has been the gov ernment benefits associated A irw LET REBECCA CONWAY OR THE NEW YORK TIMES SAUMYA KHANDEIWAL OR THE NEW YORK TIMES Gautam Adani left the founder of Adani Group is building a coal fired power plant I near Godda India The power generated there would be exported to Bangladesh An energy supply chain involving three countries with the huge new coal fired power plant under construc tion in India near the town of Godda The coal from the Car michael mine could be burned there company executives say The land for the plant ac quired by the governmentfrom a swath of lush paddy fields was home to some of poorest farmers A cellphone video taken at the time shows local women screaming and falling at the feet of a company representative begging him to spare their land The Godda power plant is unique because it will be built as part of a special economic zone But unlike other such zones where factories make duty free goods for export this one would generate electric ity for export It would be the sole special econom ic zone with only a power plant And it was made possible only after a change in I ndian regula tions in early 2019 to allow the Adani project to go forward or the company that brings significant gains It would be exempt from several levies including on imported coal and equipment The project has also been ap proved for a roughly $700 mil lion loan from the state owned lender that funds power plants and for another $700 million loan from a second state owned company designed to help electrify Indian villages This plant though is not meant to electrify a single In dian village Power generated in Godda would be exported to Bangladesh a low lying delta nation The people who live near the site would receive none of the electricity just the pollution The power export deal was announced by Mr Modi on a visit to Bangladesh in 2015 Mr Adani was part of his business delegation Critics said the deal could be made possible only with gov ernmentassistance enough subsidies and anything can be said Tim Buckley an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and inancial Analysis they did not have special treatment back in In dia they be able to use expensive Australian sourced coal TOR'.