Opinion – Ronaldo Lemos: It’s the comments, stupid!

Want to influence people? Or sell ideas and products? So forget about posts, videos, influencers and other content that appears at the top of social networks. What matters more and more is the bottom: the comments, reactions, responses, repercussions and interactions to what is posted.

What dominates in today’s world is the apparent chaos of the part that is open and free for interaction in social networks. Could this be the emergence of a new democracy in communication? Or the triumph of “the people” in their decentralized wisdom?

None of that! What happens is that economic and political groups, which already have power, have learned techniques to control the underside of social media. These techniques involve using robots, sockpuppets and centrally coordinated teams to spread the “message” or “action” that is of interest to these groups.

All with one important difference. At the top, the content is at least signed, you can tell where it came from, and there’s minimal editorial responsibility involved. At the bottom, the content masquerades as “voice of the people”, of apparently disinterested people expressing their opinion. But what actually happens is the use of money, people and the use of computing power to dominate the interactive spaces of social networks.

Examples are many. Starting with a clothing brand that has been hugely successful precisely because it ruthlessly uses this type of marketing that operates in the comment boxes on social networks. The brand uses not only influencers to spread its products, but also an army of people and controlled accounts that patrol the social networks, speaking well of its products and immediately rebutting any criticism of the quality of the clothes or its production method.

Or the case of fans of singer Anitta who used a strategy to make it seem that the singer was being heard worldwide on Spotify. Coordinated groups performed on the platform, giving the impression that the artist’s new music was the most listened to worldwide. But the action came exclusively from Brazil. Anyone looking at Spotify would think they were facing a “spontaneous” phenomenon. The reality was a coordinated, hidden action taking place behind the scenes.

The same type of questioning arose in relation to the winner of Big Brother Brasil. The program’s votes are increasingly coordinated and articulated by marketing teams linked to the participants. Whoever has the most money and the most computing power controls the most votes.

That’s exactly the problem. There is no “voice of the people” here, but the effectiveness of new, hidden marketing methods. Or, there is a new law of the strongest, whereby those who have money and computing power dominate the open spaces of the digital public sphere.

In short, I could say for those who haven’t noticed: the communication of the present is in the comments and reactions, stupid! It’s just that stupid, in this case, it’s all of us, swept up in a new kind of centralized marketing that masquerades as an anonymous crowd.

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