[liberationtech] Brazilian Activists automatically being banned from Facebook

[Nadim Kobeissi]

On 2013-06-22, at 7:58 PM, André Costa <andredmcosta at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello guys 
> 
> Just to let you all know, we have found it possibly was a well-organized deceit. Apparently someone has spammed many messages with words related to the military, and then started to spread a rumor that there was a surveillance scheme going on. Since the combination of those words had already been reported as spam, all messages started to be automatically blocked. 

That sounds credible to me.

> 
> Some fears and rumours about the possibility of an attempt against democracy in Brazil have been circulating here lately, and those dreads are generally projected upon the military. Someone probably took advantage of this situation to spread  misinformation and more fear.

The best thing to do is to adopt a wise security posture and focus more on keeping your own communicative safety and ignoring rumours and bait :-)

NK

> 
> Thanks to everyone who tried to help.
> André
> 
> Sorry for the confusion. This is not the only case of the infowar that's happening here, since journalists from independent media outlets received attacks on their webpages lately.
> 2013/6/22 André Costa <andredmcosta at gmail.com>
> Hello guys
> 
> I cannot say exactly what's going on in Brazil, but we have just revealed what seems to be the tip of a surveillance strategy related to the military. We have found that, when you send the message "Meu amigo general disse que a Força Nacional tá mega bem equipada, pra qualquer emergência."   on the chat, this content is automatically reported as abusive and the account is automatically suspended. 
> 
> For those who do not understand Portuguese, this sentence would translate as "My General-of-the-army friend said that the National Security Forces are very well equipped, for the case of any emergence". At least five friends needed to reconfirm their account, whereas I have not been able to come back.
> 
> I suspect that this system of aumotically banning probably works outside Brazil as well, so you may try it yourselves, but take care, because it may not let you get you accounts back. 
> 
> Could you try to put some light on this? Any idea of what it may be?
> 
> Thank you very much for any help
> Andre
> 
> 
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