False: It is false that football player Vinicius Junior, from Real Madrid (Spain), has posted on his Twitter the offensive message to Bolsonaro. The target post of the check was made by another user of the social network who also has the verification seal on the account. When the publication went viral, the author of the tweet used the same profile picture and the same name used by the Brazilian athlete; later he returned to identify himself with original photo and name.
Investigated Content: One post on twitter of a profile that has a verification seal and that supposedly would be of the football player Vinicius Junior says that “bolsonaro is my piru kkkkkk #bailei”. At the time of publication, the account author of the post had the same name and profile picture as the athlete.
where it was published: Twitter.
Completion of Proof: It wasn’t the profile of football player Vinicius Junior, from Spanish club Real Madrid, who posted the phrase “bolsonaro is my piru kkkkkk #bailei” on Twitter. The message was published by the profile @alamoju. The author of the post changed the photo and name that appeared on the social network to the same as Vinicius Junior, causing confusion among network users.
Comprova searched for the words “bolsonaro”, “president” or “election” on Vinicius Junior’s official Twitter account, but did not find any results. The profile that made the publication also has the Twitter verified seal and actually belongs to jiu-jitsu athlete Mateus Santana.
After going viral, Santana changed the name and photo in the publication, returning to put an image of himself and the nickname of “midnight priest”. However, until the closing of this investigation, the profile changed its name to “analysis analyst”.
Falsefor Comprova, is content invented or edited to change its original meaning and deliberately disclosed to spread a falsehood.
Scope of publication: The post being checked had 5,802 retweets, 2,064 tweets with comments, 50,300 likes, and 624 comments as of October 4, 2022.
What the author of the publication says: Comprova contacted the owner of the profile who made the publication by direct message on Twitter and via email, available on the author’s profile, but he did not respond until the closing of this text.
How do we check: The verified post has a different username (the @ from Twitter) than the one found on Vinicius Junior’s official profile on the same network. While the Real Madrid player has @vinijr as his profile, the account that published the investigated tweet has @alamoju. With these differences, the proves searched for the terms used in the fake post on the player’s official profile and found no results.
After the content went viral, @alamoju also changed his photo and the name that appears on his profile, which were identical to those used by the Brazilian player in his account on the social network. Until September 30, the investigated tweet was still on the air, but without the same image and name of the football player.
Thus, it was possible to identify that the viral post was fake, made by an account different from that of Vinicius Junior. The profile that posted the disinformation piece also has the Twitter verified seal, as it belongs to jiu-jitsu athlete Mateus Santana. As the two are verified, the publication caused confusion among users of the platform, who came to believe that the post had been made by Vinicius Junior.
Finally, we contacted the author of the publication, athlete Mateus Santana.
Post confused Twitter users
Among the responses to the tweet, several users claimed to have “fallen” on the post, believing that it was really a publication by the player Vinícius Junior and that the athlete had criticized the president of the Republic and candidate for reelection, Jair Bolsonaro (PL).
after the alert from a user who commented on the possibility of Twitter removing the verification seal from the account, Santana replaced a photo of himself on his profile. “Friend, beware that this makes you lose the verified”, commented a user of the platform who also has the verification seal on his account.
Jiu-jitsu athlete posted
The profile that posted the message posing as Vini Jr. belongs to the athlete Mateus Santana. On Twitter, there is a link to your profile on Instagram. In it, Santana identifies himself as a jiu-jitsu athlete and creator of the Bienal da Quebrada project, “created by @oalamoju with a mission to give prominence to other narratives and democratize access to reading”, according to the profile description.
Hashtag #Bailei is about fighting racism and prejudice
The Brazilian player Vinicius Junior, better known as Vini Jr., has as one of his brands to celebrate his goals by dancing. Recently, a commentator on a Spanish sports program made a racist comment towards the athlete, saying that he should stop “monkeying” at the celebrations. The criminal attack went viral on social media and a campaign to support the Brazilian athlete spread under the hashtag #BailaViniJr.
In the tweet verified here, the author of the post added the #bailei at the end of the text — a reference to the footballer support campaign, but used outside the context of online mobilization.
Comprova searched for possible publications on the player’s account that could cite support or disapproval of Bolsonaro, but no posts with this imprint were found. Likewise, no records were found on Google in which the sportsman mentioned Bolsonaro.
In June of this year, inclusive, the Magnifying glass denied a text that circulated on WhatsApp in which Vini Jr. would have dedicated one of his goals to the President of the Republic during an interview with the American newspaper The New York Times.
Twitter has specific rules for verified accounts
According to Twitter’s Terms of Service, the company can remove the verification badge from any account, at any time and without notice. Among the reasons that may cause the badge to be removed are changes made by the account owner, which include among other things: change of username (@identifier), inactivity or account with incomplete mandatory data and misleading account changes.
The platform further explains that one of the violations of its rules, which can lead to the removal of the verified badge, is when the user assumes a “false identity or intentional deception of people on Twitter by changing their display name, bio, banner image. and/or profile picture”. Twitter reserves the right to review the qualifications of any verified account.
why do we investigate: Comprova investigates suspicious content that goes viral on social media about the covid-19 pandemic, public policies of the federal government and presidential elections. False content that involves or mentions presidential candidates, such as the post checked in this case, can influence the decision of the Brazilian voter, who must be based on true and reliable information to define the vote.
Other checks on the topic: In the final stretch of the 2022 elections, disinformation content involving presidential candidates has intensified. Comprova has already shown that post lied when attributing to actor Fabio Assunção statements in defense of the re-election of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), accompanied by criticism of the PT; what the tweet that indicates 17 as Bolsonaro’s ballot box number is misleading; and also explained what deepfake is, an artificial intelligence technique that is being used to produce disinformation.
Investigated by: NSC, O Povo, Estado de S.Paulo, GaúchaZH; Verified by: Piauí, Metrópoles, Plural Curitiba, CNN Brasil, A Gazeta, SBT, SBT News, CBN Cuiabá, O Popular, Correio Braziliense, Grupo Sinos and Folha de S.Paulo
Source: CNN Brasil
