Pimenta blames the platforms’ algorithm for justifying the low audience of Lula’s lives

The minister of the Social Communication Secretariat of the Presidency, Paulo Pimenta, stated this Tuesday (2) that it is “crazy” to compare the live audiences of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) with live content that aired a or two years ago. Former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) popularized weekly lives that were normally broadcast on Thursday nights and had a greater reach on social media than the current president’s broadcasts.

Pimenta highlighted that the platforms’ algorithm has changed, as has their reach, preventing comparison. “About live, firstly, I think that you making an audience comparison in a technology that is completely different from what it was two years ago is completely crazy. Myself, I had 10 times more reach than I had on Facebook, in the past on Facebook I had 100 times more reach than I have today. So, this algorithm, this technology completely changed”, he stated in an interview with UOL portal.

In 2023, Lula carried out 20 live broadcasts of “Conversa com o president”, which were watched by 117,500 people in real time, according to a survey carried out until December 11th by the Drive, data platform for the Poder360 portal. Bolsonaro’s first 20 lives accumulated 21.5 million views on Facebook. Lula’s 20 live broadcasts reached 1.1 million views on Facebook.

Pimenta stated that currently the largest audience is in short videos on the platforms. “The main delivery [de conteúdo nas redes sociais] They are small videos, small cuts, any advertiser knows, any reasonably informed person knows that these algorithms have all changed. There is no way to compare the audience for a Lula live broadcast today with Lula himself a year or two years ago”, he highlighted.

He said that Lula is satisfied with the lives and prefers them to be done in the morning. Furthermore, Pimenta stated that the schedule allows highlighting important topics for the government and “setting the agenda” for the press.

“If you want to do a serious analysis, what are you going to see? Then take the cuts on Instagram from Lula’s live, you will find that there is no cut with less than 500 thousand, 700 thousand, 1.5 million [de visualizações]. So, if I use Instagram as an audience criterion and not YouTube, if I use the short video as a criterion, I would even say, our result was extraordinary from the audience’s point of view”, reinforced the Secom minister.