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Podcast: The Anti-Vax Files, Brazil’s bubble of bad information | BBC World Service

A helicopter carrying vaccines is greeted in a by a crowd in an indigenous village – and the villagers are armed with bows and arrows.

It’s just one, thankfully rare incident. But it’s a symptom of the creeping misinformation hitting some of Brazil’s most remote communities.

But rather than being a vestige of traditional ideas or village life, rumours about health and vaccines are being spread in a very modern way.

Mobile phone operators in Brazil often include free data in their user plans, but the package is limited only to select social media platforms. These plans, popular in poorer, rural and indigenous communities, allow Brazilians to spend hours online for free – but limit access to other apps and alternative sources of online information.

It means Brazil’s poorest can find themselves unable to check what they’re reading on chat apps – and stuck in a misinformation bubble.

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Source: BBC World Service – Trending, The Anti-Vax Files, Brazil’s bubble of bad information