Influencer Mirely Gomes published, this Thursday (12), a video crying after discovering that her Instagram account had been blocked by Meta, at the request of the Ministry of Justice, for promoting betting sites.
Mirely had more than 800 thousand followers and published the video on a reserve account she created on the social network.
"I don't even know what I'm going to do now. I created this reserve account here. Who can help me, who can help me by following, sharing so that people can see that my profile has been deactivated", he says in the video. "Only God knows the effort we make, everything we go through, for our dream to end like this overnight", he continued.
Mirely is another of the influencers who had their accounts blocked. Since last Wednesday (11), profiles that promoted illegal betting platforms were removed from Instagram following a request from the federal government to Meta.
Among the names affected are the influencer Malévola, the content creators Léo Neiff, Da Fúria and Rony Kbuloso, as well as the former Big Brother Brasil participant Paulo Augusto.
Names that had already been identified by g1 promoting betting platforms are also on the list, which includes content creators from different segments:
Maleficent: 1.5 million followers.
Da Fúria (Danyel Motta): 2.48 million.
Rony Kbuloso: 2.2 million.
Italo Wendel (Belo Belo): 1.8 million.
Nayara Souza: 1.4 million.
Merianne Silva: 1.2 million.
Jéssica Santos (Jessica Macaxeira): 1.2 million.
Léo Neiff: 1.03 million.
Mirely Gomes: 830 thousand
Paulo Augusto (ex-BBB): 746 thousand.
Diego Gelio: 520 thousand.
Dany Maria: number not confirmed.
Bruno Souza: number not confirmed.
Fábio Neto: number not confirmed.
On Monday (9), the Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP) asked the platforms to remove 348 influencer profiles used to publicize illegal bets. According to the folder, all accounts were on Instagram and had more than 150 million followers. One of the profiles had 1.4 million followers.
When trying to access the removed accounts, users encounter a message stating that the content has been restricted by a legal obligation related to fixed odds betting services in Brazil.
Merianne Silva used a secondary account to comment on the removal. "I just woke up and received news that is not 100% good. I just lost my account of 1.2 million (followers)," he said. "It is banned in Brazil."
Despite having lost count, Merianne said she agreed with the measure, as long as it was applied to all influencers who continued to promote banned platforms.
"If the government is taking it from everyone, that's great. If it's taking it from me and everyone else who continued to promote the platforms they couldn't disclose, I completely agree. If it took it, it's taken away," he stated.
Influencer Maleficent also had her profile @malevolazxoficial_ removed. Even after the ban, she continued to promote some bookmakers on her account, which had around 1.5 million followers.
In October, g1 identified at least 40 influencer profiles in Ceará who were still publishing betting and virtual casino links on Instagram.
Three content creators interviewed by the report had their accounts taken down this Wednesday: Nayara Souza, Italo Wendel, known as Belo Belo, and Jéssica Santos, known as Jessica Macaxeira. Jéssica confirmed to g1 that her profile went offline in the morning.
g1 reached out to Meta to comment on the removal of the profiles, but did not receive a response until the last update of this report.
The request to remove the 348 profiles is part of an offensive by the Ministry of Justice to prevent clandestine platforms from using influencers and social networks to reach new bettors.
In addition to the accounts on Instagram, the ministry reported having identified, on Monday (9):
2,207 pages on Facebook, with an audience of 7.5 million people;
18 groups on Telegram, with approximately 182 thousand participants;
998 websites related to irregular betting.
"It is not enough to take illegal betting sites offline if these platforms continue to reach the population through influencers and social networks. We are acting on this entire chain of disclosure to prevent clandestine activities from continuing to exploit citizens and compromising families' income", said the Minister of Justice, Wellington César Lima e Silva, in a statement.
Monitoring is carried out by the National Secretariat for Digital Rights (Sedigi) and the National Secretariat of Public Security (Senasp), through the Cyber Operations Laboratory (Ciberlab). The work covers websites, social networks and messaging applications.
According to the Ministry of Justice, since monitoring began on September 25, more than 60 thousand websites, pages, profiles, groups and servers related to the dissemination of irregular bets have been counted.
Of this total, 51,611 are websites. The folder also identified:
6,596 Facebook pages, with an audience of 34 million members and followers;
More than 900 profiles on Instagram;
1,442 groups on Telegram, with 25.6 million participants;
127 profiles on TikTok, with 469 thousand followers.
On October 9, the survey counted 20,318 websites, pages, profiles, groups and servers. A month later, the number had already exceeded 60 thousand.
The offensive comes after the federal government banned the exploration, offering, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odd betting in Brazil. The restriction was established by Provisional Measure No. 1,394, published on September 25th.
The measure also reached online games and virtual casinos, such as the so-called Jogo do Tigrinho.
The removal of content related to betting on social media was already among the government's areas of action. On September 29, the Ministry of Justice reported that it had requested the blocking of 5,209 websites and the removal of 186 applications from the Apple and Google stores. At the time, the removal of 300 Facebook pages and 90 Instagram profiles had also been requested.
