The discovery of the Billionaire scheme of undue discounts on retirement and pensions of the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) was the most discussed theme in public messaging groups, surpassing the repercussion of other matters of great political impact, such as the health of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), the PIX crisis and the amnesty project convicted by the acts of January 8.
The data is from Quaest survey, conducted between April 21 and May 7, which estimates an average daily reach of 818,000 people with messages about the case of the INSS.
During this period, about 3.6 million messages related to the scandal were recorded in 30,000 public groups monitored by the Qinsider platform, developed by the consultancy.
On April 23, the Federal Police and the CGU triggered the operation without a discount, which revealed a scheme that may have diverted up to R $ 5.9 billion, according to the latest estimate of pensions between 2019 and 2024.
“Even after weeks since the outbreak of the Operation without discount, the scandal involving the INSS remains one of the most discussed political themes in the groups monitored by Qinsider, Quaest’s messenger group monitoring platform,” the research affirms.
According to the investigations, associative discounts were identified in retirement and pensions that were not authorized. The amounts are paid monthly to entities and unions that represent retirees and pensioners.
According to the survey, the theme had peaks of repercussion in three specific moments: in the outbreak of the operation without discount, on April 23rd; in the disclosure of the Federal Police report on April 29; and on May 6, after the publication of a video by Deputy Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG) attributing the responsibility of the case to the Lula administration.
PIX CRISIS
The research also compared the repercussion of the scandal with the PIX crisis, which occurred earlier this year, after the government announced a measure of the IRS on the monitoring of financial movements. The measure generated a negative repercussion, accompanied by a wave of false news that claimed that the government would rate Pix. Given this, the government decided to revoke the measure.
According to Quaest, in the first 15 days after the outbreak of the Operation without discount, the INSS scandal generated 2.6 times more messages in monitored groups than the episode involving the Pix.
Deputy Nikolas Ferreira published videos on his social networks during the two recent crises faced by the federal government. Both contents reached millions of views, but the video about the INSS fraud had a greater repercussion.
According to Quaest survey, in the first two days after publication, the INSS -related video generated 108% more mentions in public messaging groups than the content about the PIX crisis, released in January this year.
Critical Messages to the Government
The research also analyzed the content of the messages and found a broadly negative scenario for the government. According to the Quaest feelings analysis model, 50% of the messages were direct criticism, 47% were the simple dissemination of news about the case and only 3% brought government defenses.
The data reinforce the perception that the scandal involving the INSS has become one of the most sensitive and mobilizing political themes of the year on the networks.
