Felipe Neto

Felipe Neto was born in 1988, in Rio de Janeiro. He is a YouTuber, businessman, actor, comedian and writer from Rio de Janeiro. A pioneer on Brazilian YouTube, he was listed by the QualiBest Institute of Market Research as one of the biggest digital influencers in the country. In 2020, he was included in the Time magazine’s list as one of the 100 most influential people in the world; in addition, he received the Medal of Legislative Merit from the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil. He is also the founder of the Vero Institute, a non-profit organization that works on media literacy and digital education in Brazil, as well as the Felipe Neto Institute, which helps schools develop the mental health of young people. He created the Cala Boca Já Morreu movement, which offers free legal support to people investigated for having expressed an idea or criticized a public authority. Having been a virulent critic of the governments of the Workers’ Party (PT), he began to reconsider his political positions following the rise of the far right in the country, from the impeachment of 2016 to the years of the Bolsonaro government. It is this shift in political positioning that guides his new book Como enfrentar o ódio: a internet e a luta pela democracia (Companhia das Letras), released in September 2024, in which he proposes to discuss the mechanisms of hate speech both in his career and in the country’s history and to reflect on ways to develop healthy virtual communication.