WhatsApp became a social network, and the election proved it

Six million followers in ten days

On October 5, federal deputy André Janones created a WhatsApp channel called "Exército do Lula", a channel supporting Lula. Within 24 hours, 500,000 people were following it. Ten days later, that number was 4.5 million. On the other side, deputy Nikolas Ferreira launched "Tropa do Flávio", a channel supporting Flávio Bolsonaro, which surpassed 1.7 million followers in just over a week.

I am not going to discuss politics here. Both sides used the same tool, with impressive results, and that is what interests me. During Brazil's 2026 presidential election race, the TSE, Brazil's Superior Electoral Court, went as far as suspending one of the channels and requiring it to be registered as an official campaign communication outlet; the other side also updated its registration. That legal back-and-forth is a subject for a different kind of article.

For anyone in marketing, it reveals something else: millions of people started following profiles inside a messaging app that publish posts, receive reactions and are recommended by an algorithm. There is a name for that. It is a social network.

Three elections, three layers of WhatsApp

Fernando Paiva, director of Mobile Time, noted in his column that this is the third consecutive presidential election in which WhatsApp has played a leading role. In 2018, it was bulk messaging. In 2022, groups. In 2026, channels.

It is worth looking at this sequence through a marketing lens, because it describes the evolution of the app itself. First, WhatsApp was a contact list for exchanging messages. Then it became a collection of communities. Today, it has an entire tab, the Updates tab, with Status and Channels, where people consume content from those they follow and discover profiles they did not know before.

Channels arrived in Brazil in 2023. Only the administrator can publish in them. Followers can react and forward posts to their own contacts, and there is no follower limit, unlike groups. Most businesses I know still have not opened that tab with a purpose.

The two natures of WhatsApp

I like to explain it this way: WhatsApp now has two natures inside the same icon.

The first is the conversation. Private, one-to-one, where customer service, negotiation, sales and after-sales support happen. It is where most businesses already operate, with varying degrees of maturity.

The second is the square. Public, one-to-many, with followers, reactions, recommendations and, now, ads. The square is where the two election channels grew.

The mistake I often see is a manager treating WhatsApp only according to its first nature: a communication channel attached to customer service, measured by response time. That matters, but it is half the app.

What the two channels' numbers teach us

1. An audience is not born on WhatsApp. It is transferred.

The most revealing figure is not the size of the channels. It is the comparison with the official profiles. According to Mobile Time, on October 13 the channel created by Janones had 4 million followers, while Lula's official channel had 1.4 million. "Tropa do Flávio", created by Nikolas, had 1.4 million; Flávio Bolsonaro's official channel had 205,000.

The strongest channels did not belong to the candidates. They belonged to people with huge audiences on other networks, who brought those audiences to WhatsApp. The columnist himself attributes the result to the digital capital the two deputies already had on Instagram.

For a business, the lesson has two parts. First: the channel will grow in proportion to the audience you already have elsewhere and the effort you make to bring it over. Opening a channel and waiting does not work. Second: people attract more interest than logos. A founder, an in-house expert or a partner with an audience of their own tends to draw more followers than a corporate profile.

2. There is already an algorithm

When the press noticed that searching for one of the channels made WhatsApp suggest the opposing channel, the platform explained that it recommends channels based on criteria such as follower count, posting frequency, reactions received and similarity between content.

Read that list again with a social media manager's mindset. Audience size, consistency, engagement, shared topics. It is the same logic that organizes any social network's feed. In practice, an inactive channel that posts a promotion every two weeks loses out to one that posts regularly and gets people to react. The channel needs an editorial calendar, just like any profile.

3. The channel is a distribution hub

According to the same Mobile Time analysis, much of what circulated in those channels came from YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. The channel was not where the content originated. It was where that content set off for millions of screens.

This changes the question a manager should ask. Instead of "what am I going to produce for the WhatsApp channel?", the question becomes "how does the WhatsApp channel distribute what I already produce?". The YouTube video, the Instagram carousel and the blog article get a second life there, reaching an app that almost everyone opens several times a day. WhatsApp is on 98.3% of Brazilian smartphones and on the home screen of 64% of them, according to the June 2026 Super Panorama Mobile Time/Opinion Box survey.

4. Followers with a task drive faster growth

Press coverage reported that, in the first week, the administrator of "Exército do Lula" gave followers a "mission": bring in new members, watch live streams and engage with the content. Followers were not just an audience. They were part of the distribution.

In business marketing, this is called a referral. The difference is that, on WhatsApp, it happens in the same app where people talk to friends and family, just one tap away from forwarding. A brand can ask a customer to bring in another customer, invite them to a live stream or set a challenge. A follower who receives a clear task gets more involved than one who only receives offers.

5. A platform audience has an owner

Both channels went through days of uncertainty, and one was even prevented from publishing and receiving new followers. Mobile Time reported that the administrators began worrying about moving followers to other accounts, fearing the channel might be shut down or hacked.

For a business, the risk is usually different (an account restricted for a policy violation, a change in platform rules), but the logic is the same. A channel follower is not a contact. Under WhatsApp's own policy, following a channel does not reveal the follower's phone number to the administrator. The person managing the channel therefore cannot initiate a private conversation with that person on their own. That is why the channel needs to move followers into a relationship the business controls: the official customer service number, the email list, the customer database. The channel attracts. The conversation turns the follower into a customer.

Meta already treats this tab as media

If there were still any doubt that the Updates tab is a media space, Meta itself settled it. In 2025, the company announced ads in Status, with the option for users to start a conversation with the advertising business, promoted channels and paid channel subscriptions. According to Meta, the Updates tab is used by more than 1.5 billion people every day.

Notice the piece that completes the cycle: the Status ad leads to a conversation. It is the square bringing people into the conversation, with the two natures of WhatsApp connected by the platform itself.

In the same column, Fernando Paiva ventures a prediction: perhaps this will be the first and last election with free use of channels. That is his opinion, not an announcement from Meta. My reading points in the same direction by a different route: the history of social networks shows that organic reach tends to be more generous at the beginning. Those who build an audience now learn the rules before they become expensive.

What I would do starting Monday

If I were the marketing manager of a business that already uses Instagram and Meta ads, I would start with four moves.

I would open the channel with a person at the forefront, not just the brand. I would set a posting frequency I could sustain and put the channel on the editorial calendar alongside the other profiles. I would use every post, video and live stream on other networks to invite the audience to the channel, always with a clear reason to follow. And in every piece of content published there, I would leave a door open to the conversation: the link to the official number, where customer service, qualification and sales happen.

This is the approach I advocate in Integrated Conversational Marketing, or MCI: each channel has a role, and results come from integrating them. What the 2026 election made unmistakably clear is that WhatsApp, on its own, already serves two roles. The campaigns discovered this in a few days, under the pressure of a runoff. Businesses can learn at their own pace, and before the square starts charging a toll.