Pablo Marçal and clipping: what the strategy showed and where the courts drew the line
In 2024, Pablo Marçal's campaign for mayor of São Paulo ran clipping contests with cash prizes, and Brazil's Electoral Justice turned that into a ban from running for office. I rebuilt the case from news reports, with a date and source for every fact, and pulled out what it teaches about clips for anyone outside politics.
Pablo Marçal and clipping: what the strategy showed and where the courts drew the line
In 2024, during the race for mayor of São Paulo, Pablo Marçal used clipping contests in a Discord community, with prizes from R$ 50 to R$ 5,000 for people who posted short videos of him with the hashtag #prefeitomarçal, according to Aos Fatos, a Brazilian fact-checking outlet. Brazil's Electoral Justice suspended his profiles in August 2024 and later declared him ineligible to run for office until 2032 for misuse of the media, a ruling upheld by the São Paulo regional electoral court (TRE-SP). The case showed two things at once: how much reach distributed clips generate, and that paying for them during an election is illegal in Brazil.
Two disclosures first. I am the CTO of Cut.Pro, which runs clipping championships, so this case matters to anyone working with the format. And this is a case study built only from public news reports, with a link for each fact; Cut.Pro does not appear in any of them. I will not give an opinion about the person or his politics. The subject here is the mechanism.
What was Pablo Marçal's clipping strategy?
The Aos Fatos report of July 18, 2024 described how it worked:
- a Discord community called "Cortes do Marçal" (Marçal's Clips), with more than 112,000 members;
- contests in which participants posted clips of the then pre-candidate on their own accounts, with the hashtag #prefeitomarçal in the caption;
- prizes based on view counts, number of videos posted and other criteria;
- in the June 24 to July 7, 2024 edition, prizes between R$ 50 and R$ 5,000.
The 15 top performers in that edition added up to more than 14.4 million views, according to the same report. Later Aos Fatos reports released audio linking the management of the community and the payments to an employee of one of Marçal's companies.
Anyone who works with clipping championships recognizes every piece: a library of long videos, a hashtag to identify clips, a performance ranking and a cash prize. The difference was the content (a candidate's propaganda) and the timing (the pre-campaign period).
How big was it?
The most complete numbers came from a survey by Instituto Democracia em Xeque, published by Folha de S.Paulo and republished by Jornal de Brasília on September 26, 2024:
| What was measured | Number |
|---|---|
| TikTok accounts created or used in the contests in July | 674 |
| Of those, still existing on September 23 | 582 |
| Still posting pro-Marçal content | 282 |
| Videos from the contests since July, across networks | 9,645 |
| Of those, on TikTok | 7,885 |
| TikTok videos after the August 24 court order | 4,724, with 17 million views |
In the first round, on October 6, 2024, Marçal got 28.14% of the valid votes and came third, according to Agência Brasil. You cannot attribute that result to the clips, and the sources cited here do not. What the numbers show is something else: hundreds of accounts and thousands of videos, produced by people outside the campaign, kept circulating even after a court order.
What did the Electoral Justice decide?
| Date | Decision | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 08/24/2024 | The judge of São Paulo's 1st Electoral Zone, in a case filed by the PSB party, suspends Marçal's Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X profiles and his website, forbids paying content creators tied to the campaign and suspends the Discord activity, with a daily fine of R$ 10,000 | CNN Brasil |
| 08/28/2024 | The TRE-SP denies the request to restore the profiles and states the measure is not censorship | Folhapress, via TNH1 |
| 04/26/2025 | First-instance ruling: 8 years of ineligibility and a R$ 420,000 fine for not complying with the order to shut down the Discord channel | Aos Fatos |
| 12/2025 | The TRE-SP upholds the ineligibility for misuse of the media and dismisses the charges of abuse of economic power and illicit campaign fundraising and spending | Estadão Conteúdo, via O Povo |
| 08/05/2026 | The TRE-SP unanimously rejects the defense's motions and keeps the ineligibility until 2032; an appeal to the TSE was still possible | CNN Brasil |
| 09/11/2026 | The TSE unanimously rejects Marçal's presidential candidacy registration, citing the ineligibility and the party membership requirement, and allows his party to replace him | CNN Brasil |
Two lines from the rulings sum up the reasoning. In the August 2024 injunction, the judge wrote that "monetizing clips amounts to continuously spreading an image without respect for the balance valued in an electoral contest" (CNN Brasil, our translation). And the upheld conviction describes the conduct as "mass posting of short videos on social media in exchange for promised cash prizes to content producers" (CNN Brasil, our translation).
Marçal faces more than one case from the 2024 campaign, according to Estadão Conteúdo. This post covers only the one involving clips.
Why is paying for clips illegal in an election and legal outside one?
Because Brazil's electoral rules protect something commercial rules do not: a level field between candidates. In a Brazilian election, those who can pay to boost content are the candidate, the party or the coalition, with identification and accountability. Paying people to post propaganda on their own accounts creates reach that looks spontaneous and does not show up as campaign spending.
In 2026, this stopped depending on interpretation. TSE Resolution 23,755 forbids hiring people, directly or indirectly, through contests, rankings or prizes, to post political and electoral content. The rule, its sources and this year's cases are explained in clipping contests during Brazil's election. Other countries have their own election rules, and this post covers only Brazil's.
Outside an election, the same mechanism is distribution paid on results, like advertising, only done by people. Podcasts, streamers, brands, churches, athletes: all of them can pay clippers, as long as they follow the advertising and rights rules of their own niche.
What did the case show about the power of clips?
Setting politics aside, the case is a large-scale test of what happens when many people get paid to clip the same creator:
- Distribution beats production. Nobody on the campaign had to edit 9,645 videos. The contest outsourced production and spread posting across hundreds of accounts.
- Every account is a new audience. Accounts created or used just for the contests added up to millions of views, because the algorithm judges each video, not just the size of the account.
- The hashtag is the tracker. The same tag that identified clips for the ranking is what let researchers measure the network afterwards.
- A distributed network does not switch off. Even with a court order, hundreds of accounts kept posting. Whoever pays for distributed reach loses control over where the content ends up and when it stops.
- Whoever pays is accountable. The sanctions described in the rulings fell on the beneficiary of the network. Whoever organizes it takes on the legal risk of what the network posts.
Lessons for creators and brands outside politics
If you are thinking about paying clippers for your podcast, channel or brand, I would take five practical rules from this case:
- Public, written rules. Prize, criteria, cap and period set in advance, in a document every participant accepts. On Cut.Pro, the terms are generated from the form's rules and accepted at sign-up.
- Caps on everything. Per-video and per-participant caps limit your spend and keep the prize from rewarding exaggeration.
- Content you are allowed to distribute. The library has to be yours or authorized. If it is not, the network spreads a problem.
- Disclose the advertising. A clip paid for by a brand is advertising, and how to make that clear is explained in clipping campaigns for brands.
- Stay out of electoral content. If your library has interviews with candidates in an election year, pull those moments from the championship until the election is over.
On Cut.Pro, political content follows Brazil's electoral court rules, and every championship goes through manual approval before going live.
Where to start
If you want the distribution effect without the risk, set up a championship with your own content, public rules, per-video and per-participant caps, and no politics. The step by step is explained in how to create a clipping championship, and the side of the person being clipped in how to go viral with clips. For the downside of a badly designed incentive, read the dark side of clipping campaigns.
I am not a lawyer. If your question is about a specific situation in an election year, the right conversation is with an election law specialist.
Sources (in Portuguese): Aos Fatos, clipping contests with prizes (07/18/2024) · CNN Brasil, Electoral Justice suspends profiles (08/24/2024) · Folhapress via TNH1, TRE-SP keeps profiles offline (08/28/2024) · Folha via Jornal de Brasília, Democracia em Xeque survey (09/26/2024) · Agência Brasil, São Paulo first-round result (10/2024) · Aos Fatos, first-instance conviction (04/28/2025) · Estadão Conteúdo via O Povo, TRE-SP rejects appeal (08/05/2026) · CNN Brasil, TRE-SP keeps ineligibility until 2032 (08/05/2026) · CNN Brasil, TSE rejects candidacy (09/11/2026)
