Jody Serrano
Editor in chiefEditor in Chief at Xataka On. Before joining Webedia, I was a tech reporter at Gizmodo and The Messenger. While I've covered all sorts of things related to technology, I'm specialized in writing about social media, Internet culture, Twitch, and streamers.
In a way, the Internet is like a double-edged sword, capable of causing great good or great harm in a shockingly short amount of time. Just ask the Marubo Tribe, a 2,000-member Indigenous group in the Brazilian Amazon.
Last year, the tribe was the subject of countless news stories around the world falsely accusing its people of becoming addicted to porn after being given Internet access. According to the Marubo, the spread of this false narrative is all The New York Times’ fault—and it’s suing.
The story. The tribe was the subject of a 2024 story by the Times, which profiled the group’s first exposure to the Internet via Elon Musk’s Starlink, along with the technology’s benefits and challenges. For instance, the story says that while the Internet has allowed the Marubo to video chat with loved ones who live far away and call for help during emergencies, it’s also affected the youth.
“Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet,” Tsainama Marubo, a 73-year-old woman, said. She explained that the tribe’s younger members are less interested in traditional activities, such as making jewelry out of snail shells. “They’re learning the ways of the white people.”
The Internet affected the Marubo in other ways, too—many of them familiar to people who have had access to the technology for decades. Seeing teenagers glued to their phones and group chats filled with gossip became common. In addition, the Marubo started using social media networks and were exposed to misinformation.
The porn. The Internet also brought the tribe access to porn. The Times story says that minors were now watching porn, which had unsettled some in the tribe. It quoted Alfredo Marubo, leader of a Marubo association of villages and the biggest critic of the tribe’s new access to the Internet.
According to Times, Alfredo Marubo said that young men were sharing mature adult content in group chats. The spreading of that type of content marked a strong contrast with the tribe’s culture, which disapproves of kissing in public.
“We’re worried young people are going to want to try it,” Alfredo Marubo said, referring to the graphic sex shown in the videos being shared.
Alfredo Marubo added that some tribal leaders had told him of young men displaying more aggressive sexual behavior.
The distortion. Overall, based on my count, the references to porn and sex in the story were limited to five sentences. Nowhere did the Times story call the Marubo people porn addicts or suggest it was a huge problem.
That wasn’t the story heard round the world, though. Instead, countless media outlets ran pieces about how the Internet had caused the tribe to become addicted to porn, a claim that was untrue. TMZ ran a story with the headline, “Elon Musk’s Starlink Hookup Leaves A Remote Tribe Addicted To Porn.”
The New York Post also had a headline in the same vein: “Remote Amazon tribe finally connects to internet — only to wind up hooked on porn, social media.”
A little more than week later, the “porn addict” framing had become so widespread that the Times published a follow-up story. In the story, the outlet said that more than 100 websites worldwide had published the false claim.
“The Marubo people are not addicted to pornography. There was no hint of this in the forest, and there was no suggestion of it in The New York Times’s article,” Jack Micas, the author of the piece, wrote.
The lawsuit. But in the eyes of the Marubo people, the damage had already been done. This week, the tribe filed a defamation lawsuit against the Times, TMZ, and Yahoo News in Los Angeles Superior Court, Courthouse News reported.
The suit says that TMZ and Yahoo News are also defendants because their stories amplified and misrepresented the original. The tribe is seeking $180 million from each of the media outlets.
“The NYT portrayed the Marubo people as a community unable to handle basic exposure to the internet, highlighting allegations that their youth had become consumed by pornography shortly after receiving access," the lawsuit said. "These statements were not only inflammatory but conveyed to the average reader that the Marubo people had descended into moral and social decline as a direct result of internet access.”
It added that the stories turned the Marubo into a subject of “international ridicule” and reduced them to “memes and headlines.”
In a statement to Courthouse News, the Times defended the original story and said it did not infer that “any members of the tribe were addicted to pornography.”
“Any fair reading of this piece shows a sensitive and nuanced exploration of the benefits and complications of new technology in a remote Indigenous village with a proud history and preserved culture,” the outlet's spokesperson said. “We intend to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
Images | Natalia Pedraza
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