Attendees hold up their phones during the launch event for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidential reelection campaign in São Paulo, Aug. 2, 2026. Lula’s stunning come-from-behind election victory on Sunday rested, to a significant degree, on social media. (Victor Moriyama/The New York Times) By ANA IONOVA, ADAM B. ELLICK and JACK NICAS It started with a WhatsApp channel with a few thousand followers. It exploded into a digital army of 10 million people that helped swing Latin…
