Brazil Court Orders Meta to Prove Fair Treatment of Lula and Bolsonaro
Theo Umar Farooq, Al Jazeera English
Brazil's Supreme Electoral Court has doubled Meta's daily fine and given the company 24 hours to prove it does not favor either presidential candidate in its content feed. The ruling comes days before the runoff between Lula and Bolsonaro, after Lula's campaign alleged his content was suppressed while pro-Bolsonaro posts were boosted.
Brazil's Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) has doubled its daily fine against US-based social media company Meta, citing its failure to comply with an order on how political content is displayed across its platforms.
On Monday, the TSE gave Meta 24 hours to prove that it does not favor one presidential candidate over the other in its content feed. The ruling came less than a week before Brazilians vote in the second round of the presidential election, pitting incumbent left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva against right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro.
"The continued non-compliance, just days before the second-round vote, shows that the fine imposed so far is insufficient," a TSE judge said in Monday's order.
Under the order, the fine for non-compliance was also raised from 500,000 Brazilian reais ($100,000) to 1 million reais ($200,000).
The court order responds to a complaint from Lula's campaign, which accused Meta of preventing his profile from being fully promoted on Instagram and of keeping it out of search results. His campaign also argued that posts by Lula supporters were disproportionately removed by moderators, while content promoting his rival or questioning the integrity of the election was allowed to remain.
Civil society groups and digital rights watchdogs have backed the allegations, arguing that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — the three platforms run by Meta — have blocked content from the left-wing leader while boosting posts promoting Bolsonaro.
Meta denies favoring any candidate on its platforms, though it acknowledges that some of Lula's campaign ads were temporarily removed because of a technical error.
Lula and Bolsonaro face off in the final round of voting on Sunday. Bolsonaro, the son of a former president currently in jail, performed far better than analysts predicted in the first round on October 4. He took 47 percent of the vote to Lula's 45 percent. Neither, however, crossed the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Pre-election polls show the two nearly level ahead of Sunday's vote.
Social media bias has become a point of contention on both sides of Brazil's political divide. Earlier this month, Lula's campaign launched a website to log complaints from supporters who say their activity was unfairly restricted on Meta and other social media platforms.
Some digital rights groups, such as the nonprofit CTRL+Z, have published findings suggesting that Meta may have helped Bolsonaro achieve an outsized presence on its platforms, which many Brazilians use as their main source of news.
"Brazilian citizens have the right to know why their accounts are banned, why their posts disappear, why their accounts lose reach and why they are blocked from commenting, reposting and saving content," CTRL+Z wrote on its website. "Meta cannot be the invisible judge of Brazil's election debate."
On Friday, Brazilian newspaper Folha de S Paulo reported that it had reviewed internal messages between Meta employees in which they acknowledged knowing about inconsistent treatment of Lula's and Bolsonaro's social media presence.
Political campaigns in Brazil have sharply increased spending on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, overtaking traditional channels such as television or street advertising in recent elections, according to Daniela da Silva, executive director of CTRL+Z. According to data collected by the Supreme Electoral Court, Facebook took in more than 200 million reais ($40 million) in revenue during the 2024 municipal elections, topping the list of advertising providers for that cycle.
Despite that revenue, da Silva said Meta and other companies do not take seriously their responsibility for the fairness of elections. "These are very powerful and wealthy companies, and they are capable of doing more than they are doing," she told Al Jazeera.
More than 100 civil society groups, including Greenpeace International, Global Witness and Oxfam Brazil, joined CTRL+Z in signing a letter calling on Brazilian authorities to enforce regulations aimed at reining in Meta. They also pressed the company to do a better job of removing deepfakes and disinformation, and to provide clear rules on how content is moderated.
"We want transparency about moderation criteria, a human review channel and timely responses to protect the election," the group said on its website.
