BRASÍLIA, Brazil — Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court has given Meta 48 hours to explain whether it reduced the reach of posts by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s re-election campaign, after the campaign accused the tech giant of trying to interfere in the presidential race to benefit his rival, AFP and the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo reported.
In a statement on Saturday, Lula’s campaign said Meta had in recent days “prevented President Lula’s profile from promoting Instagram feed posts,” that a post on his official account “experienced an interruption in view counts,” and that before the first round the profiles of Lula and other leftist leaders “suddenly disappeared from Instagram’s search function.” The series of problems “raises strong suspicions that Meta’s actions constitute an attempt to interfere in the Brazilian electoral process to the benefit of Flavio Bolsonaro’s candidacy,” the statement said, according to AFP. The campaign also said it would file a complaint with Brazil’s data protection authority, G1 reported.
The court, known as the TSE, ordered Meta to preserve its moderation logs, ad data and metrics; report, profile by profile, every measure applied since Aug. 16 to Lula’s official accounts and to third-party accounts; explain anomalies in view counts on videos posted on Oct. 7; justify disabling the campaign’s ad account on Sept. 23; and say whether it had identified a network of 255 AI-run Instagram profiles that the fact-checking agency Lupa found drew 58 million views in a month attacking Lula, his Workers’ Party and first lady Janja da Silva, Estadão reported. The campaign and the electoral prosecutor will then have 24 hours each to respond before the court rules on an urgent injunction request.
Meta’s Brazil office called the accusations “simply false” and “not supported by the facts.” “Many of the technical issues mentioned did not affect only Brazil or specific accounts,” the company told AFP. “We comply with electoral regulations and are committed to a level playing field regarding the use of our platforms.”
Lula is seeking a fourth, non-consecutive term in the Oct. 25 runoff against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who finished first in last Sunday’s opening round. Lula, who does not use a mobile phone, launched a social media push after the first round that includes videos of him speaking directly to his followers.
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