Brazil’s top electoral court has doubled the daily fine imposed on Meta, the United States-based social media company, after finding it had failed to comply with an order on how political content appears on its platforms.
On Monday, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) gave Meta 24 hours to demonstrate that it is not favouring one presidential candidate over the other in its content feeds. The ruling comes less than a week before Brazilians vote in a presidential runoff between left-wing incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and right-wing senator Flavio Bolsonaro.
A TSE judge said in the order that the company’s continued noncompliance, so close to the vote, showed the original penalty was not enough. “The continued noncompliance, just a few days before the run-off election, demonstrates that the fine imposed was insufficient,” the judge said. The penalty for each day of noncompliance rose from 500,000 reals ($100,000) to one million reals ($200,000).
Lula campaign alleges unequal treatment on Instagram and Meta
The order responds to a complaint from Lula’s campaign, which says Meta has prevented his profile from being fully promoted on Instagram and from appearing in searches. The campaign also argues that moderators are removing posts by Lula’s supporters at a disproportionate rate, while leaving content that promotes his rival or questions the integrity of elections online.
Civil society groups and digital rights monitors have backed those claims. They say Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, all three run by Meta, have held back content from the left-leaning leader while boosting posts that promote Bolsonaro.
Meta has denied favouring either candidate on its platforms. The company has acknowledged, however, that some of Lula’s campaign ads were taken offline temporarily because of technical errors.
The final round is scheduled for Sunday. Bolsonaro, the son of an imprisoned former president, did better than many analysts had expected in the first round on October 4, winning 47 percent of the vote to Lula’s 45 percent. Neither candidate passed the 50-percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff, and pre-election polling shows the two virtually neck-and-neck.
Researchers and newspaper report scrutiny of Meta’s moderation
Social media bias has been a point of contention on both sides of Brazil’s political divide. Earlier this month, Lula’s campaign launched a website collecting complaints from supporters who say their activity has been unfairly restricted on Meta and other platforms.
Several digital rights groups, including the nonprofit CTRL+Z, have published findings suggesting Meta may have helped give Bolsonaro an outsized presence on its platforms, which many Brazilians use as their main source of news. On its website, CTRL+Z wrote: “Brazilian citizens have the right to know why their accounts were banned, why their posts disappeared, why their accounts lost reach, and why they are being prevented from commenting, reposting, and saving content.” The group added: “Meta cannot be the invisible judge of the Brazilian electoral debate.”
On Friday, the newspaper Folha de S Paulo said it had reviewed internal messages between Meta employees acknowledging awareness of the inconsistent treatment of the two candidates’ social media presence.
Daniela da Silva, executive director of CTRL+Z, said political campaigns in Brazil have sharply increased their spending on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, now outpacing traditional channels like television and street advertising in recent elections. Data gathered by the Supreme Electoral Court shows Facebook took in more than 200 million reals ($40m) in revenue during the 2024 municipal elections, placing it at the top of advertising suppliers for that cycle.
Civil society coalition presses Meta and authorities for action
Despite that income, da Silva said Meta and other companies were not taking their responsibility for election fairness seriously. “These are very powerful, wealthy companies, and they do have the capacity to do much more than they are doing,” she said in an interview.
More than 100 civil society groups, including Greenpeace International, Global Witness and Oxfam Brazil, have joined CTRL+Z in signing a letter urging Brazilian authorities to enforce rules designed to restrain Meta. The coalition has also pressed the company to do more to remove deepfakes and disinformation and to publish clear rules on how it moderates content.
“We want transparency regarding moderation criteria, a human review channel, and timely responses to protect the election,” the group said on its website.
