Brazilian judge orders Meta to treat rival presidential campaigns equally

A judge at Brazil’s top electoral court has ordered Meta to treat the campaigns of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his rival Flávio Bolsonaro equally in the run-up to the presidential run-off on 25 October. The interim order, issued by Marco Aurélio Bellizze on 15 October, carries a fine of 500,000 reais a day if Meta fails to comply. [3] [4]

The order covers restrictions on the distribution of posts, recommendations and search results, as well as how Meta AI handles requests about the candidates. It does not ban moderation: previously announced platform rules apply equally to both campaigns, while electoral rules and court orders remain exceptions. Meta must also have a person review restrictions on the campaigns’ advertising accounts and paid promotion. [3] [7]

Lula’s campaign brought the case after alleging that its posts and advertisements had been unfairly restricted while Bolsonaro’s content benefited. Folha de S.Paulo reported that Meta AI refused a request to create Lula campaign material but fulfilled a comparable request concerning Bolsonaro. Meta denied deliberately favouring either candidate and attributed some reported problems to technical faults. It said it had tightened its AI filters to prevent the generation of candidate images for both sides. [6] [7]

Bellizze did not, at this stage, find that Meta had manipulated distribution for or against a candidate. According to CNN Brasil’s account of the ruling, he noted that a technical statement showed distribution from an official candidate account above its baseline on 7 October, while a report submitted with the complaint lacked sufficient evidence of deliberate partisan favouritism. He also said there was no basis yet to conclude that the AI fault was deliberate or systematic. Those findings do not settle the cause of every restriction alleged by the campaign. [3] [5]