Meta staff discussed Lula Instagram ad restriction, Brazilian newspaper reports

Meta employees discussed a restriction that stopped President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s official Instagram account from paying to boost posts already in its feed for almost 24 hours on 9 October, according to internal messages reported by Folha de S.Paulo on Friday. The incident has become part of a dispute over online campaigning before Brazil’s 25 October presidential run-off against Flávio Bolsonaro. [1] [5] [6]

The account was not shut down: earlier promotions kept running, and Lula’s campaign could place separate new adverts. The campaign estimated that about 1.3 million people missed its adverts because of the restriction, Folha reported. An initial explanation pointed to a global data outage affecting more than 3,000 accounts on 7 October. But Folha says that outage lasted about five hours, two days before Lula’s nearly day-long problem. The connection between the incidents remains unclear. [1]

Folha also reported that Meta staff noted Bolsonaro’s Instagram profile appearing in searches when it should not have, while Lula’s did not appear in some searches for his exact name. A WhatsApp search for a Lula-supporting channel also returned a Bolsonaro-supporting channel. Folha says Brazilian election rules prohibit algorithmic recommendations of candidates’ accounts and channels. In a separate Instagram test earlier in the week, Dutch broadcaster NOS found Lula’s official profile harder to find than Bolsonaro’s. That test showed what appeared in those searches, not how widely either candidate’s content reached users. [1] [3]

Lula’s campaign has accused Meta of favouring his opponent. Folha says none of the conversations it reviewed admitted electoral interference; the messages also described a brief advertising error affecting both campaigns in September. Bolsonaro’s campaign disputed Folha’s account of problems with its adverts. Meta told the newspaper that it gives no candidate preferential treatment, attributing the episodes to different causes, including wider technical faults, a corrected error and the application of election rules. [1] [4]

On 15 October, following a complaint from Lula’s campaign, a judge of Brazil’s electoral court ordered Meta to ensure equal treatment of the candidates in content distribution, searches and its AI tool. Non-compliance could bring a fine of 500,000 reais a day. The order preceded Folha’s report; it was not a finding that Meta had deliberately favoured either candidate. [4]