Meta accused of bias ahead of Brazil presidential runoff

Lula's campaign seeks to disqualify Flávio Bolsonaro's presidential ticket over claims that Meta's platforms favored his candidacy.RIO DE JANEIRO (CN) — Days before Brazil’s presidential runoff, the country’s top electoral court is locked in a dispute with tech giant Meta, amid accusations its platforms are favoring Senator Flávio Bolsonaro over President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.In a letter Thursday, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and 12 Democratic House members urged Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to address reports of unequal treatment of Brazil’s presidential campaigns.The lawmakers requested a briefing for Friday and written answers by Nov. 4, including whether the parent company of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook would allow an independent audit of its election-related moderation and content distribution data.In a Thursday statement, Meta denied favoring any candidate and disputed claims that differences in follower counts and post reach were evidence of algorithmic interference. The company said content performance depends primarily on audience engagement, including shares, views, likes and comments.“An account with fewer followers can receive more views or reach more people than a much larger account without any preferential treatment,” the company said. Meta added that, to comply with the electoral court’s rules, it does not recommend organic posts from candidates’ accounts to users who do not follow them during the election campaign.The contentious presidential runoff is set for Sunday.“The electoral court took far too long to begin talks with the platforms, sign memorandums of understanding and, in doing so, establish obligations, fines and so on,” Fernando Neisser, a lawyer and member of the Brazilian Academy of Electoral and Political Law, said. “Normally, in recent election cycles, at least since 2020, this has happened in the year before the election.”Lula v. BolsonaroOn Wednesday, Lula’s campaign filed a lawsuitseeking to disqualify Bolsonaro’s presidential ticket over what it called abuse of economic power and misuse of mass media.Lula’s campaign argues that restrictions on its own accounts, combined with advantages in the distribution of pro-Bolsonaro posts, including AI-generated content, undermined a level playing field in the election.The campaign also said Bolsonaro’s posts received nearly three times as many interactions per post as Lula’s during the first week of the runoff campaign. It asked the court to preserve digital records and order Meta to provide internal data on recommendation systems, content distribution and moderation, as well as information about election ads and artificial intelligence tools.Neisser said that if a winning presidential ticket is disqualified for benefiting from abuse of power or misuse of mass media, the runner-up does not automatically assume the presidency. Brazilian law provides for a new election and an interim succession process until a new president is chosen.On Thursday, electoral court President Kassio Nunes Marques ordered Meta to submit a detailed report within 24 hours on “Exército do Lula” or, “Lula’s Army,” a pro-Lula WhatsApp channel run by Congressman André Janones with about 8.4 million followers. The order followed a complaint from Bolsonaro’s campaign questioning whether the channel’s coordinated online activities violated election rules.Lula v. MetaOn Oct. 9, Lula’s campaign filed a separate legal action against Meta over restrictions on the distribution of its posts, problems with paid promotion and issues with the company’s AI tool. The campaign said the AI tool refused requests to generate images of the president while fulfilling similar requests involving Bolsonaro.On Oct. 15, Justice Marco Aurélio Bellizze of the Superior Electoral Court ordered Meta to take steps to ensure equal treatment of both campaigns, including correcting problems with its AI tools, restoring paid advertising affected by technical failures and suspending irregular election ads.Bellizze also ordered Meta not to restrict the reach of election-related content unless the same criteria were applied to both campaigns, warning of a daily fine of 500,000 reais (about $100,000) for noncompliance. The ruling was unanimously upheld by the full electoral court on Oct. 16.In its court filing, Meta said the suspension of Lula’s advertising account was an error reversed within little more than an hour. The company also said it examined 35 profiles it was able to identify from a network cited by the campaign and found no evidence of coordinated inauthentic behavior.In an Oct. 16 statement, Meta acknowledged a problem with its AI image-generation tool but denied favoring either candidate. It said prompts using both candidates’ first names and electoral numbers could generate campaign posters, and that the problem affected both sides. Meta said it fixed the issue the same day.João Victor Archegas, a lawyer and researcher at Rio’s Institute for Technology and Society (ITS Rio), said the case highlights efforts by Brazil’s electoral justice system to collaborate with technology companies on election strategies and planning.“The biggest challenge is that there is no formula for assessing algorithmic interference or favoritism in elections, especially because the largest digital platforms are not transparent enough for us to access the internal data that would allow us to state categorically that such favoritism or interference actually occurred,” Archegas said. “The electoral court is very limited in what it can do with this information.”Courthouse News reporter Marília Marasciulo is based in Brazil.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads