Brazil's top electoral court gives Meta 48 hours to answer bias claims

Justice Marco Aurélio Bellizze of Brazil's Superior Electoral Court gave Meta Platforms 48 hours on October 10 to respond to six questions regarding digital campaign content. The order followed a petition from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's reelection campaign, which accused the owner of Facebook and Instagram of algorithmic selectivity and restricting the reach of its posts.

Lula's coalition also alleged that Meta failed to remove artificial intelligence-driven accounts attacking the president and allowed prohibited synthetic content to remain online. The team sought the urgent restoration of standard content distribution, the lifting of delivery limits, and the removal of automated and inauthentic profiles.

The court's six inquiries require Meta to preserve moderation records, detail moderation actions taken since the campaign began on August 16, explain anomalies in view count calculations, clarify why Lula's ad account was disabled on September 23, state whether it detected automated networks promoting Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, and list excluded presidential candidate profiles.

Lula's campaign also planned to approach the National Data Protection Authority, reporting that its Instagram profile was blocked from boosting feed content from early October 9 until the morning of October 10 before being resolved. Meta stated that the campaign's allegations are false and unsupported by facts, noting that technical issues were not isolated to Brazil or specific accounts and reaffirming its compliance with electoral rules.