Six days before Brazilians choose a president, the country’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) turned to a company in California and asked it something no voter can check: does the machine that decides what 200-odd million people see on their screens lean toward one man? On Monday, 19 October, the court gave Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, 24 hours to show that its content feeds do not favour either Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Flávio Bolsonaro.
As Al Jazeera reported, the court doubled the daily fine for failing to obey an earlier order, from 500,000 reais ($100,000) to 1 million reais ($200,000). “The continued noncompliance, just a few days before the run-off election, demonstrates that the fine imposed was insufficient,” a TSE judge wrote. Brazilian outlets described the same decision a little differently: Mobile Time and others reported that the fine would rise to 1 million reais if Meta failed to deliver its proof within the 24 hours. Either way, the amount on the table had doubled, and the clock was running.
An order from Thursday
The dispute had begun the previous week. On Thursday, 15 October, Minister Marco Aurélio Bellizze ordered Meta to treat the two campaigns equally through the second round, under a daily fine of 500,000 reais, Correio da Manhã reported. The company was not to cut the reach of one candidate’s posts, limit his recommendations or restrict his search results unequally. By 21 October it was to restore paid promotion bought by Lula’s campaign that had reportedly never been delivered. The complaint also covered Meta AI, the company’s image tool, which allegedly refused requests to generate pictures of Lula while accepting similar requests about the senator.
The next day, the full court upheld the order unanimously. It did not find that Meta had deliberately favoured anyone. It wanted only to keep the scales level until Sunday.
Then came the paperwork, and with it the oldest struggle between a state and anyone it tries to regulate: the struggle over time. The court wanted explanations of how Meta distributes political content, how its recommendation systems work and what limits apply to paid electoral advertising. Meta had 72 hours; it asked for five business days. Bellizze refused, writing that it falls to the court, not to the company, to set deadlines.
A reflection, no more than that: a firm that every day decides how much attention each Brazilian voice receives was told, in plain judicial language, that it does not own the calendar.
What the campaign says it saw
Lula’s campaign brought the complaint. It says Meta stopped his Instagram profile from being fully promoted and kept it out of search results. It says moderators took down his supporters’ posts at a disproportionate rate while leaving up pro-Bolsonaro content and posts that cast doubt on the integrity of the vote. Earlier this month the campaign set up a website to gather supporters’ complaints about restrictions on social media. Civil society groups and digital rights monitors have backed its account of what happened on all three platforms.
Meta denies favouring anyone. It acknowledges that some of Lula’s campaign ads went offline for a time, and blames technical errors; in its account the failures were operational, with no deliberate change to the reach of electoral content.
On Friday, according to Al Jazeera, the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported that it had reviewed internal Meta messages in which staff acknowledged that the two candidates’ accounts had been handled inconsistently.
Where the money goes
The nonprofit CTRL+Z published findings suggesting Meta may have given Bolsonaro an outsized presence. “Meta cannot be the invisible judge of the Brazilian electoral debate,” the group said. Its executive director, Daniela da Silva, said campaigns now spend more on social media than on television or street advertising, and that the platforms “have the capacity to do much more than they are doing.”
The court’s own data show how far the money has moved. Facebook earned more than 200 million reais ($40m) from the 2024 municipal elections, more than any other advertising supplier. The leaflet and the loudspeaker truck have given way to the feed, and the feed has an owner.
More than 100 organisations, among them Greenpeace International, Global Witness and Oxfam Brazil, signed a letter with CTRL+Z urging the authorities to enforce the rules on Meta. They want faster removal of deepfakes, clear moderation rules, a channel for human review and timely responses.
Sunday
The run-off is on 25 October. In the first round, on 4 October, Flávio Bolsonaro, a right-wing senator and son of the imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, took 47 percent to Lula’s 45 percent. Neither passed 50 percent. Polls now show the two essentially tied, in a contest that has been fought over the family name as much as over the man.
In an election that close, a delayed advert, a missing search result or a post that reaches fewer people could matter. Bellizze knew it. In his decision he noted how near the second round was, and that from 22 October the law bans paid boosting and the publication of new synthetic content. After that, whatever reach was lost cannot be bought back.
Meta was given until Tuesday to show its working. By Monday night, nothing had been reported on whether it had done so, or on whether the court had started counting the higher fine.