Brazilian court orders Meta to prove Lula and Bolsonaro get equal treatment

A judge also doubled the daily fine for noncompliance with a previous court order governing political content.

Al JazeeraUmar Farooq2026-10-19 17:24查看原文 ↗

A judge also doubled the daily fine for noncompliance with a previous court order governing political content on Meta’s platform.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro debate ahead of the presidential election run-off in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on October 18, 2026 [Nelson Almeida/AFP]

Brazil’s top electoral court has doubled a daily fine for the United States-based social media company Meta, saying it failed to comply with an order about how political content is shown on its platforms.

On Monday, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) gave Meta 24 hours to show that it is not favouring one presidential candidate over the other in its content feeds.

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The decision comes less than a week before Brazilians vote in a presidential run-off that pits left-wing incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva against right-wing senator Flavio Bolsonaro.

“The continued noncompliance, just a few days before the run-off election, demonstrates that the fine imposed was insufficient,” a TSE judge said in Monday’s order.

The penalty for noncompliance was also increased in the order, from 500,000 Brazilian reals ($100,000) to one million reals ($200,000).

The court order is in response to a complaint from Lula’s campaign that Meta prevented his profile from being fully promoted on Instagram and from being visible in searches.

His campaign has also argued that posts by Lula’s supporters are being disproportionately taken down by moderators, who are instead allowing content promoting his rival or questioning the integrity of elections.

Civil society groups and digital rights monitors have supported those allegations, saying Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — three platforms run by Meta — have suppressed content from the left-leaning leader while boosting posts promoting Bolsonaro.

Meta has denied favouring either candidate on its platforms, although it admits some of Lula’s campaign ads were taken offline temporarily due to technical errors.

Lula and Bolsonaro are set to face off in a final round of voting on Sunday. Bolsonaro, the son of an imprisoned former president, performed better than many analysts expected in the first round of voting on October 4.

He garnered 47 percent of the vote, compared with Lula’s 45 percent. Neither, however, crossed the 50-percent threshold needed to avoid a run-off. Pre-election polling puts the two virtually neck-and-neck going into Sunday’s vote.

Social media bias has been a point of contention on both sides of Brazil’s political sphere.

Earlier this month, Lula’s campaign launched a website to document complaints from supporters about their activities being unfairly restricted on Meta and other social media platforms.

Several digital rights groups, such as the nonprofit CTRL+Z, have published findings that suggest Meta may have helped Bolsonaro have an outsized presence on its platforms, which many in Brazil use as their main source of news.

“Brazilian citizens have the right to know why their accounts were banned, why their posts disappeared, why their accounts lost reach, and why they are being prevented from commenting, reposting, and saving content,” CTRL+Z wrote on its website.

“Meta cannot be the invisible judge of the Brazilian electoral debate.”

On Friday, the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S Paulo reported it had reviewed internal messages between Meta employees acknowledging they were aware of the inconsistent treatment of Lula and Bolsonaro’s social media presence.

Political campaigns in Brazil have dramatically increased their spending on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, outpacing traditional avenues like television or street advertising in recent elections, said Daniela da Silva, the executive director of CTRL+Z.

According to data collected by the Supreme Electoral Court, Facebook received more than 200 million reals ($40m) in revenue in the 2024 municipal elections, ranking at the top of advertising suppliers for that cycle.

Despite that revenue, da Silva said that Meta and other companies were not taking their responsibility towards election fairness seriously.

“These are very powerful, wealthy companies, and they do have the capacity to do much more than they are doing,” she told Al Jazeera.

More than 100 civil society groups, including Greenpeace International, Global Witness and Oxfam Brazil, have joined CTRL+Z to sign a letter calling on Brazilian authorities to enforce rules meant to rein in Meta.

They have also pushed the company itself to do a better job removing deepfakes and disinformation, and to provide clear rules on how it moderates content.

“We want transparency regarding moderation criteria, a human review channel, and timely responses to protect the election,” the group said on its website.

法官还将违反先前法院关于Meta平台上政治内容的命令的每日罚款提高了一倍。

2026年10月18日，巴西总统路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦和参议员弗拉维奥·博尔索纳罗在巴西圣保罗举行总统选举第二轮投票前的辩论。[Nelson Almeida/AFP]

巴西最高选举法院将总部位于美国的社交媒体公司 Meta 的每日罚款提高了一倍，称该公司未能遵守有关其平台上政治内容展示方式的命令。

周一，最高选举法院 (TSE) 要求 Meta 在 24 小时内证明其内容推送中没有偏袒任何一位总统候选人。

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据报道，Meta公司三名员工称，卢拉的账户在巴西大选中受到限制。

距离巴西总统大选决胜轮投票不到一周，这一决定出台。此次决胜轮将在左翼现任总统路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦和右翼参议员弗拉维奥·博尔索纳罗之间展开。

“在决选前几天仍继续不遵守规定，这表明所施加的罚款不够，”台湾高等法院一名法官在周一的命令中表示。

该命令还将不遵守规定的处罚从 50 万巴西雷亚尔（10 万美元）提高到 100 万雷亚尔（20 万美元）。

法院的这项命令是对卢拉竞选团队投诉的回应，该投诉称 Meta 阻止了卢拉的个人资料在 Instagram 上得到充分推广，并使其在搜索结果中可见。

他的竞选团队还辩称，卢拉的支持者发布的帖子被版主不成比例地删除，而版主却允许发布宣传其竞争对手或质疑选举公正性的内容。