Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) gave Meta 24 hours to document its compliance with an order requiring equal treatment for both campaigns, making a higher daily fine conditional on the company’s response before the Oct. 25 runoff.
France 24 reported Monday, citing a court document seen by AFP, that Judge Marco Aurélio Bellizze said Meta had not adequately demonstrated compliance with an Oct. 15 directive. The order called for equal treatment of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign and Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro’s through the runoff.
A court notice made the increase conditional on Meta failing to prove full compliance within 24 hours. The daily rate would rise from 500,000 reais ($100,000) to 1 million reais ($200,000) if it misses that deadline.
Lula’s campaign accused Meta of suppressing the reach of his posts and said WhatsApp’s AI tool restricted some requests for election content involving him while allowing similar requests about Bolsonaro. Meta denied favoring either campaign.
Meta said an antifraud review mistakenly disabled Lula’s campaign ad account on Sept. 23. It attributed a separate, global software fault on Oct. 9-10 to a problem that prevented advertisers from turning existing Instagram posts into ads. Meta said ads already running were unaffected by that fault.
The runoff follows an Oct. 4 first round in which Bolsonaro received 47.03% of valid votes and Lula received 45.16%, according to an early Oct. 5 TSE update that said 99.99% of ballot boxes had been counted. Nexus and AtlasIntel surveys put Bolsonaro narrowly ahead on a valid-vote basis: 50.3% to 49.7% in Nexus and 51.1% to 48.9% in AtlasIntel, as covered in earlier runoff polling.
Brazil’s presidential runoff is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 25.
