President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's campaign plans to ask Brazil's top electoral court to annul Senator Flávio Bolsonaro's presidential ticket, alleging Meta favored Bolsonaro ahead of the Oct. 25 runoff.
The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) said Bolsonaro led the Oct. 4 first round with 47.03% of valid votes, compared with Lula's 45.16%. The planned challenge puts the conduct of a major social media company at issue days before voters choose between the candidates.
AFP reported that Lula campaign coordinator Camilo Santana postponed the intended filing from Oct. 20 to Oct. 21. Folha de S.Paulo reported that the proposed case would allege abuse of economic power and misuse of communications channels, drawing on claims about Meta's content recommendations, AI tools and advertising reviews.
The planned challenge to Bolsonaro's ticket follows a separate complaint against Meta by Lula's campaign. In that case, the TSE directed the company to explain its treatment of the campaigns' political content and advertising. The court said Meta submitted information and met with the judge and representatives of both campaigns on Oct. 20. Meta has said it adopted a court-ordered two-hour review of campaign ad account restrictions.
Meta denies favoring either candidate. It said a mistake disabled Lula's campaign ad account for just over an hour on Sept. 23. The company also attributed an Oct. 7 problem with view counts to a fault that lasted about five hours and affected creators in more than 100 countries.
Meta said a separate worldwide fault starting Oct. 9 stopped some advertisers from making new ads out of existing Instagram feed posts. It said the problem ended early Oct. 10 and left ads already running and direct uploads unaffected. Folha de S.Paulo, citing internal company messages, reported that Lula's campaign could not promote feed posts for nearly 24 hours on Oct. 9.
Meta also said prompts pairing either “Flávio” or “Luiz” with the corresponding candidate's ballot number briefly bypassed safeguards against campaign-style AI images. It said it fixed the gap on Oct. 14. The court has made no finding that Meta deliberately favored a candidate. The runoff is scheduled for Oct. 25.
