The independent Oversight Board’s co-chairs pressed Meta on Oct. 20 to publish data on its election protections after errors interrupted voter outreach in the United States and campaign advertising in Brazil.
The co-chairs said public measures are needed to show whether Meta’s safeguards work. The board recommended them in 2023 after examining Meta’s handling of content related to Brazil’s 2022 presidential election. The co-chairs said Meta has yet to establish those measures.
The No Kings Coalition said its main Instagram account went offline at about 1:30 p.m. ET on Oct. 17 as it held events encouraging early voting. The account later became visible, but organizers said they could not post until about 5:30 p.m. ET. The coalition said the interruption hampered its communication during the events.
The co-chairs said Meta’s additional checks should have caught the suspension. They questioned why the coalition’s account was outside cross-check, a program that can provide human review before restrictions are imposed on prominent civic accounts. They also said specialists should have reviewed an action against a Brazilian campaign advertising account.
Meta said it mistakenly disabled one ad account used by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign for a little over an hour on Sept. 23. An advertisement had triggered a stricter fraud review aimed at scams involving government programs. Meta said the review followed an April 2026 agreement and that it had recognized the possibility of legitimate ads being affected.
The company said Lula’s Facebook page and Instagram account remained accessible. It denied favoring any candidate.
Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) requested information from Meta within 24 hours about equal treatment of the campaigns’ content and advertising. The court said a judge met Meta and representatives of Lula and presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro on Oct. 20 after the company responded. Lula’s campaign alleged unequal treatment; the court is examining possible favoritism.
A related order provided for a conditional increase in Meta’s daily fine from 500,000 reais to 1 million reais if the company failed to prove full compliance within 24 hours.
Meta said it had implemented measures to comply with the TSE’s advertising order and that unpaid posts were unaffected. Its approach prevents some social-issue advertisers, including nongovernmental groups and news outlets, from running those ads through Brazil’s Oct. 25 presidential runoff.
