Ahead of Brazil’s election runoff, Meta’s recommendations for Bolsonaro’s channels ruled unlawful as foreign ad funding adds to accountability controversy

Africanews, citing The Associated Press, reported that Brazil’s electoral court issued two rulings concerning electoral content distribution ahead of the October 25 presidential runoff: the platform must treat incumbent President Lula and opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro equally, and providing algorithmic recommendations to Bolsonaro’s Instagram and WhatsApp channels was unlawful. A lawsuit filed by Lula’s campaign argued that Meta used biased algorithms and AI-based restrictions to favor Bolsonaro; Meta denied politically favoring any candidate in Brazil’s election.

Meta attributed the recent platform issues to global technical glitches unrelated to targeted suppression, as well as strict anti-fraud measures and regulatory compliance, and maintained that its systems do not distribute content according to political ideology and that its rules apply equally to all candidates. The report said Meta did not directly explain why Bolsonaro’s two channels received algorithmic recommendations. The company’s two global technical disruptions in October — one froze view counts on Instagram Reels in more than 100 countries while content distribution continued normally; the other briefly interrupted a tool feature for creating advertisements based on existing Instagram posts — explained anomalies in platform functions but did not answer the court’s concern about recommendations to campaign channels.

On October 19, a group of protesters demonstrated outside Meta’s offices in São Paulo, accusing the company of interfering in Brazil’s presidential election. October 25 was the voting day for the runoff between Lula and Bolsonaro.

Another thread of the accountability debate came from research by NetLab at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. The study said Meta allowed at least 1,613 noncompliant political advertisements to run from July through September, generating 171 million views and about 2 million reais in revenue, with most of the funding for the advertisements coming from the United States. The report did not disclose the research methodology, underlying data or margin of error; the figures are results published by the study and do not represent final findings by Brazilian judicial authorities on each advertisement.

Marie Santini, a communications professor who participated in the study, cited Brazilian rules saying: "In Brazil, no entity other than a political party, candidate or coalition is permitted to purchase electoral advertising." She further argued: "No company, whether based in Brazil or abroad, should be able to buy advertisements on Meta to promote electoral activity." These were the arguments of a researcher involved in the study and do not amount to a finding by judicial authorities on cross-border purchasing.

The controversy therefore goes beyond whether a particular recommendation complied with the rules. Brazilian rules restrict who may purchase electoral advertisements to parties, candidates and coalitions, while NetLab says the related funding came mainly from the United States; the platform’s global advertising accounts, payment verification and content distribution have therefore become unavoidable elements of electoral accountability. Meta both decides whether advertisements can run and earns revenue from their distribution, while advertisers seek political reach, highlighting the tension between the platform’s interests and electoral neutrality.

Existing reporting does not indicate that Meta intentionally helped any candidate win, but this does not eliminate the platform’s systemic responsibility: who is eligible to purchase advertisements, which advertisements are allowed to run, and why particular campaign channels received recommendations are all pieces of information controlled by the platform and difficult for external overseers to verify. Brazil’s electoral court has already ruled the recommendations in question unlawful. Before October 25, what now needs to be tested is whether Meta will halt and correct the recommendations, identify and block the advertisements flagged by the study, and how accountability will be imposed for the ad-review process behind the roughly 2 million reais in revenue. More importantly, it remains to be seen whether Brazil can bring cross-border funding — and not merely domestic political groups — into the same framework for electoral accountability.