Meta's fine could double to one million reais a day unless it proves fair play

Brazil's Superior Electoral Court has given Meta 24 hours to demonstrate equal treatment of the two presidential campaigns, putting its systems under scrutiny days before the runoff. ^[1]

The deadline was due to expire on October 20, five days before President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces Senator Flávio Bolsonaro in the October 25 vote, according to MercoPress. Judge Marco Aurélio Bellizze found the company's earlier response inadequate and warned that its daily fine could double from 500,000 to one million reais. ^[1]

The order covers Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and remains in force through the end of the runoff. It bars unequal restrictions on the distribution of candidates' political content, their inclusion in recommendations and their visibility in search results. Meta AI must also apply identical criteria to both campaigns. ^[1][3]

The dispute reaches beyond whether an individual post stays online. It concerns the systems that determine whether voters encounter campaign material at all, from a recommended account to an advertisement bought but never delivered. Those are the points at which Lula's campaign says it suffered unequal treatment. ^[1][3]

Meta denies political bias. In a statement reported by the Associated Press, the company said its systems do not distribute content according to political ideology and that it applies the same rules to candidates and political viewpoints. It attributed the disputed incidents to unrelated technical problems, anti-fraud measures and compliance with regulations. ^[5]

The court has not found that Meta deliberately manipulated the campaign. Bellizze said the evidence did not yet establish deliberate manipulation, according to teleSUR, while finding that the company had failed to demonstrate compliance adequately. Whether Meta met the latest deadline, and whether the court accepted any submission, was not yet known. ^[4][1]

A deadline after an inadequate response

The immediate pressure on Meta follows its handling of an earlier court instruction. According to MercoPress, Bellizze criticised the company for taking five days to respond to a 72-hour deadline without authorisation, citing technical difficulties. He also faulted it for submitting reports in English without translations and providing documents out of context. ^[1]

The new demand requires detailed reports in Portuguese. A separate instruction requires Meta, by Wednesday at the latest, to restore Lula campaign advertising that had been paid for but not delivered, or state that no such advertising remained pending. ^[1]

That gives the compliance process two concrete tests: an explanation of how Meta's systems treat the campaigns and an accounting for undelivered paid ads. A general assurance of neutrality has already proved insufficient for the judge. ^[1][4]

The threatened increase would add 500,000 reais to the daily penalty. It is a warning tied to non-compliance, rather than an announcement that the higher fine has already been imposed. The Superior Electoral Court unanimously upheld the earlier ruling on Friday, according to MercoPress. ^[1]

For the campaigns, the timetable matters as much as the money. A distribution problem corrected after voting cannot deliver an advertisement during the campaign.

Restrictions, recommendations and missing ads

Lula's campaign alleged that Meta restricted the reach of his accounts and that Meta AI refused to generate images supporting him while producing material for Bolsonaro. Those allegations underpin the demand for equal treatment across both content distribution and the company's AI service. ^[1][3][4]

Internal company messages reviewed by Folha de S.Paulo described Lula's Instagram account as limited compared with Bolsonaro's, according to the newspaper's October 16 account. The messages also recorded problems that prevented Lula's campaign from boosting some feed posts for nearly 24 hours on October 9. Boosting is the paid promotion of an existing post to reach more people. ^[2]

Lula's campaign estimated that about 1.3 million people did not see the affected advertisements. That is the campaign's estimate of lost exposure, not a count of voters whose decisions changed. ^[2]

Folha also reported internal messages indicating that Bolsonaro's profile and WhatsApp channel appeared in recommendations or search results where candidate accounts were not supposed to be recommended. Meta told the newspaper that the episodes had distinct causes, including technical failures and an error that had been corrected. ^[2]

The court's requirements address these different routes to an audience separately. The order therefore reaches the choices made by the platform's systems as well as the availability of the underlying content. ^[3]

Both campaigns bring complaints

Bolsonaro's campaign has also taken a complaint to the electoral court. It alleged that Meta permitted negative advertisements against him and allowed AI-generated Lula campaign material to circulate without the required label. Bellizze admitted that complaint to the case, according to MercoPress. ^[1]

The two campaigns are challenging different parts of Meta's operation: Lula's side alleges restricted access to audiences and unequal AI treatment, while Bolsonaro's side alleges failures over advertisements and labelling. Meta's position is that it favours neither candidate. ^[1][3][5]

The next decision belongs to the court: whether Meta's response demonstrates compliance and whether the increased fine is warranted. ^[1]