Why did Brazil President Lula file a complaint against Meta? | Explained

The story so far: On Sunday (October 11, 2026) the election campaign of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva accused the tech giant, Meta (parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram) of deliberately restricting and blocking social media content of the leader on its various platforms, particularly Instagram.

What happened?

Mr. Lula, who is seeking a fourth non-consecutive term in the ongoing electoral run in Brazil, is up against far-right candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

In the run-up to the elections (the final round will be conducted on October 25), his campaign team, in a statement wrote that Mr. Lula’s profile was prevented from promoting posts on Instagram which severely affected his reach. It further states that post the first round of voting, which took place on October 4 wherein Mr. Bolsonaro came out on top, Mr. Lula’s and other left leaders’ profiles “suddenly disappeared from Instagram’s search function.”

The statement added that, “the series of technical issues... raises strong suspicions that Meta’s actions constitute an attempt to interfere in the Brazilian electoral process to the benefit of Flavio Bolsonaro’s candidacy”.

How has Meta responded?

Meta’s Brazil office denied the charges, calling them “simply false” and “not supported by the facts.” The company said that it was committed to ensuring a level-playing field during elections, and that such glitches were global and not just localised in Brazil with the intention to tamper anyone’s candidacy.

Has this happened before?

This is not the first time where Meta, formerly Facebook, has been accused of election interference. The most infamous example of the same was the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the U.S. which dealt with the 2016 presidential campaign between Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

A personality-based pop-up quiz allegedly collected personal data, such as political preferences, from users on Facebook, which was transferred to Cambridge Analytica, a third-party political consultancy which worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign. The firm used the data to profile voters and target them with personalised ads and content which, critics say, influenced voter behaviour and preferences.

The scale of the data breach was exponential — it became apparent that the data of up to 87 million users was shared with the U.K.-based political firm. After the news became public via a whistleblower who used to work in the firm to harvest data from Facebook, Facebook admitted that “improper transfer” of data had happened and suspended the political consultancy from its platforms. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg later apologised for the data breach before a Congressional committee of the U.S., stating that “We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry”.

In India, too, Facebook has been accused of favouring one political party over another. In 2022, an investigation conducted by The Reporters’ Collective and ad.watch of over 5 lakh political ads during the 2019 elections revealed that Facebook was offering cheaper rates to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) than its opponents. It also identified scores of “dummy” or “surrogate” ads, which are advertisements run by so-called third parties rather than the official party accounts, which are not governed by the electoral code of conduct rules and regulations that official party handles have to follow. These ads were allowed to promote a particular party and attack its opponents without clearly disclosing their political affiliations.

However, Meta denied all the charges and said that, “we apply our policies uniformly without regard to anyone’s political positions or party affiliations”.