In their letter, the lawmakers express “deep concern” over reports that Meta’s platforms “are restricting or suppressing content associated with Lula’s campaign” US Senator Bernie Sanders and 11 other Democratic lawmakers on Thursday asked Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to explain the alleged unequal treatment by Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp of the campaigns of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who face each other on Sunday in Brazil’s presidential runoff.
In their letter, the lawmakers express “deep concern” over reports that Meta’s platforms “are restricting or suppressing content associated with Lula’s campaign while amplifying or recommending content linked to Bolsonaro’s campaign”. They say favouring a candidate, even unintentionally, is “unacceptable”, and ask the company to disclose whether it had contacts with Donald Trump’s administration about Brazil’s judiciary, platform regulation, the election or US policy towards Brazil, and if so to hand over records of meetings, calls and messages.
In Brazil, the Electoral Prosecutor’s Office said on Wednesday that Meta had failed to comply with four points of the Superior Electoral Court’s order requiring it to treat both candidates equally, including providing statistics on its artificial intelligence tool and handling complaints equally, and asked for the stipulated fine to be applied. The decision rests with Judge Marco Aurélio Bellizze, who had warned that the daily penalty could rise to one million reais.
Lula’s campaign has complained to the UN and the Organization of American States about the reduced reach of his profiles and Meta’s artificial intelligence refusing to generate images supporting the president while doing so for his rival. Bolsonaro’s campaign has also gone to the court, accusing Meta of allowing negative ads against the senator and AI-made Lula campaign material without the mandatory label. Meta denies any interference and attributes the incidents to technical errors that it says it has corrected.
Polls show a statistical tie between the two candidates, who hold their final debate on Friday on TV Globo.