President Lula’s campaign accuses Meta of interfering in Brazil’s elections — The Rio Times

In Brazil, the campaign headquarters of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva accused Meta of interfering in the presidential election in favor of his rival, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Lula’s campaign said it would appeal to Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court and the National Data Protection Authority. The Rio Times reports.

The president’s campaign headquarters claims that from the beginning of October 9 until the morning of October 10, Instagram did not allow paid promotion of posts from Lula’s profile. The campaign also said that the candidate’s advertising account was deactivated during the first round and that the view count on one of the posts was interrupted, which, according to the headquarters, affected its reach.

Positions of Lula’s campaign and Meta

Lula’s representatives believe that a series of problems that Meta explained as technical glitches may have benefited Bolsonaro’s candidacy. They cited a report by the Workers’ Party communications service: according to it, Flávio Bolsonaro’s page received 2.96 times more interactions on average, despite having 17.2% fewer followers than Lula’s page.

More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.

Meta rejected the accusations, calling them false and unsupported by facts. The company said that many of the cited technical problems were not limited to Brazil or individual accounts, and also stressed its compliance with electoral rules and equal access for candidates to its platforms. At the same time, according to Meta’s ad library, 11 promoted ads were active on Lula’s Facebook and Instagram pages on the morning of October 10.

Second round on October 25

In the first round on October 4, Flávio Bolsonaro received 47.03% of valid votes, while Lula received 45.16%. The second round of the presidential election is scheduled for October 25. The first Datafolha poll ahead of the second-round vote, conducted on October 6–7 among 2,520 voters, gave Bolsonaro 52% of valid votes against Lula’s 48%.

As of the afternoon of October 10, it was not publicly known whether Lula’s campaign had already filed a complaint with the Superior Electoral Court or the National Data Protection Authority. No decision by the electoral court on this matter had been made public either.