Judge Imposes $98,000 Daily Non-Compliance Fine
A judge on Brazil's top electoral court ordered technology giant Meta on Thursday to guarantee equal treatment for both presidential candidates. The legal intervention arrives just days before Brazil's high-stakes October 25 presidential runoff election. Incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces challenger Senator Flávio Bolsonaro after a razor-thin first-round vote on October 4. Bolsonaro secured 47 percent of the opening vote compared to 45 percent for the 80-year-old incumbent president. Justice Marco Aurélio Bellizze ruled that Meta cannot restrict search results, remove posts, or reduce organic reach unfairly. Furthermore, the judge ordered the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp to apply identical rules across its artificial intelligence tools. Meta faces a steep fine of 500,000 reais ($98,000) per day if it fails to comply immediately.
Allegations Of Algorithmic Bias And AI Restrictions
The court acted after Lula's legal team filed a formal complaint accusing Meta of favoring Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign. Campaign lawyers Gean Ferreira and Evelyn Santos alleged that Lula's organic posts suffered unjustified reductions in platform visibility. Conversely, they argued that accounts backing Bolsonaro received artificially inflated reach rivaling the engagement metrics of global pop stars. The legal filing also highlighted a troubling disparity within WhatsApp's built-in "Meta AI" image generator. Voters reported that the AI tool refused to generate campaign images supporting Lula while freely creating promotional graphics for Bolsonaro. Lula's campaign demanded that the court force Meta to double his organic reach to compensate for the lost visibility.
Meta Blames Technical Glitches For Platform Issues
While Meta declined to comment directly on Thursday's fine, the company previously denied skewing its algorithms toward Bolsonaro. In an October 11 filing, Meta told electoral authorities that technical glitches had affected user accounts across multiple countries. The company maintained that it complies fully with Brazilian election laws and provides equal access to all political parties. Follow how artificial intelligence and social media algorithms shape global elections. Read our technology and world news at The WAU.
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