US lawmakers press Zuckerberg over Meta’s role in Brazil’s runoff

Senator Bernie Sanders and 12 House Democrats have told Mark Zuckerberg it is “unacceptable” for a platform to favour one candidate. Their letter, sent on Thursday, asks Meta to explain its role in Brazil’s presidential race. The runoff is on Sunday.

The vote pits President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Lula’s campaign says Meta’s platforms favoured his rival. Meta denies it. Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court has already ordered the company to treat both campaigns equally.

What the lawmakers want

The letter, led by Representative Pramila Jayapal, asked for a briefing on Friday and written answers by 4 November. One question asks whether Meta will let an independent auditor see its internal moderation and distribution data.

“It is unacceptable for any social media platform to favor one political candidate or party over another,” the lawmakers wrote.

They also ask about Meta’s internal rules for foreign elections. And they ask about any contact with Trump administration officials over Brazil. Meta’s global affairs chief, Joel Kaplan, helped repair Meta’s ties with Donald Trump and leaves next year.

The case in Brazil

Lula’s campaign first went to the court on 9 October, Courthouse News reported. It said Meta cut the reach of its posts and that its paid promotion failed. It also said Meta’s AI tool refused to make images of the president while making similar ones of Bolsonaro.

On 15 October, Justice Marco Aurélio Bellizze ordered Meta to “immediately secure equal treatment” of both, the Associated Press reported. Meta faces a daily fine of 500,000 reais, about $98,000, if it fails to comply. The full court upheld the ruling the next day, according to Courthouse News.

On Tuesday, Meta told the court it had complied. Any automatic block on a presidential campaign’s ad account now gets a manual review within two hours, it said.

On Wednesday, Lula’s campaign went further. It asked the court to disqualify Bolsonaro’s ticket for abuse of economic power and misuse of the media, Courthouse News reported. It said Bolsonaro’s posts drew nearly three times Lula’s interactions in the runoff’s first week.

The other side has filed a complaint too. On Thursday, court president Kassio Nunes Marques gave Meta 24 hours to report on “Exército do Lula”. It is a pro-Lula WhatsApp channel with about 8.4 million followers. Bolsonaro’s campaign had questioned whether its coordinated activity broke election rules.

Meta’s answer

Meta says it applies the same rules to everyone. It made its case in a statement on 16 October, reported by the AP.

“Brazilian voters deserve facts, not a political narrative constructed by combining unrelated technical issues,” Meta said.

It went further on Thursday, Courthouse News reported.

“An account with fewer followers can receive more views or reach more people than a much larger account without any preferential treatment,” the company said.

The company said reach depends mainly on engagement, such as shares, views and comments. It added that, under the court’s rules, it does not recommend candidates’ posts to people who do not follow them.

Meta also called the suspension of Lula’s ad account an error, reversed within about an hour. It admitted a fault in its AI image tool. That fault hit both campaigns, it said, and it fixed it the same day. It found no sign of coordinated fake behaviour in 35 profiles the campaign flagged.

One researcher says that is hard to check from the outside.

“There is no formula for assessing algorithmic interference or favoritism in elections,” João Victor Archegas of Rio’s Institute for Technology and Society told Courthouse News.

Brazil has spent the campaign writing new rules for platforms, from deepfake labels to AI chatbots. This month, Meta also blamed an AI tool for an Instagram account suspension in the US.

Bolsonaro led the first round on 4 October with 47% to Lula’s 45%, the AP reported.