Tech giant Meta has come under the scanner in Brazil, where the campaign of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva reportedly accused the company of election interference on Saturday, and the country’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) gave the company 48 hours to clarify whether it reduced the reach of posts by Lula’s campaign.
It noted instances where Meta’s platforms allegedly restricted the distribution of his content, according to the statement of Lula’s campaign cited in the report. Furthermore, the campaign alleged that in recent days, Meta “prevented President Lula’s profile from promoting Instagram feed posts,” while a post from his official account “experienced an interruption in view counts, which affected its reach,” the report added. Lula’s campaign had filed a complaint with the electoral court over the alleged social media blocks, the report said. Meta was ordered to “report, profile by profile, all the measures applied” to “Lula’s official accounts” and to “explain the anomalies in the metrics” of the videos, the TSE said. Meta’s Brazil office denied the charges, according to the AFP report. The company termed the allegations “simply false” and “not supported by the facts.”
The statement stated, “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.
