Brazil electoral court fines Meta, sees no deliberate election bias

Brazil's electoral authority fined Meta's ​Facebook 7.5 million reais ($1.34 million) for failing to ​fully comply with judicial orders during last month's ‌presidential ​election runoff campaign, but said there was no evidence so far the company had deliberately acted to influence the outcome.

In a unanimous decision, the country's top electoral court (TSE) ruled on ‌Tuesday that Facebook had failed to adequately meet court demands related to allegations that its platform treated content from the rival campaigns of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro differently. Lula's coalition filed a complaint ahead of the vote alleging ‌restrictions on the distribution of its posts, the activity of purportedly inauthentic accounts, failures in identifying AI-generated content and asymmetries in ‌the operation of Meta's tools.

Meta told the court last month it had adopted measures to ensure equal treatment of the two campaigns. "Meta complies with Brazilian electoral law and applies the same rules to all candidates and parties. We will continue to present the facts and defend ourselves against false allegations in the ⁠ongoing legal ​proceedings," Meta said in a ⁠statement on Wednesday.

The court said Meta had provided some information and documents on the measures, but found that parts of its orders were either not complied ⁠with, were only partially fulfilled, or were carried out after deadlines had passed. "The records contain technical failures acknowledged by Facebook itself, but there are ​no elements allowing us to conclude, on a preliminary basis, that there was deliberate action to unbalance the election," Justice ⁠Marco Aurelio Bellizze wrote in his ruling.

"That conclusion would require robust evidence, to be produced through the appropriate legal proceedings," he added. According to Bellizze, the fine ⁠reflected ​Meta's conduct in responding to the court orders as a whole, including delays, incomplete information and difficulties in verifying some of the data submitted.

The amount corresponds to three daily fines of 500,000 reais between October 17 and 19, and six days ⁠of fines of 1 million reais per day between October 20 and 25, when Lula unexpectedly secured re-election over Bolsonaro after his ⁠team mobilized a huge social media ⁠campaign. Lula has long vowed to tighten rules on social media in the country. In his victory speech, he said: "We had to overcome foreign interference in the election, coming from outside through digital ‌platforms that we ‌will have to regulate."

($1 = 5.5832 reais)