Meta’s role in Brazilian elections comes under scrutiny

Once upon a time not that long ago, US tech giants and the billionaires who own them at least paid lip service to certain democratic, even progressive principles. It is not exactly news that, nowadays, that era seems like a quaint and distant memory.

Perhaps that’s why some of the allegations made about Meta during the recent Brazilian election so captured the electorate’s attention.

The owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp became a huge election talking point when Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign requested that his rival, Flávio Bolsonaro, be disqualified before the final round of voting over the weekend due to interference by Meta.

What two surprising election results tell us about the world

Listen |

22:11

In a court petition, Lula’s team complained that the tech giant had favoured his right-wing opponent’s content over his, giving Bolsonaro an advantage. Among other things, they claimed that for a 24-hour period, Lula was unable to boost his Instagram posts, while Bolsonaro could. Several watchdogs and human rights groups also said they found evidence of bias in Meta’s algorithm.

Meta denies the claims and called Lula’s allegations “false and unfounded”. It said there had been “technical incidents” that affected campaigns from “different parts of the political spectrum”.

It’s not clear to which incidents Meta is referring. Yet, as early as August, Amnesty International was warning that election adverts containing disinformation were slipping through the cracks in Meta’s monitoring systems.

While it didn’t make an allegation of bias, the human rights group said at that time that it found Facebook had “approved eight ads that contained disinformation”. Of the eight, “four focused solely on ‘electoral delegitimisation’, two were solely from the ‘security-focused authoritarianism’ category, including disinformation advocating military intervention or non-participation in elections. The other two overlapped between the three categories”.

[ Brazilians in Ireland turn out in force for presidential voteOpens in new window ]

The more recent controversy in Brazil was prompted by Meta’s oversight board’s “over-enforcement of Meta’s fraud policies against Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s ad accounts” on a particular date during the campaign. Apparently, this happened “by mistake ... and not for political reasons.”

Malice or incompetence: whatever the reason, the outsize influence that powerful tech companies can have on elections has been a talking point for some years. With the billionaire owners behind them cosying up to the likes of Donald Trump, it cannot be ignored any longer.