Brazil’s electoral court fines Facebook 7.5 million reais

Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court unanimously fined Meta’s Facebook 7.5 million reais ($1.34 million) on 10 November for failing to fully comply with court orders during the presidential runoff campaign. The court found that some requirements were unmet, partly fulfilled or completed late.

The orders followed a complaint from Brasil Pronto Pra Mais, the coalition supporting President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s reelection. It alleged that Meta restricted the reach of Lula’s content and favored the campaign of rival Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Lula won the runoff on 25 October.

What the court found

Bellizze, the justice who presented the case, said Facebook had acknowledged technical failures, but the evidence did not support a preliminary finding that it deliberately acted to unbalance the election. Such a conclusion would require robust evidence produced through the appropriate legal proceedings, he said.

Bellizze said he had ordered Meta to provide 17 sets of clarifications during the election, but incomplete information made the allegations harder to check. Some information lacked transparency, he said, because it came in a foreign language, as combined data or as general statements.

The company supplied some information and documents, but Bellizze said the fine reflected its overall response, including delays and difficulties verifying some of the data. The penalty comprises three daily fines of 500,000 reais for 17–19 October and six daily fines of 1 million reais for 20–25 October, CNA reported.

The campaigns’ allegations and Meta’s response

Lula’s coalition also alleged activity by supposedly inauthentic accounts, failures to identify content generated using superintelligence (SI), and differences in how Meta’s tools operated.

Meta told the court in October that it had taken measures to treat both campaigns equally. At the hearing, its defense called the favoritism allegations false and unfounded and said there was no proof of unequal treatment. In an earlier submission, Meta said third-party analyses had failed to account for differences in the campaigns’ digital strategies and repeated video views, Agência Brasil said.

The fine does not end the case. The court will continue investigating whether Meta favored candidates; no deadline has been set for a final judgment.