A Brazilian electoral court judge ordered Meta Platforms Inc. not to interfere with the distribution of political or election-related content from any candidate in the Oct. 25 runoff. Judge Marco Aurélio Bellizze issued the order on Thursday in response to a complaint filed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s reelection campaign. It alleges that Meta has “repeatedly and systematically failed to deliver” the leftist candidate’s posts to users.
Belizze threatened a daily fine of 500,000 reais ($98,100) for noncompliance with the order. His ruling could be subject to review by the full electoral court. The incumbent Lula is locked in a neck-and-neck race with conservative Senator Flávio Bolsonaro.
Lula’s campaign also said it identified a separate issue earlier this week involving Meta AI, the company’s generative artificial-intelligence tool available on its popular messaging application WhatsApp. According to the campaign, the tool refuses requests to create images related to Lula while generating campaign material favorable to Bolsonaro. Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside business hours.
Bellizze wrote that, considering the tool is available to any WhatsApp user with 10 days to go before the runoff, it is appropriate to require it to apply the same criteria to both candidates, refraining from generating election propaganda either in favor of or against either of them, and to require the company to explain the criteria it uses.
Source: Bloomberg Markets · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing