Brazil electoral court fines Meta $1.3 MN, sees no deliberate election bias

Brazil's electoral authority today fined social media giant Meta $1.3 million today for failing to comply with judicial orders in last month's presidential election runoff campaign. In a unanimous decision, the judges ruled that Facebook failed to adequately meet court demands related to allegations that it was treating content about Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his right-wing rival Flavio Bolsonaro differently. The court, though, did stop short of suggesting that the company deliberately acted to influence the outcome. So for more, We'll turn now to our correspondent. in Rio de Janeiro, Jan Anosco. Hi, Jan. So tell us more about the details behind the reasoning for this fine. And this is because, according to Brazil's superior electoral court, Meta failed to provide them with adequate and timely evidence to prove that their platform, Facebook, was treating both candidates equally. Now, that court order came after Lula's campaign team filed a complaint against Meta, accusing the company of restricting their social media posts. It said that some of the posts appeared without a share button, had reduced reach, and some of them also appeared without audio and played at the wrong speed. The newspaper, the Folha de Sao Paulo, even cited internal communications by staff at Meta, which acknowledged that Lula's accounts were being hindered by restrictions. So that's what led to the court demanding answers from Meta. But it says the response that it got didn't fully comply with what they asked for. It said the evidence was not transparent and some of it was submitted after the deadline they gave. And so the judges, as you say, they voted unanimously to fine the company. Also, as you've said, it's important to say here that the court has said that so far it has found no evidence that there was deliberate action by Meta to favour Flavio Bolsonaro over Lula. But that investigation into the company will continue. Now, yeah, and I will say that I almost thought I misread the numbers when I saw how much they were fined. It's only $1.3 million, which obviously is really peanuts, if that, for a big social media giant like Meta. So how has it reacted to this fine? Absolutely. That fine, in fact, was for nine days from the point where Lula's campaign filed the complaint, or rather from the point where the deadline was passed until the end of the second round runoff. But once again, the company is insisting that there was no deliberate attempt to skew the election in favor of Flavio Bolsonaro. And it says that these allegations are false and unfounded. At the time. Meta did acknowledge that there were technical failures, which led to the problems that Lula's campaign identified. And they also said that they did adopt measures to ensure equal treatment of both candidates, including human reviews of both the campaigns to override any automated restrictions. But according to President Lula, he believes it was foreign interference and he's vowed to regulate social media companies much more strictly. And he's also being encouraged to do that by civil society organizations here in Brazil. 48 of them have written a letter to him demanding more transparency from these companies, stronger oversight and also measures to reduce the concentration of power that these companies have. And which plays such a huge role, such a crucial role in elections, not just here in Brazil, but all around the world. Indeed, especially because that fine, obviously, I'm sure is not going to serve as much of a deterrent. Some action from civil society then certainly will be necessary. Yana Nosko, thank you very much.