Brazil court orders Meta to prove equal treatment in election

Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court gave Meta 24 hours to demonstrate that its platforms treated presidential candidates Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro equally, while increasing the daily fine for noncompliance to 1 million reais. The order came days before the country’s October 25 runoff election. The court had previously directed Meta to apply the same rules to both campaigns. On Monday, October 19, it said the company had not demonstrated compliance and raised the penalty from 500,000 reais per day. A court document cited in reports set the increased amount at 1 million reais daily. Lula’s campaign prompted the case with allegations that Meta restricted Lula-related content while allowing content supporting Bolsonaro to remain available. It also cited restrictions on election-related material through WhatsApp’s artificial intelligence tool. Those claims have not been independently established in the information available. Meta denied favoring either candidate. The company said some Lula campaign advertisements had been mistakenly deactivated because of technical errors, and it said those incidents were not evidence of political bias. On Tuesday, October 20,...