Brazil Electoral Court Unanimously Fines Meta 7.5 Million Reais, Finds No Deliberate Election Bias
Brazil's Superior Electoral Court ruled unanimously on November 10 to fine Meta's Facebook 7.5 million reais (about $1.34 million) for failing to fully comply with court orders during last month's presidential runoff campaign. The court said there is no evidence so far that Meta deliberately acted to influence the outcome. All seven justices backed the ruling.
The case began with a complaint from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's re-election campaign, which alleged that Meta's platforms treated content from the Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro campaigns differently. Reporting Justice Marco Aurélio Bellizze wrote that the record contains technical failures acknowledged by Facebook itself, but no elements allowing the court to conclude, at this stage, that there was deliberate action to unbalance the election; Meta had admitted that technical glitches mistakenly deactivated several of Lula's campaign advertisements. The court found that Meta missed deadlines and supplied information that was incomplete, generic or in another language.
The fine is the sum of daily penalties: 500,000 reais a day for three days, October 17 to 19, and 1 million reais a day for six days, October 20 to 25, totaling 7.5 million reais. Lula defeated Bolsonaro in the October 25 runoff to win re-election.
(Source: Reuters)
Source: Reuters
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于巴西利亚的巴西最高选举法院总部。照片：CC BY-SA 4.0，经维基共享资源 / Headquarters of Brazil's Superior Electoral Court in Brasília. Photo: CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
