Brazil court fines Meta $1.34M, finds no deliberate election meddling

Brazil's top electoral court didn't hold back. On Tuesday, the TSE unanimously fined Meta's Facebook 7.5 million reais ($1.34 million) for failing to fully comply with judicial orders during last month's presidential runoff campaign. But the court handed Meta a bigger win in the same breath: so far, no proof the company deliberately tried to tip the election.

The fight started before the vote. Lula's coalition complained that Facebook treated posts from his campaign and rival Flavio Bolsonaro's differently, pointing to restricted distribution of its content, activity from purportedly inauthentic accounts, failures to flag AI-generated content, and asymmetries in how Meta's tools operated. Meta told the court last month it had taken steps to guarantee equal treatment for both campaigns.

Justice Marco Aurelio Bellizze spelled out the split verdict in his ruling. The records, he wrote, contain technical failures Facebook itself acknowledged, but nothing that let the court conclude on a preliminary basis that there was deliberate action to unbalanced the election — a conclusion he said would require robust evidence produced through proper legal proceedings.

The money adds up fast. Three daily fines of 500,000 reais covered October 17 to 19, then six days at 1 million reais each from October 20 to 25 — the stretch when Lula pulled off an unexpected re-election win over Bolsonaro after a massive social media push. Bellizze said the total reflected Meta's conduct as a whole: delays, incomplete information and data that was hard to verify.

Meta isn't backing down. In a Wednesday statement the company said it complies with Brazilian electoral law, applies the same rules to all candidates and parties, and will keep defending itself against what it calls false allegations in the ongoing proceedings.

Lula has promised regulation is coming. In his victory speech, he said Brazil had to overcome foreign interference in the election coming from outside through digital platforms — platforms, he added, that the country will have to regulate.