The campaign for the re-election of Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, ahead of the second round of elections this Sunday, has presented this Wednesday before the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) a request to invalidate the candidacy of the senator and ultraconservative candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. The president's team claims that the technology company Meta --parent of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp-- and the social network X would have improperly favored their opponent.
According to the document registered before the electoral justice, which Europa Press has accessed, Lula's team has filed "an Electoral Judicial Investigation Action (AIJE) for abuse of economic power and improper use of social media, with a request for urgent protection."
In the final part of the complaint, several demands directed at the mentioned platforms are detailed, and additionally, it requests to annul the candidacy and "declare the ineligibility" of Flávio Bolsonaro and his running mate, Alfredo Gaspar de Mendonça, "for a period of eight years following the election of 2026."
The document emphasizes that "this action does not concern what a candidate said. It deals with who decides what the voter sees. The already documented facts reveal that the private infrastructure in which electoral propaganda is currently carried out --the recommendation systems, generative artificial intelligence tools, and the ad review mechanisms of Meta's platforms (Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp) and X-- has operated, repeatedly and convergently, to the benefit of the candidacy of the investigated and to the clear detriment of the opposing candidacy."
Lula's campaign asserts in the text that there exists a "synthetic content farm" and a "disproportionate distribution," illustrating this accusation with the data that "the official profile of the first investigated (Flávio Bolsonaro), with 17.2% fewer followers (than Lula), obtained, in the first week of the second round, 2.96 times more interactions per post than that of the Coalition candidate."
Likewise, it denounces the "restriction" imposed on the advertising account of the leader of the Workers' Party in the days leading up to the first round, and that "the artificial intelligence systems of both platforms generate content with the label 'Flávio 22', but reject an equivalent request with 'Lula 13'", referring to the numbers that identify each candidacy. It is also pointed out that "paid ads were approved from the United States that included a synthetic image of the American president (Donald Trump) asking for votes for the first investigated (Flávio)".
Lula's legal team argues that "these elements converge in the two offenses provided for in art. 22 of Complementary Law No. 64/1990, here imputed: the improper use of social media --given that digital platforms are, today, the media with the greatest reach in the country-- and the abuse of economic power --since the candidacy benefits from the mobilization of business structures for the production and distribution of content, of significant economic value, outside of accountability and with resources coming from prohibited sources--".
The initiative before the TSE is presented one day after Meta defended having followed all the determinations of the Superior Electoral Court to correct the failures pointed out by Lula's campaign regarding an alleged manipulation of its publications in favor of Flávio Bolsonaro. That same day, however, Meta's Advisory Council expressed its concern about the "recurrent" errors in the company's efforts to protect electoral integrity in its services, warning that its moderation policies would be stifling political debate.
The previous complaint from Bolsonaro's circle
The movement of Lula's team comes after the Liberal Party, led by Flávio Bolsonaro, also went to the TSE to denounce the president's candidacy, demanding its annulment for "abuse of power".
The campaign of the ultraconservative senator presented a resource in which it claims that the Executive would have resorted to data obtained from the official Government portal (Gov.br), from the National Institute of Social Security (INSS), and from the Receita Federal (equivalent to the Spanish Tax Agency) in order to send personalized communications about social support programs for families, about the cost of fuels and electricity, or for the purchase of medications.
In that request, it is stated that "no opposition candidate has access to any of these resources. Furthermore, the use of personal data collected for the provision of public services for the purposes of government communication during an electoral period violates the principle of purpose limitation that governs the processing of data by public authorities."
The document also refers to a contract between the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services and the Federal Data Processing Service (SERPRO), signed in 2021 and valid until December of this year, which provides for the estimated sending of 170 million notifications per month through various digital channels. The calculated value of the service amounts to 20.4 million reais (3.6 million euros) over a period of twelve months.