Brazil's Electoral Court Judge Proposes $R7.5 Million Fine on Meta

By Tom Whitfield

Brazil's top electoral court justice Marco Aurélio Bellizze has proposed a R$7.5 million fine against Meta, ruling that the company broke judicial orders during the presidential campaign but finding no evidence it deliberately interfered in the election. Bellizze, rapporteur on a case brought by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's campaign, delivered his vote on Tuesday at the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE).

The fine covers nine days of non-compliance. Meta pays R$500,000 per day for October 17–19, then R$1 million per day for October 20–25, when the daily penalty was raised. The total reaches R$7.5 million.

What did Bellizze actually find?

Bellizze drew a sharp line between two issues. The first is Meta's failure to comply with orders from the Electoral Court — the basis for the fine. The second is whether the company intentionally tilted the race between Lula (PT) and Flávio Bolsonaro (PL). On that second question, he found no proof.

"Os autos registram falhas técnicas reconhecidas pela própria representada. Para além delas, não há elementos que permitam afirmar, em cognição sumária, a existência de atuação deliberada para desequilibrar o pleito, conclusão que dependeria de prova robusta do elemento subjetivo, a ser produzida em procedimento de cognição exauriente, na via processual adequada," Bellizze said.

He also explained the procedural limit: this type of complaint, a representation, does not allow complex technical evidence or deep investigation into how platform algorithms work. "Não há espaço para perícia, para produção de prova técnica complexa ou para ampla dilação probatória," he said.

Which obligations did Meta fail?

Bellizze concluded Meta complied with part of the court's orders, missed others entirely and broke deadlines. The irregularities he identified include:

• Failure to report within 48 hours the concrete steps taken to comply with judicial orders; a consolidated report filed after the second round did not satisfy that duty.
• Partial compliance with measures meant to prevent undue reduction of posts' reach.
• Partial compliance on guaranteeing human review of automated restrictions on campaign ad accounts.
• Partial compliance on ensuring equal treatment of candidates by the company's artificial intelligence tool.

The delays mattered, Bellizze argued, because the orders were issued mid-campaign, when fast correction was essential to guarantee equal conditions between candidates. "Em processo cuja utilidade depende do tempo, o cumprimento tardio compromete a própria finalidade da tutela jurisdicional," he said.

He also criticized Meta's lack of transparency. Some data arrived in a foreign language, in aggregated form or as generic statements, making verification difficult. Because the court depended entirely on data supplied by Meta itself, he said, it could not verify the reasons given for the failures or the time actually spent fixing them.

How was the fine calculated?

The figure does not result from adding up each breached order. Bellizze assessed the company's conduct as a whole across three factors: the delays, the incomplete compliance and the lack of transparency. He called the amount proportional to the stakes — electoral integrity — and to Meta's financial capacity.

He stressed the penalty is coercive and unrelated to any alleged intent. "A multa tem natureza coercitiva e é devida desde o dia em que se configurou o descumprimento das determinações judiciais, e não se relaciona a eventual intuito da representada favorecer qualquer das candidaturas ao cargo de presidente da República," he said.

Bellizze rejected Lula's campaign request to raise the daily fine to R$10 million and to sanction Meta for contempt of court. With the election over, he said, the higher penalty had lost its purpose of forcing compliance during the campaign.

What sparked the case?

Lula's campaign filed the complaint in October over how political content was distributed on Meta's platforms — Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. The coalition alleged irregularities in post reach and in AI tools that could produce unequal treatment of candidates.

On October 15, Bellizze granted an injunction barring Meta from artificially reducing the distribution of political-electoral content, removing posts from recommendation systems, restricting their placement in search tools, or manipulating reach metrics for either campaign outside what electoral law permits. The full TSE bench upheld the order unanimously the next day. The measures ran until the end of the second round.

Clashing narratives in court

Lula campaign lawyer Ângelo Longo Ferraro argued the failures were not merely technical. "Foi direcionado apenas ao presidente Lula. Era um erro de viés, estava direcionado a um candidato específico e favorecendo o candidato Flávio Bolsonaro," he said, adding: "A caixa-preta da Meta precisa ser desvendada."

Ferraro claimed Meta kept restricting recommendations of Lula videos and removing campaign ads even after the court's orders, while taking no equivalent action against election ads boosted with foreign money.

Meta's lawyer Patrícia Helena Marta Martins countered that the case lost its purpose once the election ended. She said the incidents were technical problems, explained and corrected. "A Meta nunca escondeu tais episódios técnicos, pelo contrário, explicou todos eles," she said, adding: "São falsas as alegações de que a Meta favoreceu ou interferiu em nome de qualquer candidato ou grupo político."

Meta presented data showing Lula's Instagram accounts reached about 1.5 times more people and logged 1.5 times more impressions than Flávio Bolsonaro's between August 16 and October 25. The company attributes reach differences to posting frequency, campaign digital strategy and user engagement — not deliberate interference. It also said an implementation flaw in Meta AI was fixed the same day and that problems with Lula's ad account did not affect organic content distribution.

The TSE plenary still must vote on Bellizze's proposal before the fine becomes final. His opinion leaves the deeper question — alleged algorithmic bias in elections — open, and by his own reading, answerable only through a fuller evidentiary proceeding.