Brazil votes on Sunday in a presidential runoff that has become a battleground over social media's role in democracy. President Lula faces right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro in a race expected to be tight, and both campaigns have been fighting for digital attention in a nation where more than 76 percent of voters now get their news online.
The digital arena itself has become an election issue. Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, faces accusations before Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) that it suppressed Lula's content and favored material promoting Bolsonaro. Political ad spending on its platforms has grown sharply: an analysis by Brazilian news outlet G1 found Meta received at least 288 million reais ($57 million) in direct campaign spending in 2026, double what it received during the 2022 race.
More than 76 percent of Brazilian voters now get their news online, said Andre K Rodarte, a researcher at the Digital Democracy Centre at the University of Southern Denmark. He pointed to online influencers on opposite sides, right-wing personality Nikolas Ferreira and left-wing activist Erika Hilton, who were each reelected to the Chamber of Deputies this year with record numbers of votes. "You are seeing people transitioning from information-producer roles to politics, and they are just getting more and more power, more and more votes," Rodarte said. "If this is the media landscape they are dealing with, it's unlikely they will adopt a different campaign style, or different style of politics."
Brazil's reliance on digital campaigning took off in 2018 with the election of Flavio's father, Jair Bolsonaro, according to Leticia Cesarino, an anthropologist at the Federal University of Santa Catarina who studies far-right politics online. Jair spread his message of tough-on-crime tactics and traditional Christian family values through bite-sized social media posts; supporters at his 2019 inauguration chanted "Facebook!" and "WhatsApp!" After his 2022 defeat, Jair spread false claims that the vote had been rigged, and his supporters stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace in Brasilia on January 8, 2023. The TSE later barred him from public office for eight years. He is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup and is barred from social media.
The assault "really shocked a lot of policymakers and political elites to act," said Vicky Wyatt, a campaign director at Eko, a coalition advocating for more accountability from tech companies. Brazil now bans AI-generated depictions of electoral candidates, requires disclaimers on any political ads using AI, treats content advocating violence, hate speech or gender-based discrimination as illegal, and restricts campaign ads to officially backed accounts. Wyatt described the framework as "some of the strictest laws in the world when it comes to guardrails around the use of AI on tech platforms."
Meta pushed back. "Meta has long warned that Brazil's strict digital-content rules increase the risk of over-enforcement and threaten free expression," a company spokesperson said.
Watchdog groups say the rules are not being enforced. Daniela da Silva, executive director of the nonprofit digital rights group CTRL+Z, said campaign coordinators report shrinking organic reach and a growing need to pay to boost posts; some spent more than 70 percent of their budgets for such boosts on Meta. CTRL+Z has collected 1,100 reports this year of accounts removed or having their reach restricted, "mainly related to profiles supporting Lula," whose advertising account was briefly suspended last month. Lula's campaign has cited studies by Eko, CTRL+Z and other groups to petition the TSE to enforce rules requiring equal treatment for political campaigns.
In one test, Eko asked Meta to approve 15 election-season ads containing AI-generated content promoting violence and disinformation; Meta approved 13. NetLab, a research group at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, found that more than 1,600 political ads paid for by companies outside Brazil ran on Meta's services, generating about 2 million reais ($400,000) in revenue. Some told voters they could cast ballots online through a website that collected their private data; online voting is not allowed in Brazil.
"Meta wasn't really able to prevent these operations from happening, and even when it did do something and moderated this content, these ads were still a source of revenue for the company, and they already reached millions of Brazilians," said Debora Gomes Salles, NetLab's research head.