“Facebook’s self-proclaimed efforts to safeguard election integrity in Brazil appear to be failing, as our new investigation uncovers. Our investigation finds that Facebook appallingly failed to detect election-related disinformation in ads in the run-up to the Brazilian election on 2 October 2022. Tensions are high in Brazil, with the growing threat of disinformation – that undermines the election results and could lead to violence – overshadowing the campaigning period.
This follows a similar pattern we uncovered in Myanmar, Ethiopia, and Kenya about Facebook’s inability to detect hate speech in volatile political environments – but what’s different this time is the ad content contained outright false election information (such as the wrong election date) and information designed to discredit the electoral process, and therefore undermining election integrity.”
