Meta employees say Lula’s accounts restricted in Brazil election: Report (aljazeera.com)

142 points by nidnogg 5 hours ago

roenxi 2 hours ago

It is somewhat confusing to me that more countries don't treat Meta as a political threat. China's approach to restricting access to western internet companies looks more and more reasonable in hindsight. The US tech giants appear to be politically active and becoming more and more willing to influence elections. I don't like the strategic situation of any anti-US political parties with Facebook in the mix (not a comment on Lula, about whos policies I know little).

That being said, it is a complex issue. There are countries that refuse to embrace US style free speech and so there is a natural pressure to move political speech to US-controlled media platforms as a result. The average quality of the chatter is higher.

gib444 21 minutes ago

> It is somewhat confusing to me that more countries don't treat Meta as a political threat

Lobbying and bribes aren't confusing

ceroxylon 2 hours ago

There is a lot of money involved in getting Bolsonaro back in power:

> Brazil’s government announced Friday that annual deforestation in the Amazon fell to its lowest level since records began in 1988 [. . .] During Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, from 2019 to 2022, Amazon deforestation surged by about 60% [0]

This highlights the greatest difference between these two candidates (imo), one wants to preserve the 'lungs of the Earth', the other wants to rip them out for profit and give the world a middle finger on their way out.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/brazil-amazon-deforestation-lula-...

privacyishuman 2 hours ago

Well that sucks then: https://polymarket.com/event/brazil-presidential-election

80% chance Bolsonaro wins.

matheusmoreira 2 hours ago

https://globalelectionsimulator.com/brazil/

  Bolsonaro 52.26%
  Lula      47.74%
Election starts a few hours from now. We'll know the results by tonight.

somenameforme 11 minutes ago

krystalgamer an hour ago

brazilians are extremely poor, even with the programmes that try to masquerade the numbers.

why would they care about the amazon if they barely have any money?

climate pov is a first world luxury. no one serious about this election would even attempt to make.

nextaccountic 40 minutes ago

Because the rain in most of Brazil depend on the Amazon. If the forest is gone, we will have desertification in the most populous regions of Brazil. The southeast is already facing droughts periodically, and it will get worse with more deforestation. With less rain we will produce less food, which means not only that food will become more expensive in Brazil (and a lot of people will face hunger), but we also depend on the agricultural output to avoid a trade deficit. Less rain means less food exports which means less dollars getting into Brazil, which will, among other things, turn Brazil into a hotter Argentine.

https://piaui.uol.com.br/web/six-conclusions-about-model-of-...

No seriously. There's a flying river, kilometers high in the sky, that goes from the Amazon to various Brazilian regions. It transports more water than the Amazon river itself (which is already the river with the highest discharge of the world). The water source is transpiration from Amazonian trees. Without the trees, the flying river is gone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_river

matheusmoreira 25 minutes ago

matheusmoreira an hour ago

If I had a button that would burn that entire jungle down and replace it with a top tier national semiconductor industry, I'd press it twice.

Only university leftists care about the Amazon to the point they sacrifice national interests for it. Completely disconnected from reality.

> Europe is not worried about the trees in the Amazon, they want the subsoil.

Dr. Enéas Carneiro.

It's all about the rare earths.

alpineman 6 minutes ago

dachris 26 minutes ago

nidnogg 5 hours ago

It’s sad but it’s real and it’s happening. In Brazilian news, this is actively being exploded upon and it is not reaching mainstream media properly.

[1] - https://www.instagram.com/reel/De2BfVRD30o

[2] - https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/16/meta-employees-...

matheusmoreira an hour ago

I wouldn't attribute an eventual Lula defeat to this, however.

His 3rd term was terrible, dozens of new taxes were implemented, living costs rose, purchasing power declined, and it became obvious that he was governing through the supreme court. His campaign was overconfident and taken completely off guard when they got utterly eviscerated in the 1st round of elections earlier this month. Left wing desperation was palpable.

Partidarian judges and journalists did everything they could to help Lula, but after the presidential debates on live television, it's pretty much over. There's just no way this guy is even fit to lead the nation ever again.

saulapremium an hour ago

Funny, that sounds exactly like what an American right-winger would say about Biden in 2024.

I guess Brazil is about to experience a shit-show similar to what the US is going through now, then. Not much hope left anywhere.

matheusmoreira an hour ago

goshx 4 hours ago

At the same time, some candidates from the opposition are getting more views than Beyoncé and other artists known globally.

https://sleepinggiantsbrasil.com/biblioteca/visualizacoes-de... (portuguese)

Terr_ 3 hours ago

To save others a couple clicks:

> [Auto-Translated] The Sleeping Giants Brazil report analyzes 300 Reels of 30 Instagram profiles to investigate evidence of algorithmic favoring to federal deputy Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG). Its ten videos totaled 410.5 million views, nearly three times the total of the 90 videos of the other nine MPs analyzed. In views by follower, its performance was 17.2 times the typical value of these deputies, 29.3 times that of the largest Brazilian profiles and 33.7 times that of the largest profiles in the world. His average viewing was behind only Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, surpassing celebrities such as Selena Gomez, Beyoncé and Justin Bieber. The study documents a persistent disparity that requires more transparency from the Meta, although public data does not allow it to determine its causes.

nidnogg 3 hours ago

Both sides are pulling record levels of engagement. It's a colosseum out there. But yes, one of the sides is more automated as usual. Most of the left engagement is human driven.

Jensson 2 hours ago

Looks at least partially organic to me, the guy is very cute and looking at his youtube video it is full of female commenters and has 2.7m subscribers.

So he is a celebrity and not just a politician, probably a lot of women are in love with him.

undefined 2 hours ago

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Kapura 4 hours ago

meta employees will look at this and think that their job isn't political. what a j o k e.

N_Lens 33 minutes ago

More people should be aware of the Buddhist precept of “right livelihood”.

undefined 29 minutes ago

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dastardly45 21 minutes ago

The American propaganda platforms (especially Meta and X) have been weaponised to interfere in foreign elections for a long time. Brazil is just the latest example from South America. It is also happening in Europe. It is a stated goal of the Trump regime to change European governments which are not aligned with Trumpism. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/12/donald...

Gualdrapo a minute ago

I do believe the US interference in flipping most of latin america to the right the last few years reached levels we haven't seen in decades and the magnitude of the machinery behind that is something we have never seen before. Trump surely got quite a few puppet governments with the likes of Milei, Noboa, here with the incredibly corrupt de la espriella and now Brazil in the verge to have another Bolsonaro.

msandford 3 hours ago

At a certain point the big social media companies are going to have to publish their algorithms and/or let you choose your own re: friends updates, friends of friends, things your friends or friends of friends liked, etc. Make your algorithm too opaque and you run the risk of outrage engagement showing up as "the platform pushed this" whatwver that happens to be.

jimbob45 2 minutes ago

I suspect this has been part of 4chan’s lasting appeal: a dead simple algorithm that can be independently verified via timestamps.

_ink_ 28 minutes ago

I would go further and make them liable for what they show. Sure it's user created content. But the feed is entirely curated by them. They decide what to show and what not and they should be liable as such.

thoughtpeddler 35 minutes ago

The US government is not a fan of other sovereign nations (even Western-aligned ones) from gaining "algorithmic sovereignty", as was seen when Australia tried to do so recently and received a stern threat from the US State Department.

matheusmoreira 2 hours ago

X did publish their algorithms.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49310291

They set the standard in transparency.

Vaushite 2 hours ago

I don't think anything will force them to do this. Can you elaborate on why you think they'll be forced to do this?

verdverm 2 hours ago

Algorithms are something we should definitely regulate, as a generalization of social media and Ai decisions over human lives.

I'd like to see something like ATProtocol feeds forced upon these companies, anyone can create any kind of feed, it works in all clients.

nidnogg an hour ago

If anything, many in Brazil feel a social media decline or stagnation. Orkut was poised to restart here and was met with great anticipation. Good market to new novel social media ideas.

Somehow something like Baidu web doesn’t seem too bad now. Brazil could use some sovereign tech.

gnabgib 5 hours ago

Title: Meta employees say Lula’s accounts restricted in Brazil election: Report

> don't editorialize.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

nidnogg 4 hours ago

Apologies! Fixed the title now

undefined an hour ago

[deleted]

silverFork 4 hours ago

Did you expect more from FaceBook?

moribvndvs 4 hours ago

It’s just a technical issue that seems to magically and repeatedly happen in favor of right wing interests. Crazy how that just works out some times.

matheusmoreira 2 hours ago

The Brazilian left has done much worse than whatever it is that Meta is doing.

> We have defeated Bolsonarism!

Luís Roberto Barroso, former Brazilian Supreme Court Justice.

EdwardDiego 3 hours ago

Whoopsie! A slight technical error that aligns with the politics of the White House, it's wild how that happens from time to time to time to time...

Vaushite 2 hours ago

It's not the white house, it is always the right wing. When the white house is left wing Facebook is still right wing.

N_Lens 32 minutes ago

derektank 2 hours ago

Facebook has also made content decisions that have hurt right wing interests in the past, such as in 2020 when they banned several accounts affiliated with Bolsonaro

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/facebook-suspends-disi...

SwellJoe 2 hours ago

"Any suggestion that Meta favors one side is false"

Weird how it keeps happening (e.g. just last week, Instagram and the No Kings account), and it's always to the benefit of right-wing extremists. I'm sure it's just an accident, though, surely they wouldn't lie on the internet.

microtonal 8 minutes ago

They also repeatedly suspended Dutch LGBTQIA+ accounts:

https://nltimes.nl/2026/04/23/meta-suspends-dozens-dutch-lgb...

It's time countries started suspending Facebook/Instagram for meddling in national affairs.

ChrisArchitect 5 hours ago

platevoltage 3 hours ago

I hope to see Mark dragged in front of congress every day of his life next year.

mindslight 31 minutes ago

No, the last thing US Democrats need is to squander their time on endless questioning.

Some of that is going to be inevitable for impeachment and conviction of course, which are most certainly necessary for traitor Grump and his Supreme Council justifiers as well.

But as for this issue? Strike the root, don't get bogged down in endless bickering about how power was probably abused. Rather, put an end to the capabilities being available to abuse to begin with. Imagine a US GDPR, along with anti-trust legislation/enforcement that un-ties Faceboot-the-app from Faceboot-the-hosting-service, mandating open APIs that facilitate vibrant competition in both markets.

oefrha 2 hours ago

For flexing muscles and advancing U.S. foreign policy goals abroad? Doubt it.

barbazoo 2 hours ago

I only use FB occasionally for marketplace with an empty account. All that it's ever suggesting in the home feed is hateful, right-wing content. Never anything positive. It's so sad that that's what drives the metrics these people care about. If this is your job, shame on you!

matheusmoreira 2 hours ago

Don't be fooled. Whatever it is that Meta is doing, it's only a fraction of what Lula, his party and his supreme court ministers did to the Brazilian right wing. Censorship was the least of it.

I'm not even denying that it's happening. I'm just saying I don't care.

d--b 2 hours ago

Is this a Trump thing?

Like is the motivation to please Trump and ask for stuff/be left alone? Or is Zuckerberg really gone full right wing globally?

rf15 2 hours ago

No, it's the lawnmower analogy again: Zuckerberg has no political views, he just thinks that Trump will restrict him less/allow him to make more money/is easier to exploit.

nidnogg 2 hours ago

It would absolutely strike me as a Trump thing, yes. We have a habit of mirroring the US, and it shows

microtonal 5 minutes ago

I think it's more that they happen to be aligned. Left-wing parties are more likely to tax and regulate Meta than radical right parties. So it's for their own profit. But Trump is also mostly there for enriching the oligarchy, he often has the same priorities.

Vaushite 2 hours ago

Facebook always aligns with the right wing no matter if the white house is left wing or right wing.

matheusmoreira an hour ago

Possibly. All things point to Bolsonaro's son winning the election today. He's a Trump ally.

If the Brazilian right wins, then it will mean that not a single left wing party has won an election in South America since the end of USAID.

quaddoggy 3 hours ago

[flagged]

platevoltage 3 hours ago

Are you claiming that Al Jazeera fabricated this report?

derektank 2 hours ago

*Reuters report. This is a wire story

prajaybasu 2 hours ago

[flagged]

tuwtuwtuwtuw an hour ago

How is it good that companies in the US is interfering with elections in other countries? Seems like a bizarre take.

Are you one of the guys that support the pedophile Trump and believe everything he says to he gospel?

nidnogg 44 minutes ago

Probably, and as with most of MAGA adjacent electorate, it’s comprised of frequently stubborn brainwashed minds with no way of arguing out of.

matheusmoreira an hour ago

It's a hollow complaint given the countless abuses of Lula, his party and all the left wingers in the judiciary and media.

Back in 2022, Bolsonaro was barred from even going live on social media while at the Palácio da Alvorada. Lula has no such restrictions and did it multiple times. Even now, we've got judges who have openly declared that they vote for Lula absolving him of the same actions they condemned Bolsonaro for in 2022.

Whatever it is that Meta is doing, it is literally nothing compared to what they did to the Brazilian right wing. Can't say I feel sorry for them. They literally pulled out all the stops, and it's actually going to be cathartic when they lose anyway.

tuwtuwtuwtuw an hour ago

RockRobotRock 3 hours ago

damned if you do, damned if you don't

gchamonlive 2 hours ago

By which frame of comparison do you say they were ever "damned even though they didn't"?