The stakes couldn’t be higher in Brazil’s election. However, technology platforms are predictably failing to live up to the momentum.
More than 120 million Brazilians voted in the first round of elections on October 2. A second round on October 30 will determine Brazil’s next president.
These elections are likely to be a critical test of the country’s democracy and rule of law, with ramifications that reach far beyond its borders, given Brazil’s size and influence. In recent years, President Jair Bolsonaro, who is running for re-election, has tried to undermine trust in the electoral system by claiming, without providing any evidence, that it is unreliable. On October 17, just two weeks before the runoff, Bolsonaro once again questioned the credibility of the electoral system.
As we have seen in elections around the world, privately owned social media platforms and messaging apps have become the de facto public square for campaigning and public debate in Brazil. Technology platforms have a responsibility to respect human rights. This includes the right to participate in democratic elections.
On election day and as the counting of votes was underway in the following days, posts and videos containing misinformation and allegations of electoral fraud began to circulate on social media. WhatsApp and Telegram groups with supporters of President Bolsonaro circulated messages saying “if Bolsonaro didn’t win in the first round, it would be because the elections were rigged.” According to the Supreme Electoral Court, reports of misinformation have increased significantly compared to the first round. The Tirana Stock Exchange reported receiving 5,869 complaints in the first 11 days of the campaign’s resumption, which accounted for almost half of the complaints received about the campaign at that time. Complaints increased by 1,671% compared to the 2020 municipal elections.
People with hundreds of thousands of followers claimed the count was fraudulent. it I tweet, for example, suggested that the “fraud” had begun in a 15-minute break from the electoral court, implying that it would favor Bolsonaro’s opponent. The tweet is still online, has over 30,000 likes, and has no link to information from election authorities, official election results, or other accurate information. Other tweets remain online that explicitly claim voter “fraud” without any credible information and do not contain a tag or link to authoritative information.
There are three main dimensions to this problem:
First, Brazilian civil society groups have noted that no platform other than Twitter has a policy to prevent calls for insurrection against the democratic order or interference with the peaceful transmission of power that do not explicitly call for violence. This means that the platforms can be used to organize and promote anti-democratic actions in case there is an institutional crisis after the elections.
Second, when it comes to election fraud, platforms have very different policies, and even the strongest ones are not always enforced. Meta’s publicly available policies, for example, prohibit the promotion of paid content that alleges election fraud, but do not address similar unpaid content.
A survey by Netlab of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro found that Meta allows some content to circulate on Facebook and Instagram, even after it is classified as electoral disinformation by independent fact-checkers, in some cases unlabeled. Most of the posts in the study claimed that electronic voting machines are unreliable and that it would be easy to rig the election. The study also found that the profiles of those posting the most electoral disinformation were politicians.
Another Netlab study documented at least four cases of paid ads on Meta services containing unsubstantiated claims that cast doubt on the reliability of vote counting.
Twitter has one politics on civic and electoral integrity. But as shown by the tweet repeating false claims of election fraud, the company doesn’t always adequately enforce the policy. YouTube’s electoral integrity policy is limited to false allegations of voter fraud in previous elections.
An investigation by data analysis consultancy Novelo Data published by Folha de São Paulo found that from October 2-15, 16 live streams and 137 videos were posted on YouTube with claims of fraud without evidence. In total, the content had at least 3.3 million views. Much of this content is still available. Telegram is a standout. It has no published policy to address disinformation and attacks on democracy and has failed to act on its March commitments. Telegram and WhatsApp are reported to be the main platforms used to spread misinformation about the election process, with groups and channels with tens of thousands of followers dedicated to spreading this narrative. Closed messaging platforms present particular challenges for detecting and mitigating misinformation.
Third, tech platforms have a history of bending their rules for powerful actors and allowing politicians to get away with speech that violates their policies. Access to what politicians say is indeed essential to holding leaders accountable. But being more permissive of powerful actors could allow them to incite violence on these platforms, or cause other harm, with few consequences.
Since politicians have more influence in society than ordinary people, their statements have, in fact, much more potential to lead to harm. Many of the biggest purveyors of fake news in Brazil are at the highest level of national politics. Much of the distrust in the Brazilian electoral system was propagated by President Jair Bolsonaro and his sonswho are also politicians.
Human Rights Watch wrote to Google/YouTube, Meta, Telegram, and Twitter to ask about their efforts to mitigate electoral disinformation in Brazil’s elections. Neither company directly addressed our specific questions, but Meta said it had created tools that promote reliable information and flag election-related posts, created a direct channel for the Supreme Electoral Court to send potentially harmful content to it for review, provides access to data on content removed from Facebook and Instagram during the campaign period and continues to closely cooperate with Brazilian authorities and researchers.
Twitter’s written response noted its Civic Integrity policywhich deals with misleading information that could affect the integrity of civic processes, says it will remove and/or add tags and context of fraudulent, harmful Tweets and reduce their visibility. Twitter notes that differing opinions and viewpoints and interpretations are not necessarily enforceable under its policy.
To fulfill their responsibilities, the platforms must immediately implement the Supreme Electoral Court’s orders to remove electoral disinformation. They also need to fill in the gaps in their policies and implement them to ensure that they are respecting the right of Brazilians to participate in democratic elections. This requires adequate resourcing of efforts to protect electoral integrity and civic discourse and being transparent and accountable for their actions. Platforms must also hold politicians to a higher standard when it comes to speech that is likely to incite violence or spread harmful misinformation that could undermine the democratic process.
Targeted efforts to address election disinformation are necessary but insufficient. More broadly, platforms need to address their chronic underinvestment in user security worldwide. Regulators must address rights abuses facilitated by the business models of dominant platforms, which rely on the mass collection of personal data to sell access to people’s attention and are designed primarily to prioritize the “engagement” of their human rights.
* A version of this article was published on UOL.
