Meta denies accusation of anti-Lula political bias in Brazil after electoral court ruling

SAO PAULO -- Tech giant Meta denied accusations Friday that it acted with political bias during Brazil’s presidential campaign, less than a day after the country’s electoral court ruled the platform must give equal treatment to incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of their Oct. 25 runoff.The lawsuit was triggered by Lula’s campaign, which claimed that the company owning Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp was using biased algorithms and AI restrictions to favor Bolsonaro. The suit in Brazil echoes related European cases in Romania and Germany, where courts previously intervened to correct platform imbalances.Meta said in response that a series of recent platform issues stemmed from unrelated global technical glitches, strict anti-fraud measures, and regulatory compliance rather than targeted suppression. It insisted its systems do not distribute content based on political ideology and emphasized that rules are applied equally. The company said it had two global technical disruptions earlier in October: one froze view counts on Instagram Reels across more than 100 countries while content distribution remained normal, and another briefly d...