Less than two months before the elections for President of the Republic, Senate and House of Representatives, investigations reveal that tech companies are not complying with the memorandum signed with the Superior Electoral Court on combating electoral disinformation.

A survey conducted by NetLab, a laboratory linked to the School of Communication at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), at the request of the newspaper O Globo, found that between 26 June and 31 July, Meta approved the publication of at least 21 advertisements containing electoral disinformation on Facebook.

Researchers from the National Institute of Science and Technology in Digital Democracy (INCT.DD) and the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) produced a report which concluded that Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube, despite being signatories of the TSE memorandum, still have loopholes and flaws in checking disseminated content, in the agility to process complaints and in the transparency to combat fake news.

Global Witness conducted an experiment with Facebook: it sent ten ads in Portuguese containing electoral disinformation to the platform. All were approved by Meta, including those about alleged election fraud and manipulation. The result of the investigation generated concerns in civil society. Institutions have highlighted how harmful this type of content is to the democratic regime.

We invited Meta to comment on all articles. Despite having sent notes to Global Witness and Terra, the company did not respond to the Resource Centre.