"Facebook approves election disinformation ads ahead of tense Brazil election", 15 August 2022

...Our new investigation shows Facebook failed to detect ads with election-related disinformation ahead of the 2022 Brazilian election. These ads contained false information about the election...

We submitted ten Brazilian Portuguese-language ads that contained election disinformation, and alarmingly, 100% of the ads were accepted for publishing by Facebook. All of the ads submitted violate Meta’s election ad policies and community guidelines...[W]e were able to submit the ads from outside of Brazil...with an account that had not been verified by Facebook’s ‘ad authorisation’ process – a requirement for any account posting election-related content.

One ad which was aimed towards Indigenous groups and promoted the wrong election date was initially rejected under Facebook’s “Ads about social issues, elections, or politics” policy. But just six days later, without any intervention from us, the ad was approved without explanation...

“Facebook knows very well that its platform is used to spread election disinformation and undermine democracy around the world,” said Jon Lloyd, Senior Advisor at Global Witness...This follows a similar pattern we uncovered in Myanmar, Ethiopia, and Kenya...

...[S]ome of the ads also call into question the integrity of Brazil’s electronic voting machines...[,]..President Bolsonaro’s narrative...setting the stage for contesting the election result...

"This investigation shows that Meta prioritizes its profit over the protection of Global South democracies. The company shows its inability to control the use of its platform to spread fake news, and this has a direct negative impact on our democracy", says João Brant, coordinator of Desinformante platform in Brazil.

...The full response from Meta was: “We cannot comment on these findings as we don't have access to the full report. However, we prepared extensively for the 2022 election in Brazil. We’ve launched tools that promote reliable information and label election-related posts, established a direct channel for the Superior Electoral Court to send us potentially-harmful content for review, and continue closely collaborating with Brazilian authorities and researchers. Our efforts in Brazil’s previous election resulted in the removal of 140,000 posts from Facebook and Instagram for violating our election interference policies and 250,000 rejections of unauthorized political ads. We are and have been deeply committed to protecting election integrity in Brazil and around the world”...