Harmful content: Does Meta protect electoral integrity in Brazil?

Faced with threats to the integrity of the 2022 Brazilian elections circulating on the networks, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) created an online system through which users can report disinformation content about the election.

The content received would be forwarded to Meta and verified by independent checkers, in accordance with a partnership signed between the court and the platform in order to combat the spread of electoral disinformation and protect democracy.

If the checks indicated the presence of misinformation, Meta committed to removing the publications or adding a label that alerts the user and directs them to reliable sources. Dangerous content would be labeled as “false” or “partly false”.

We analyzed a sample of the content reported to the TSE, in order to verify whether, in fact, Meta removed or indicated the presence of misinformation in these publications.

The results indicate that a significant portion of the publications reported and already diagnosed as harmful by fact checkers were not removed from Meta's networks and/or did not receive the disinformation label.