Political Ads on Linkedin During the 2024 Municipal Elections: Between the Declared Ban and the Practiced Reality

On February 27, 2024, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) published Resolution No. 23,732/2024, requiring digital platforms that provide political and electoral advertising services in Brazil to offer an accessible, user-friendly online repository to archive and make publicly available data on this type of content. Following the resolution, companies such as Google and Kwai claimed technical impossibility to implement the required measures, despite their robust technological systems, and banned the placement of this type of ad. However, studies by NetLab UFRJ showed that the ban was insufficient to prevent the placement of political ads on Google's platforms.

In this study, we assessed whether LinkedIn complies with legal standards and its own guidelines on the placement of political advertising. The platform provides a public repository with all ads served in the last year, accessible both via an Application Programming Interface (API) and a web interface. However, its advertising policies prohibit the placement of political ads. Based on data from the platform's repository, we conducted a case study on political-electoral ads identified during the pre-campaign and first-round campaign of the 2024 municipal elections.

In this report, we first contextualize Resolution No. 23,732/2024 and examine LinkedIn's advertising policies, detailing the ad review process described in its official documentation, the types of prohibited and restricted content, and its moderation and advertiser verification policies. We then present the results of the analysis of ads that mentioned election- and political-related terms. Collected via API, we analyzed data from 273 ads that were active on LinkedIn between May 1st and October 7th, 2024.

Regarding the results, based on the TSE definition, 31.9% of the ads analyzed (87) promoted political-electoral content, with clear references to individuals holding elected office, bills, and/or public policies. In addition, 14.7% (40) also mentioned public officials and actors of notable relevance in the Brazilian political landscape, but whose positions are not elected, such as ministers of state, as well as public policies.

As with Google, we demonstrated that LinkedIn's declaration prohibiting political-electoral ads does not prevent their placement. This situation highlights the complexity involved in classifying an ad as political, especially when this categorization defines the application of transparency measures, a common practice in digital platforms' advertising repositories. Although LinkedIn effectively allows the circulation of political and electoral content, it does not meet the transparency requirements set forth in Resolution No. 23,732/2024.

We argue that effective scrutiny of online advertising depends on the broad application of transparency measures, regardless of the classification assigned to the ads. Systematic analysis of all types of ads on digital platforms is essential to support the ongoing review of the definition of political advertising adopted by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) and future legislative initiatives on the topic.

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Anúncios políticos no Linkedin durante as Eleições Municipais de 2024.pdf

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DATA ACESS

If you would like to access the database for this report, please send an email to netlab@eco.ufrj.br identifying yourself, explaining why you are interested in the data and how it will be used. NetLab will evaluate your request and get in touch.

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WARNING

This report is an independent production of NetLab UFRJ. All decisions regarding this work were made exclusively by the researchers of the laboratory. The funders of NetLab UFRJ have no influence on the laboratory's research agenda and did not participate in any stage of the production of this report.

Information on NetLab UFRJ's funding sources is available here.