Ahead of Brazil’s presidential election, Amnesty International submits Facebook advertisements to test robustness of Meta’s moderation system
More than half of the ads spreading election-related disinformation are accepted
The others are flagged but not rejected outright for containing election-related disinformation
Amnesty International has today warned that Meta may be failing to effectively address election-related disinformation spread through its Facebook Advertisements platform ahead of Brazil’s presidential election on 4 October.
Social media has been used to spread disinformation in Brazil for years. To investigate how Facebook handled election-related disinformation in advertising, Amnesty International conducted an experiment by submitting ‘mock’ ads containing election-related disinformation to Facebook. The content ranged from ads alleging election fraud to ads that used disinformation to advocate for a military takeover. The experiment found that eight of the submitted ads were accepted, while the remaining seven were flagged for identity verification as they appeared to be related to a social issue, election or politics, rather than being rejected specifically because they contained election-related disinformation. Amnesty ensured that these test ads did not go live, despite Facebook’s failure to stop them.
