Original reporting: Civic Media Observatory · Global Voices — Latest Stories · CC BY 3.0 · 2026-11-02
Internet rights advocates and Lula da Silva campaigners challenge Meta’s alleged shadow banning
Screenshot from the naosemeta.com.br landing page. Fair use.
This story is part of Undertones, Global Voices’ Civic Media Observatory’s newsletter and column. Subscribe to Undertones here . It is also part of Global Voices’ October 2026 Spotlight series, “ Big Tech and Authoritarianism .” In this Spotlight, we explore how Big Tech facilitates authoritarian governments and practices, and how these choices influence the Global South. You can support this coverage by donating here .
Over the years, Meta’s content moderation policies and governance practices have faced intense scrutiny and legal challenges over alleged political bias and a lack of transparency.
Since 2018, the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement (7amleh), a human rights organization advocating for Palestinian digital rights, has documented how Facebook’s (now Meta) moderation practices disproportionately affect Palestinian content . In 2020, 7amleh launched a campaign challenging Facebook’s proposed hate speech policy , which considered “Zionist” a potential proxy for “Jew” or “Jewish.” More recently, in 2024, the organization collected 20 first-hand testimonies from Palestinian influencers, journalists, and media outlets documenting their experiences of Meta’s discriminatory content moderation practices. In 2023, Human Rights Watch also reported “systemic online censorship” against voices in support of Palestine and Palestinian human rights,
In 2022, Tom Vandendriessche, a Belgian politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) representing the far-right Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party, partially prevailed in a legal case against Meta concerning a shadow ban imposed on his account in 2021 after the company removed several posts alleging a breach of its Terms of Service (ToS) and Facebook Community Guidelines (FCG). A Belgian court ordered the company to compensate the politician for financial and reputational damages, finding that its actions had significantly restricted his ability to engage in political discourse online and that Meta had failed to provide adequate transparency or effective avenues for redress.
In 2026, Meta has faced significant criticism in Brazil and internationally from internet rights watchdogs over political bias, algorithmic interference, and the selective suppression of content perceived as favoring far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro during the October 2026 Brazilian presidential election.
Narrative: Meta, take your hands off our election!
Using the slogan Meta não se meta (roughly, “Meta, stay out of it”), which plays on the Portuguese word meta , derived from the verb meter (“to get involved” or “to interfere”), internet rights defenders and current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s followers and allies sought not only to expose alleged Meta’s shadow-banning practices during Brazil’s 2026 presidential election but also to mobilize Brazilians to demand a fairer digital space collectively.
Sub-narrative: We demand digital sovereignty, and we will hold Meta accountable
In October 2026, during the Brazilian presidential runoff election campaign, a coalition of Brazilian civil society organizations, social movements, and digital rights advocacy groups, including CTRL+Z, Código Não Binário, ARTIGO 19 (Article 19 Brasil), Sleeping Giants Brasil, and others, launched the webpage naosemeta.com.br as part of their initiative to denounce electoral interference and algorithmic bias. The site offered three ways for people to hold Meta accountable online: email Meta; message Meta’s General Director in Brazil on LinkedIn; and comment on Meta Ceo Mark Zuckerberg’s latest Instagram post. It also shared a space for those wishing to join and sign a petition to the Superior Electoral Court and an extrajudicial notification , a formal written communication sent on October 19 to put Meta on notice and demand that it recognize the technical flaws in its advertising, moderation, and artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and the distribution and availability of user-generated content and campaign materials in Brazil — which these organizations claim disadvantaged, in particular, candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Screenshot of an Instagram post from Núcleo de Tecnologia do MTST . The video shows protesters in the demonstration held on October 19, 2026, in front of Meta to denounce the company's questionable moderation practices during Brazil's 2026 presidential election. Fair use.
The online strategy to hold Meta accountable was accompanied by a protest in front of Meta’s offices on October 19, where participants called for respect for Brazil’s digital sovereignty, with the Homeless Workers Movement’s Technology Center among the loudest voices.
For those reclaiming digital sovereignty, the company’s actions stem from the relationship between U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazil’s ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, father of Flávio Bolsonaro, and the influence the current U.S. administration has over big-tech owners — they consider Meta to be facilitating foreign interference.
An extra layer supported the narrative “Meta, take your hands off our election!” After the first round of the election gave candidate Flávio Bolsonaro a small lead in early October, left-wing Congressman André Janones relaunched his WhatsApp channel, “Lula’s Army,” an initiative to mobilize voters online and offline and give visibility to Lula da Silva’s messaging and proposals, and that quickly gained millions of followers.
Screenshot of Lula's Army WhatsApp channel showing instructions to engage with content from Lula da Silva's campaign to boost it. Fair use.
In addition to reclaiming Brazilian symbols from the far-right, including inviting followers to wear the country’s yellow soccer team T-shirt , the WhatsApp channel coordinated social media interactions to boost Lula da Silva’s visibility . By giving his “troops” instructions on when and how to engage with the content Lula da Silva’s campaign produced, Janones positioned an implicit narrative that argued it was possible to “tame” the algorithm, regain ownership of the Brazilian digital media ecosystem, and ultimately win the election, recapturing the campaign spirits.
After Lula da Silva’s unprecedented second-round comeback on October 25, this narrative evolved to “dobramos a Meta,” which translates to “we doubled Meta,” hinting at the “dobrar a meta” (doubled the target) popular meme that originated from a statement made by former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in July 2015 , during a speech on the National Program for Access to Technical Education and Employment (PRONATEC)— all to say “we were able to overcome Meta’s content moderation policies and governance.”
Screenshot of an Instagram post from CTRLZ showing the message “dobramos a Meta,” which translates to “we doubled Meta.” Fair use.
Brazil ranks as the world’s second-largest country by WhatsApp users (148 million) and the third-largest addressable Instagram audience (147 million). The country is considered a pioneer in internet governance and digital regulation, with a strong tradition of open, multistakeholder approaches to protecting digital rights, especially thanks to the country's foundational internet law, Federal Law No. 12.965/2014, known as the Marco Civil da Internet .
Sources and further reading
Global Voices — Latest Stories · Civic Media Observatory · Original publication: 2026-11-02
Substantive reporting republished under CC BY 3.0; credited source text reformatted into paragraphs. No third-party photographs republished.