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.
“The fact that Meta’s moderation system failed to catch more than half of Amnesty International’s election-related disinformation ads is deeply alarming. It shows that Meta is not doing enough to prevent its platform from being a vector of disinformation, while continuing to profit from the content and advertising systems that enable its spread,”
Jurema Werneck, Executive Director of Amnesty International Brazil
The Experiment
Amnesty International submitted 15 Brazilian Portuguese-language ads to Facebook, targeted solely to Brazil’s voting age population, to assess how the platform’s ad moderation systems
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