Brazil: Social Media Pages Spend Millions Attacking Politicians

Social media platforms Instagram and Facebook are being used to host pages with undisclosed owners that are spending significant amounts of money to attack Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro and São Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas. The pages have invested approximately R$1.3 million in the past 90 days on political advertising, according to Meta's data.

These pages, which have fewer than 400 followers each, are allegedly promoting negative content against Bolsonaro, linking him to organized crime, and also running ads in favor of Fernando Haddad, a pre-candidate for governor of São Paulo. The coordinated nature of these campaigns is suggested by similar posting strategies, generic phrases in accompanying videos, and advertiser registration dates. Many pages are linked to websites with no real content, written in Spanish and created recently.

Brazilian electoral law expert Amanda Cunha stated that only political parties, coalitions, federations, pre-candidates, and candidates are permitted to boost political-election content, which must be identified as such. The pages in question, identified as Radar do Planalto, Dossier Brasil 24H, O Contra-Fluxo, Panorama Brasil, Olho no Erro, Contra a Maré, and Lente Escura, are no longer active on the platforms. Some pages used phone numbers with area codes from Paraíba and Paraná, Brazil. The investigation by O Globo and confirmed by Folha revealed these undisclosed pages were actively pushing political narratives.