What happened Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has asked the country's top electoral court, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), to investigate his runoff rival Flávio Bolsonaro and running mate Alfredo Gaspar.
Why it matters The dispute lands days before Sunday's second round, which polls suggest will be extremely close among Brazil's 159 million registered voters.
In detail In a petition filed Wednesday, Lula's campaign alleges "abuse of economic power and improper use of social network" and accuses Meta, the company behind WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, of limiting Lula's content to help Bolsonaro.
The petition also asks that Bolsonaro be barred from running for eight years after the 2026 election.
Meta denies treating the campaigns unequally.
Bolsonaro narrowly led the first round on 4 October but fell short of the 50% of valid votes needed to win outright.
Bolsonaro answered with his own petition seeking to disqualify Lula, claiming the government used personal data from official databases to send mass WhatsApp messages promoting social programmes.
UN experts, led by the special rapporteur on freedom of expression, said they were concerned about discrepancies in how each campaign could reach voters on Meta's platforms. They cited temporary interruptions to one candidate's campaign account, differences in engagement, feeds, view counts and reach, and restrictions on that campaign's Instagram posts, and said information including from Meta employees suggested accounts tied to one side were disproportionately curtailed. Meta says it has not acted to favor either side and will comply with a Brazilian court order to treat both candidates equally. Lula's campaign had earlier alleged that Bolsonaro-related content was boosted, and some users reported that Meta's AI tools did not generate images related to Lula. Pro-Lula supporters also gathered outside Meta's São Paulo office on Monday.
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