Meta's Automated Moderation Repeatedly Mistakenly Bans Political Accounts During U.S. and Brazilian Elections, Facing Accountability from Multiple Parties

According to TechFlow, on Nov. 4, Fortune reported that Meta is accelerating the replacement of human content moderation with large language models. As of June, large language models had handled about half of moderation requests, and the company plans to achieve more than 90% automation in certain violation categories by the end of the year. Meta said its models make 13% fewer errors than humans and detect 10% more violations. In recent weeks, its automated systems repeatedly restricted or banned political accounts in error during the Brazilian and U.S. elections, sparking allegations of election interference.

In Brazil, Lula's campaign team filed a complaint with the Supreme Electoral Court on Oct. 10, alleging that Meta restricted its account's reach and mistranslated negative comments targeting opponents as supportive content. The court ordered Meta to treat the two candidates equally, imposing a daily fine of 500,000 reais (about US$98,000). Lula ultimately won the Oct. 25 runoff with 51.8% of the vote. Whether Meta will be fined has not been ruled; prosecutors filed a civil lawsuit on Oct. 21.

In the United States, the No Kings movement's Instagram account was suspended for about 90 minutes on Oct. 17. Meta said the cause was the organization's use of a Claude tool to read content at high frequency, triggering automated safety protections. On Oct. 27, the Spanish-language account of Florida Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon was mistakenly flagged as impersonation and restored the next day.

Meta attributed these incidents to technical errors and has apologized. Its Oversight Board criticized repeated failures in election enforcement but did not find the incidents to be politically motivated. Attorneys general from 13 states and Washington, D.C., as well as members of Congress, have requested explanations from Meta, but these requests are not legally binding.

Source: TechFlow