Brazil election meddling: The stakes could not be higher

Cut through the corporate damage-control flimflam – ‘technical’ issues and ‘mistakes’ but no politics, they say – and the Oversight Board of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, has just had to deny but really admit that its platforms have been caught trying to influence Brazil’s upcoming presidential elections.

In essence, they have favored the challenger and US favorite Flavio Bolsonaro, commonly referred to as ‘Flavio’ in Brazil, and harmed the incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, usually called ‘Lula’.

Meta, to be clear, hasn’t (sort of) fessed up because Mark Zuckerberg’s behemoth has suddenly discovered a conscience. Instead, it was pressure from Brazilian investigative reporting that forced the company’s hand.

Whatever effect the American meddling will have on the election result, one thing is already certain: It has made the contest and the fierce political struggle behind it even more polarized than before. A few days before the decisive and very close final round, Lula and Flavio are trying to have each other excluded from the election; when dealing with a badly divided country, just leave it to Washington to make everything even more vicious.

The crude attack on Brazil’s electoral integrity is anything but a surprise. Historically speaking, it’s the bad old normal rejigged for the social-media age. In Brazil, as throughout Latin America, the US has a long history of brutally intervening in domestic politics, featuring highlights such as a full-blown coup in 1964 and massive subversion by a lawfare-spying-propaganda campaign in the 2010’s.