Did Meta interfere in Brazil’s presidential election? Meta blocked President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from paying to promote Instagram posts while recommending his rival Flávio Bolsonaro’s accounts, which is illegal in Brazil. I was asked to write this technical analysis for reasons I can't disclose. TL;DR Yes. In Brazil, Meta blocked the sitting president (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) from running normal paid Instagram promotions while its algorithms and WhatsApp recommended his opponent Flávio Bolsonaro. Its AI refused basic Lula campaign material but produced the equivalent for Bolsonaro. Some of Meta’s staff flagged the unequal treatment in real time and escalated it; the company later offered shifting technical excuses that don’t match the dates or the fact that Bolsonaro’s campaign kept using the same tools Lula couldn’t access. During the election, Meta ran over 1,600 political ads that researchers found were illegal, almost all paid for in US dollars, and only reclassified or removed them after they’d already been shown up to 171.1 million times. Complaints about account suspensions increased 585% during the election year. Brazil’s electoral court has ordered Meta to treat both candidates equally, and Brazil’s Justice Ministry has asked federal prosecutors and the data protection authority to investigate. It doesn't matter if Meta did this deliberately or if it was the predictable result of a company built for engagement and influence. The outcome is the same: Meta showed extreme bias in favour of one presidential candidate over the other. Bolsonaro beat Lula by 2 points in the first round, so extreme bias toward one candidate could decide who becomes president. Meta’s treatment of the two candidates was so extreme that Lula was blocked from paying to promote lawful Instagram posts while Meta’s own algorithms gave Bolsonaro free promotion that Brazilian election regulations explicitly prohibit. Meta blocked Lula’s lawful ads and illegally promoted Bolsonaro On October 9, Meta blocked Lula's campaign from boosting existing Instagram posts for almost 24 hours, preventing an estimated 1.3 million views. While Lula couldn't spend money to promote already published posts, Bolsonaro's campaign used the exact same feature without any restriction. Meta’s own internal communications, obtained by Folha de S.Paulo, confirm the unequal treatment. Meta also illegally promoted Bolsonaro’s official Instagram account and WhatsApp campaign channel through automatic recommendations that are prohibited by Brazilian election regulations. Unlike paid advertising, Bolsonaro received this promotion for free. When journalists asked Meta AI to create an election campaign image for President Lula da Silva featuring his name and official voting number, "Lula 13", it refused. But when they made the same request for his opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, using "Flávio 22", Meta AI generated the image. Brazilian election law prohibits tech companies from using AI to recommend or favour political candidates. This is covered by Resolution 23.755/2026. The law also prohibits Meta from recommending candidates’ Instagram accounts or WhatsApp campaign channels. Candidates can legally pay to promote posts they’ve already published, but Meta blocked Lula from doing so while promoting Bolsonaro’s accounts for free. Meta stopped Lula from doing something legal while breaking Brazilian election law to promote his opponent. Meta only amended their algorithms after journalists exposed the unequal treatment. Meta’s explanations don’t add up When asked why Meta censored Lula’s paid Instagram advertising on 9 October, the company initially blamed a global "data outage" on 7 October. That outage affected about 3,000 accounts and lasted 5 hours. But Lula’s advertising was censored for almost 24 hours, two days after the outage had ended. Meta blamed Lula’s censorship on a technical failure that had already been fixed before his advertising was blocked. The dates contradict its explanation. On 16 October, Meta changed its story. This time, it blamed a software update on 9 October that supposedly stopped thousands of advertisers worldwide from paying to promote existing Instagram posts. Meta claims its engineers fixed the problem early on 10 October. But if the software update broke that advertising feature worldwide, why could Bolsonaro’s campaign continue using it? Folha reported that Bolsonaro continued paying to promote existing posts using the same feature Meta blocked for Lula. Both campaigns were using the same advertising system, but only Lula was blocked. Meta’s first explanation contradicts the dates. Its second doesn’t explain why the same advertising feature worked for Bolsonaro but not Lula. Meta has changed its explanation twice without accounting for why its systems censored one presidential candidate but not his opponent. Meta censored one presidential candidate and illegally promoted his opponent. It then blamed technical failures that its own evidence contradicts. A technical analysis points to Meta deliberately covering up election interference. Its changing explanations, contradictory evidence and refusal to disclose the technical records give me no reason to believe otherwise. Meta’s employees flagged the unequal treatment while it was happening Meta’s internal communications reveal that employees knew Lula’s campaign was being censored compared with Bolsonaro’s. They reported the problem to engineers in Silicon Valley but complained about the lack of urgency. Staff requested a SEV2 classification. An SEV2 is a formal classification for a "major incident with significant impact", including when a service stops working for some customers or a critical function fails. One employee warned that the unequal treatment created a high likelihood of legal action. Meta’s workforce therefore recognised the suppression while Lula’s campaign was still actively experiencing it. 💡 This proves the engineering teams responsible for fixing the problem had already been notified. The explanations concerning Instagram search is extraordinary. When people searched for Bolsonaro, Instagram recommended his account. When they searched for Lula using his exact name, his account didn’t appear at all. Meta blamed Lula’s unusually long name. I co-founded the W3C standard for content labelling and URL classification in 2004 and pioneered online account labelling. As a prominent expert in content classification, moderation and filtering, Meta’s explanation is technically absurd. According to Meta’s internal communications obtained by Folha de S.Paulo, its engineers blamed Lula’s disappearance from Instagram search results on his name being too long. The company offered no detailed technical explanation in the published report. Searching for a name is one of the most basic functions of any search. Meta didn’t simply fail to recommend Lula as it did Bolsonaro. It failed to return his account even when people searched for his exact name. From a technical perspective, that suggests deliberate suppression, potentially through account classification, search filtering or changes to the search index. A long name doesn’t justify why an exact match stops working. Instagram can identify someone interested in a particular brand of running shoes, living in a specific zip code, within a particular age group, and show them an advert based on their online behaviour. Yet Meta expects us to believe the same company can’t find the sitting president of Brazil when someone types his exact name into Instagram search because his name is too long. That’s an absurd technical explanation. This looks like deliberate election interference, and Meta’s explanation suggests the company is trying to conceal what happened. Brazilian authorities have ordered equal treatment and opened investigations On 16 October, Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court intervened, unanimously upholding an order compelling Meta to ensure equal distribution across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and connected AI tools. The ruling bans deliberate algorithmic suppression, asymmetric restrictions on profile reach, unfair ad placement blocks, and skewed recommendation engines. Meta faces daily fines of 500,000 Brazilian Reais ($99K) for continuing this manipulation. A daily fine of $99K isn’t even a rounding error in Meta’s staff lunch budget. It does nothing to deter a company worth trillions. Brazil’s Justice Ministry has also referred Meta’s conduct to federal prosecutors and the country’s data protection authority, seeking investigations into account suspensions, censorship and unexplained automated decisions. Between 1 January and 30 September 2026, 73,300 complaints were filed about Meta suspending or blocking accounts, an increase of 585% compared with the same period in 2025. Those figures include regular accounts as well as political accounts, but they establish the scale of complaints about Meta’s account restrictions. A Brazilian federal court separately ordered Meta to restore Instagram accounts that belong to student organisations after finding that their suspension lacked adequate justification and affected political and academic expression. Meta ran 1,613 illegal political ads in Brazil, 99.5% paid in US dollars Researchers at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro identified 1,613 illegal political ads on Facebook and Instagram in Brazil between July and September 2026. The ads came from 187 advertisers, cost approximately $395,000 (R$2 million) and were displayed 171.1 million times. Almost 99.5% of the money spent on these ads was paid in US dollars, despite Brazilian election law restricting foreign funding of political campaigns. Meta has the technology to identify and block illegal political ads in Brazil. Instead, it allowed them to run and collected the money, while censoring Lula’s lawful campaign advertising. Meta’s track record Cambridge Analytica exposed how personal information from millions of Facebook accounts was obtained without consent and exploited for political profiling. Facebook subsequently paid a $5B penalty imposed by the US Federal Trade Commission over deceptive privacy practices. Meta now has substantially greater capabilities to analyse political opinions, predict behaviour, classify accounts, restrict political content and promote selected messages. Its executives know what these systems do because their entire advertising business relies on measuring and influencing people’s behaviour. If anyone needs reminding of how Zuckerberg and his executives have operated, go and watch The Social Reckoning in the cinema. The film examines whistleblower Frances Haugen’s disclosures of internal Facebook documents that show how executives knew their algorithms promoted harmful content, encouraged political extremism and damaged children’s mental health while prioritising engagement and advertising revenue. Former Meta safety engineer Arturo Béjar also testified under oath in August 2026, at the states’ child safety trial against Meta in Oakland, that executives repeatedly ignored warnings about harm to children. He said he’d briefed Zuckerberg at least 100 times and accused him of misleading the public about Facebook’s commitment to safety. Internal documents presented in separate litigation showed Meta chasing greater engagement among children despite publicly denying that it targeted children under 13. More recently, Meta agreed to a $17B settlement with 47 American states over allegations involving addictive product design, children’s personal information and misleading safety claims. Meta denied wrongdoing. Zuckerberg and his executives have repeatedly been confronted with evidence that their technology causes harm. Their own employees, engineers and internal research have documented the consequences. Now they’re claiming ignorance about manipulating political content to affect democratic elections. Meta’s leadership has close ties to a US government that acted in Bolsonaro’s favour Zuckerberg has openly cultivated close relationships with Donald Trump’s administration. Meta donated $1M to Trump’s inauguration, appointed former Republican political operative Joel Kaplan to lead its global policy operations and added Trump ally Dana White, to its board. Zuckerberg also met Trump at Mar-a-Lago. On 29 September 2026, Zuckerberg joined Trump and other AI executives at the White House, where Trump promoted industry self-regulation. Semafor revealed that Zuckerberg personally helped initiate the agreement, drafted its principles and circulated them to other executives before Trump announced the White House Accord on "Super Intelligence". Zuckerberg didn’t simply attend a government meeting. He helped to write the commitments his own company and its competitors will follow. In February 2026, CIA Director John Ratcliffe announced a programme to accelerate cooperation with US tech companies and give US intelligence agencies faster access to their technology. The CIA has a documented history of interfering in foreign elections and overthrowing governments, including US involvement in Brazil’s 1964 military coup. Today, US tech companies control social networks, advertising systems and algorithms capable of identifying people’s political opinions, influencing what they see and promoting or censoring specific candidates. Intelligence agencies can potentially exploit these capabilities to interfere in elections without organising military coups. The CIA is expanding cooperation with US tech companies. Meta controls technology capable of manipulating what Brazilian voters see. Zuckerberg has close relationships with a US administration that has already taken political decisions that benefit Bolsonaro. These are documented relationships and capabilities, not proof that the CIA directed Meta’s actions. But they provide specific reasons to investigate if US officials influenced Meta’s treatment of the two presidential candidates. On 27 March, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration was considering designating Brazil’s 2 largest criminal organisations, Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV), as terrorist organisations after months of lobbying by Flávio Bolsonaro and his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro. On 26 May, Trump received Flávio Bolsonaro at the White House, where Bolsonaro said he’d asked Trump to designate both groups as soon as possible. 2 days later, on 28 May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated both groups Specially Designated Global Terrorists, with Foreign Terrorist Organisation status taking effect on 5 June. Lula’s government opposed the designation. Bolsonaro, who’s campaigning on crime, credited the designation to his lobbying during the trip. That sequence establishes specific US government action aligned with Bolsonaro’s campaign priorities, and it’s worth examining alongside Meta’s conduct. I’d like to know if American officials contacted Meta about Brazil’s election, who participated, what they discussed and if any political interests influenced the company’s decisions. The answers require the disclosure of evidence held by Meta and potentially government authorities, not another corporate statement denying wrongdoing. Meta’s records can show who decided what Brazilian regulators should obtain the technical records showing which employees authorised restrictions affecting Lula, why Bolsonaro’s accounts were recommended, why Lula disappeared from certain Instagram searches, what caused the advertising failures and why equivalent AI requests produced different political outcomes. They should also examine Meta’s software updates, account classifications, advertising permissions, AI filters, internal escalation messages and communications involving executives and political officials. They should require Meta to identify the people and organisations that paid for the 1,613 illegal political advertisements in US dollars. Meta’s own records can establish which decisions were deliberate, who authorised them and if its employees knowingly permitted conduct prohibited by Brazilian election law. Brazil’s presidential election belongs to Brazilian voters, not Zuckerberg, the CIA, or the American government. Everything suggests that Meta deliberately manipulated Brazil’s election. There’s no other explanation. Meta blocked Lula from paying for lawful Instagram promotion while its algorithms gave Bolsonaro promotion prohibited by Brazilian election regulations. Its AI refused Lula campaign material while producing equivalent material for Bolsonaro. Its initial outage explanation didn’t match the dates, and its revised explanation still leaves the unequal treatment unexplained. Zuckerberg and his executives control these systems, understand exactly how they work and have a documented history of manipulating what people see. I don’t accept that these were innocent technical mistakes. If Zuckerberg wants the public to believe all 3 incidents were innocent technical mistakes, I challenge him to debate me publicly. For transparency, I used three AI models and a human called Hannah Linehan to help edit and refine this article. All the research, analysis, connections I’ve made between people, companies and events, and the opinions and conclusions are entirely my own. AI helped me with the writing, not the thinking. This is also published on my free Substack. Link in bio.

That Gen Z is the first generation that is dumber than its predecessors is no longer an opinion. It is scientifically established, as is the cause. Listen to neuroscientist, educator and bestselling author who specialises in human learning and brain development, Dr Jared Cooney Horvath:

Meta’s Muse is blocked at Schwab. Its CEO asks who’s liable if an agent moves money. When an AI agent makes a mistake, causes financial harm, exposes private information or breaks the law, who's responsible? The answer isn't complicated. AI agents aren't legal persons. They're software created, configured, authorised and deployed by people and companies. US law has recognised autonomous software since 2000. The federal E-SIGN Act explicitly defines an "electronic agent" as software capable of acting without human approval at the time of each action. The law recognises transactions conducted through automated systems. If a company gives an AI agent access to confidential information, financial accounts or computer systems, that company remains responsible for the decisions it made about access, permissions, security controls and supervision. Whether it must compensate someone depends on the applicable law, contracts and circumstances. If an agent transfers money without authorisation, accesses confidential records or attacks another company's infrastructure, investigators should examine who configured it, what instructions it received, what permissions it had, who authorised those permissions and what its activity logs show. Schwab can't blame an agent for acting independently, any more than they can blame an Excel macro. The difference between an AI agent making a mistake and a company being legally liable for that mistake is important. But neither changes who's responsible for deploying the software.

Government- Sponsored Violence Against Citizens and the Persistent Pattern of the "Lone Gunman" It's not conspiracy when it's true... From JFK’s assassination to the Dallas ICE shooting, the U.S. government has a proven track record of enabling violence against its citizens, rushing to “lone gunman” or “lone wolf” labels to bury deeper truths. MKNAOMI’s heart attack gun, Sea-Spray’s bacterial fog, and Whitmer’s staged plot show a willingness to prioritize control over consequences. The 2025 Kirk and Dallas cases, with their rushed narratives, echo this failure to learn from history’s exposures—whether JFK’s CIA links or Whitmer’s FBI scripts. As public skepticism grows, driven by alternative media, transparency remains the only path to break this destructive cycle and restore trust. Let's review and break this down. 🧵13 parts of scary shit with sources

TROUTMAN POLICE CHIEF ENDS OFF-DUTY SECURITY ASSIGNMENTS AT SCHOOL BOARD MEETINGS Troutman, NC - Troutman Police Chief Josh Watson has notified Iredell Statesville Schools that, effective October 26, 2026, his officers will no longer be authorized to work off-duty security assignments at Board of Education meetings. The decision follows an October 12 incident in which Board Chairman Doug Knight requested the removal of a man who was reading sexually explicit excerpts from a book reportedly available in Lake Norman High School’s library. The excerpts included descriptions of sexual acts and anatomy that Firewire will not repeat in this post. Troutman officers handled the situation calmly and politely asked the man to leave. In his letter, Chief Watson cited concerns about the legal basis for requested removals, the protection of constitutional rights, and the expectations placed on officers assigned to these meetings. “A request from the presiding officer does not, by itself, establish sufficient legal grounds for removal, detention, or arrest,” Watson wrote. The board and school administration will now need to arrange alternative meeting security. Troutman Police will continue responding to calls for law enforcement assistance at board meetings within their jurisdiction. Officers may also continue working approved off-duty assignments at school sporting events and other school activities. Firewire applauds Chief Watson for recognizing that officers must independently determine whether enforcement action is legally justified. His letter raises serious concerns about how requests to remove members of the public are handled. Firewire's position is simple: If a book is appropriate for students to access in a school library, school board members should be willing to hear its contents discussed during public comment. If board members find those passages too graphic to hear at a meeting, they should be willing to explain why the material is appropriate for students to read in private. Excellent job, Chief Watson. @isschools