TSE Orders Lula and PT to Remove Vote-Request Clips From YouTube

Overview

• TSE minister André Mendonça issued a provisional injunction on Monday, Aug. 17, ordering President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Governor Jerônimo Rodrigues and the PT to cut or remove YouTube segments that contain explicit requests for votes.
• The representation by Partido Novo cited specific passages from the PT convention in Salvador on Aug. 1 in which Lula asked supporters to vote for him and named Senate candidates Jaques Wagner and Rui Costa.
• Mendonça gave the parties 24 hours to edit their channel videos and told YouTube to act; the order requires full removal only if partial editing is technically impossible.
• The minister rejected Novo’s request for a blanket takedown as disproportionate and left questions of individual responsibility and fines to later court proceedings and a plenary review at the TSE.
• The ruling rests on electoral rules that allow party conventions but ban explicit vote solicitation and on TSE precedent that treats semantic equivalents to direct vote requests as illegal, a decision that raises immediate questions about how platforms will enforce narrowly targeted edits.