Overview
- Journalists and the NGO Sleeping Giants Brasil found candidate posts appearing in X’s “Para Você” recommendations and showed the platform’s public filter listed 665 accounts while the TSE registry held more than 2,100 profiles.
- After those checks, X expanded its restricted list to nearly 2,400 accounts on Aug. 25 and subsequent reporting did not identify further recommendations of declared candidate profiles.
- The Lula coalition filed a petition at the TSE on Aug. 26 asking the court to require continuous synchronization of X’s filter with the electoral registry and to preserve technical records for possible audits.
- TSE minister André Mendonça gave X 24 hours to explain how the exclusion mechanism works, to say what data and update procedures it uses, and to preserve all code, versions and logs so the court can evaluate alleged selective application.
- The dispute highlights how platforms depend on candidate-declared data to comply with TSE rules, how mismatched lists can stem from data or sync errors as well as implementation faults, and how the issue has drawn international comment including a U.S. official calling the Brazilian measure 'censorship.'