LONDON Reuters approved a series of online ads promoting violence in Brazil, days after protesters ransacked government buildings, according to a new report.
Thousands of supporters of Brazil's far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the nation's congress, supreme court and presidential palace earlier this month in an attack lasting more than three hours.
In an attempt to stem the flow of posts inciting violence online, Facebook s parent company Meta said that it had designated Brazil as a temporary high-risk location and removed content calling for people to take up arms or forcibly invade government buildings.
Four days after the uprising, Human rights organisation Global Witness found that Facebook was still allowing ads with death threats and other calls to violence on its platform.
The group submitted 16 bogus ads to run on the platform, 14 of which were approved for publication using fake accounts.
After defeating Bolsonaro in a run-off election in October, a message in Portuguese was read: "We need to find all the rats that have seized power and shoot them. '' We need a military revolution to restore the rule of law and death to the children of Lula voters and Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da SilvaLula da Silva took office on January 1st. Bolsonaro refused to concede defeat, and some supporters claimed the election was stolen.
Global Witness submitted the ads for approval on YouTube, but the video-sharing platform immediately suspended the group's accounts.
Global Witness said it withdrew the ads from Facebook before any other users could see them.
In the aftermath of the violence in Brasilia, Facebook said they were actively monitoring the situation and removing content in violation of their policies. Rosie Sharpe, a digital threats campaigner at Global Witness, said this test shows how poorly they are able to enforce what they say.
The test we have set is possible to pass, and the stronger response on YouTube shows that it is possible to pass. Meta spokeswoman Mitch Henderson said that the small sample of ads from Global Witness was not representative of how the company enforced its policies at scale.
Like we said before last year's election in Brazil, we removed hundreds of thousands of pieces of content that violated our policies on violence and incitement and rejected tens of thousands of ad submissions before they ran.
We use technology and teams to keep our platforms safe from abuse, and we are constantly refining our processes to enforce our policies at scale.