by Guilherme Levorato
The President of the Superior Electoral Court, Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, has once again ordered the suspension of updates to the “Lula’s Army” channel on WhatsApp. The decision stipulates that the channel’s reactivation requires formal notification to the Electoral Court of its electronic address and complying with the 48-hour regularization period mandated by electoral regulations.
In the same ruling, issued Tuesday, October 13, the justice ordered Meta to implement proactive monitoring measures regarding posts on this channel and other high-reach public pages identified by the campaigns in the case records. The company has 24 hours from the time of official notification to inform the court of the initial actions taken, the technological mechanisms used to identify the reposting of irregular content, the procedures to prevent wrongful removals, and any technical limitations encountered. Meta is also required to immediately identify and remove posts that are identical or substantially equivalent to those already subject to active removal orders, while preserving the records necessary for oversight.
Photo illustration of the messaging app WhatsApp diplayed on a smartphone screen in Rio de Janeiro. (Photo by Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images)
The Lula’s Army channel is managed by congressman André Janones. It had been used to campaign for President Lula. The matter was brought to the court’s attention by opposing presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, who requested action regarding the group’s operations. On Sunday, October 11, Nunes Marques had already ordered the suspension of the channel until the official certification of the 2026 election runoff results.
However, Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company, informed the court that a separate order, issued by the Superior Electoral Court’s Inspector General, Justice Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva, had provisionally mandated the page’s reinstatement. Upon re-examining the case this Tuesday, Superior Electoral Court President Nunes Marques set new requirements and emphasized that the channel’s failure to provide prior notification to the court’s authorities is sufficient grounds to bar its use in the campaign until the situation is regularized, regardless of any analysis regarding the legality of specific posts.
The decision also analyzes the channel’s structure and operation based on technical data from the Superior Electoral Court’s Office for Combating Disinformation, noting that the community combines centralized leadership with the distribution of tasks among participants. The channel had a potential audience of approximately 3.3 million people, as of October 11, and recently reached 4.1 million followers. Messages sent to members called for materials to be shared, new members to be recruited, and for interacting on other digital platforms through activities called “missions.”
The court highlighted the instructions for followers to share materials before even viewing them, as well as records of large-scale message forwarding. In Nunes Marques’s view, this operational model could facilitate the rapid spread of content without any prior verification.
Nunes Marques noted, however, that the data and evidence analyzed in the case records do not support the conclusion that the channel constitutes a digital structure substantially dedicated to disinformation. He said the group’s organization shares characteristics with content amplification networks, marked by centralized coordination, message uniformity, and the simultaneous mobilization of participants.
This article was originally published by Brasil 247. It was translated by Panamerican Dispatch. You can read it in its original Portuguese, here.