The two-candidate run-off in Brazil’s presidential election is looking extremely tight, and tempers are flaring over the outsized role social media is playing in the contest.

Current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has accused Meta of using “biased algorithms and AI restrictions” to favour his opponent Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, said The Associated Press. Flávio Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, won the first round of voting with 47%, compared with the leftist incumbent’s 45%. Meta denies wrongdoing but, ahead of Sunday’s run-off, “questions have festered over whether the digital arena has been a level playing field”, said Al Jazeera.

How influential is social media in Brazil?
Brazil has about 180 million social media users, according to Statista: more than three-quarters of the population. Brazilians tend to favour Meta’s Instagram to stay informed: in 2024, 70% of those surveyed by Aláfia Lab said it was their favourite platform when searching for information. Meta-owned WhatsApp is also a favourite, according to the Reuters Institute.

Social media ads are now “eclipsing traditional advertising”, said Al Jazeera, there are warnings that “political hopefuls” are “at the mercy of Big Tech corporations and their biases”. Left-wing activists in Brazil still “lag significantly behind the far right when it comes to digital communication”, anthropologist Leticia Cesarino told the news site. The attention economy is “structurally beneficial” to the far-right’s “alarmistic, simplistic, affect-laden far-right discourse”.

What are the allegations against Meta?
Google and TikTok do not allow political advertising, which leaves Meta’s services as “the only large-scale channels for paid digital campaigning”, said The Guardian. Meta temporarily disabled ads on Lula’s official campaign Facebook page. He was also briefly unable to boost his Instagram posts, while Bolsonaro could. Lula’s lawyers have cited this as “evidence” that Meta was “actively trying to interfere” in Bolsonaro’s favour.

What is Meta’s defence?
“We apply the same rules to all candidates, parties and political viewpoints in Brazil,” said Meta. “We do not suppress content to harm one side or give preferential treatment to any side.” The company blamed “technical incidents” that, it said, had affected campaigns from “different parts of the political spectrum”.

But Meta’s own semi-independent oversight board said it was “concerned by recurring enforcement failures in Meta’s election integrity efforts”, citing “over-enforcement of Meta’s fraud policies” against Lula.

Masked protesters clad in black have been a feature of protests around the world for decades. But the so-called “Black Bloc” is back in the news, accused by the French government of turning peaceful protests into violent riots.

Orchestra without a conductor
Originating among anarchist and radical left activists in West Germany in the 1980s, forming a Black Bloc is “an anti-establishment protest tactic” used by “temporary groups formed for a specific cause” and operating “without hierarchy”, said political-science professor Francis Dupuis-Déri on The Conversation in 2017.

The tactic spread through activist networks in North America in the 1990s, culminating in the infamous “Battle of Seattle” during the 1999 World Trade Organization summit. It has since figured in the anti-austerity movements of the 2010s, and recent youth-led protests across Asia and South America.

Ideologically identified with “anarchist, anti-capitalist and anti-fascist movements”, participants “eschew political parties”, said the Financial Times. They “pose a big problem” for the police and also for trade unions, who “do not want chaos to mar” their traditional anti-government demonstrations.

These people “are very well co-ordinated but in a horizontal way,” said Guillaume Farde, a security and defence specialist at Sciences Po university in Paris. Tactics are disseminated via social media or encrypted messaging apps, and gatherings are often impromptu. They are like members of “an orchestra who know the music so well that they do not need a conductor”.

Deploying propaganda
The “founding fathers” of the Black Bloc were “autonomist and anarchist activists”, said Le Monde, but “the spectrum has broadened” to include more people who “define themselves as free spirits”. For this reason, the movement is difficult to pin down, and police sources cited by the French paper fear that, behind the scenes, “real ideologists are developing a doctrine and structure that unifies and deploys propaganda”.

Others see this as an attempt by the authorities to make Black Bloc tactics into something they’re not. “Black bloc doesn’t mean anything”, Henri, a 40-year-old who does not define himself as an anarchist or an extreme leftist, told Le Monde. “Black is just because it’s not distinctive. It’s the best way not to be identified. We’re all in the same boat.”

Waves crash over Newhaven Lighthouse in East Sussex, as Storm Austen hammers England’s south coast. The first named storm of the season has left thousands without power and caused part of Brighton’s West Pier to collapse. Yellow and amber wind warnings remain in place across the UK for much of the weekend.

Glyn Kirk / AFP / Getty Images

London: Bezier Apartments, Aldgate EC1
A truly impressive duplex penthouse located on the 14th and 15th floors, and with a spectacular terrace offering panoramic views over London. Next to Old Street station, the property is an easy walk to anywhere in the City. 3 suites, open-plan kitchen-living-dining room, lift, residents’ services including a 24-hour concierge, gym, sauna, steam room, parking. £2.95 million; Frank Harris.

Birmingham: Paradise Street
Elegant penthouse in the Queen’s College Chambers building with a roof-top garden boasting views across the city skyline. 3 suites, kitchen, recep, daytime concierge, underground parking. £699,950; Maguire Jackson.

London: Clubhouse Apartments, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham TW1
A delightful penthouse in an Art Deco-inspired building with a spectacular terrace. 2 beds, 2 baths, open-plan kitchen-living-dining room, communal garden, terrace, parking. £700,000; Property Partnership.

Dorset: Apartment 51, The Cooperage, Dorchester
Beautifully presented penthouse with a wraparound terrace, set within an architect-designed building in the heart of Dorchester. This award-winning development offers an array of amenities including an Odeon cinema, a fitness centre, a medical centre and a variety of restaurants. 3 suites, open-plan kitchen-living-dining room, lift, parking. £1.1 million; Strutt & Parker.

Men with no female friends? That’s a red flag
Victoria Derbyshire in The i Paper
The “manosphere” is a “gross distortion of how men and women should relate to each other”, writes TV presenter Victoria Derbyshire. Did the “guys perpetuating these messages” not have girls as friends “when they were growing up”? My sons did, and they know that women aren’t “solely attracted to wealthy, aggressive, muscle-bound men”, that we “like blokes who can talk about their feelings” and that, when we ask a male friend for a drink, that “doesn’t mean we want to sleep with them”.

Can Russia broker a new US-Iran deal?
Dmitri Trenin on Al Jazeera
Moscow’s “mediation efforts” in nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran could be very effective, writes historian and former Russian army colonel Dmitri Trenin. Russia supports Iran’s “ambition to have domestic nuclear energy” but opposes Iranian “acquisition of nuclear weapons”. With Donald Trump now “applying pressure” on Ukraine, “helping the US” reach a deal with Iran “would be clearly in Russia’s interest”. “This may not be the dawn of a new world order but it could be a small step.”

Don’t pity old men in their sheds
Michael Henderson in The Telegraph
In garden sheds “across the kingdom, men who will never see 60 again” are “busy making things that may be practical, or may serve no purpose at all”, writes Michael Henderson. People may mock us but “this tinkering, sawing, and general messing about” actually “does us good” and keeps us happy. You don’t need to “cross oceans or conquer the highest peaks to be an adventurer”; with a shed and a hobby, “you can create a world of the imagination without leaving home”.