SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Twitter owner Elon Musk said on Saturday he thought it was “possible” that personnel at the social media firm gave preference to left-wing candidates during Brazil’s election this year, without providing evidence.
Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter on Oct. 27, just days before Brazil’s presidential second round runoff vote, when far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro was defeated by leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
“I’ve seen a lot of concerning tweets about the recent Brazil election,” Musk wrote on Twitter when asked by a user about elections possibly “handled” by the company’s previous management.
“If those tweets are accurate, it’s possible that Twitter personnel gave preference to left wing candidates,” added the billionaire.
Bolsonaro earlier this year hosted Musk at a meeting in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, when he called the U.S. billionaire’s takeover of Twitter a “breath of hope” and dubbed him a “legend of liberty”.
Both Lula and Bolsonaro widely used Twitter during their campaigns. Some Bolsonaro allies – including the most-voted candidate for the lower house of Congress, Nikolas Ferreira – had their accounts suspended by court orders after the second round for questioning the election results.
(Reporting by Gabriel Araujo, Editing by Franklin Paul)
