In the first round of the 2025 general elections in Bolivia, disinformation circulated widely on social media and digital platforms, but the response from digital platforms was virtually nonexistent, according to journalists and experts. Fact-checking organizations, digital rights activists, and international organizations agree that Meta and other large platforms provided minimal cooperation during the Bolivian electoral process.
By Carolina Martínez Elebi, OBSERVACOM associate researcher.
In Bolivia, the effect was also evident. While there were previously sporadic blocking of disinformation and some level of dialogue with various institutional and social actors, this year the major digital platforms stopped acting preventively and failed to take an active role in addressing electoral disinformation.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bolivia indicated that the size of the Bolivian market does not seem to spark their interest. UNDP explained that they met with representatives of the platforms in March of this year, but the response was that their policies were already defined and that it was up to local actors to adapt to them. Based on that experience, the National Coalition against Electoral Disinformation —made up of 22 organizations and created in November 2024 with the technical support of the Plurinational Electoral Body (OEP) and the UNDP—acknowledged that it could not count on the platforms as strategic allies and decided to turn to a proactive strategy of monitoring and disseminating verified information.
Local verifiers ignored
The exclusion of Bolivian actors was evident. “An agreement has never been reached with Meta,” said Adriana Olivera of Bolivia Verifica. Although the platform did hide certain content during the pandemic, that work depended on international fact-checkers: “AFP Factual publishes an article, and they have an agreement, so they manage to get false or misleading information hidden or removed. But since Bolivia Verifica doesn’t, Meta takes no action.”
The experience was similar for Chequea Bolivia. Enid López explained that the organization is not part of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), a requirement for entering Meta’s fact-checking program. However, in this case, the exclusion was not due to a refusal by the platform but rather to its own limitations: due to a lack of time and resources for a small organization, they were never able to complete the process and meet the requirements demanded by the company. This situation prevents them from having direct cooperation with the platforms. «We detected pages funded by candidates, we published the information, but there was never any back-and-forth with Meta to remove that content,» she summarized.
Both fact-checkers agree that the circulation of disinformation has increased this year, and that the epicenter has shifted from Facebook to TikTok, with the shift from images to videos becoming the predominant format. They have also been unable to establish reporting or cooperation channels with the Chinese-owned digital platform.
The OEP, without dialogue
The lack of agreement didn’t just affect civil society. The Plurinational Electoral Body (OEP) itself attempted to reach out but was unsuccessful. “The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (ED: the highest authority of the OEP) met with Meta, but didn’t reach any agreement,” says Eliana Quiroz, a member of the board of directors of Internet Bolivia. Quiroz also recalled that, in 2019, when they requested the activation of the political ad library, Meta responded that it could only do so at the request of the OEP, something impossible in that context of institutional crisis. “In 2020, they suddenly activated the Ads Library without the OEP’s intervention. The procedures are very discretionary,” she said.
This discretion was also evident to Cristian León, Executive Director of Internet Bolivia. “Previously, there was a bit more dialogue with Meta in cases of digital violence. Now, we’ve sent several messages and haven’t received a response, so we had to turn to Access Now to escalate our requests. The relationship is very unstable,” he stated.
A coalition without the platforms
The National Coalition Against Electoral Disinformation currently brings together more than twenty stakeholders—from community radio stations to universities and social organizations—with the goal of coordinating efforts to combat disinformation during elections. However, none of the major digital platforms have agreed to join this forum.
UNDP believes that platforms prioritize collaboration in countries with larger markets and that Bolivia is not among their priorities. Given this scenario, the Coalition defined a proactive strategy with three pillars: network and media monitoring, production of verified, rapid-response information, and media networks to amplify content.
Opaque transparency in political advertising
Regarding information on political ads disseminated during the election campaign, Meta’s ad library was the only source of transparency available in the country. Thanks to this, Chequea Bolivia and Bolivia Verifica were able to identify websites that were spreading disinformation and were being funded by candidates and companies. “We were able to track the emails and phone numbers of those paying for disinformation ads,” said Enid López. This access allowed us to document how disinformation was funded with specific financial resources, something that often remains hidden in other contexts.
In contrast, Google and YouTube did not enable equivalent tools in Bolivia. This made it difficult to track political advertising on their platforms, even when misinformation ads were detected on media pages. “We found misleading advertising triangulated through intermediary companies, and there was no way to identify the person responsible,” explained López of Chequea Bolivia. X and TikTok, the most used social media platform in the country, also did not offer transparency mechanisms for ads.
The lack of these tools puts Bolivia at a disadvantage compared to other countries where platforms do provide ad libraries or campaign spending reports. The contrast reinforces the idea of unequal treatment toward smaller markets.
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