As Brazilians head to the polls to pick their next leader, the shadows of the country's 2018 election as well as the 2020 U.S. presidential vote loom large.

Ahead of the first round of voting on Sunday, baseless accusations of electoral fraud are circulating on social media, and President Jair Bolsonaro is laying the groundwork to contest the results — echoing Donald Trump's claims of a stolen election. For many, it raises fears that Brazil is being engulfed by its own internet-fueled "big lie."

Brazil's last presidential contest in 2018 was so plagued by viral falsehoods, journalist Patricia Campos Mello called it "the WhatsApp election."

Campos Mello, a reporter for the newspaper Folha de Sao Paolo, has investigated how Brazilians were flooded with wildly untrue claims on the Meta-owned messaging app hugely popular in Brazil.

Back then, many of the false election narratives focused on hot-button cultural issues, like gender identity and teaching LGBT tolerance in schools, which Bolsonaro derided as handing out a "gay kit" to children. One notorious video that went viral in September 2018 falsely accused Bolsonaro's opponent of distributing baby bottles with penis-shaped nipples at day care centers.

"People actually believed it," Campos Mello said.

Bulk messages spread viral lies

The ability to forward encrypted messages thousands of times to big WhatsApp groups helped hoaxes like that one take off like wildfire. Marketing groups scraped phone numbers and sold campaigns...

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