By Supantha Mukherjee and Martin Coulter
STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) -Facebook&nbsp;parent Meta and Google's video platform&nbsp;YouTube&nbsp;said on Monday they were removing&nbsp;content&nbsp;supporting or praising the weekend ransacking of&nbsp;Brazilian government buildings by anti-democratic demonstrators.
Tens of thousands of supporters of&nbsp;Brazil's far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro smashed presidential palace windows, flooded parts of Congress with a sprinkler system and ransacked rooms in the Supreme Court in a more than three hour&nbsp;attack.
"In advance of the election, we designated&nbsp;Brazil&nbsp;as a temporary high-risk location and have been removing&nbsp;content&nbsp;calling for people to take up arms or forcibly invade Congress, the Presidential palace and other federal buildings," a Meta spokesman said.
"We are also designating this as a violating event, which means we will&nbsp;remove&nbsp;content&nbsp;that supports or praises these actions," he said. "We are actively following the situation and will continue removing&nbsp;content&nbsp;that violates our policies."
Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office on Jan. 1 after defeating Bolsonaro in a runoff election in October, ending&nbsp;Brazil's most right-wing government in decades.
Bolsonaro refused to concede defeat and some supporters have claimed the election was stolen, with people taking to social media and messaging platforms from Twitter, Telegram and TikTok to&nbsp;YouTube&nbsp;and&nbsp;Facebook, to organise protests.
A spokesperson for&nbsp;YouTube&nbsp;told Reuters that the video-sharing company was "closely tracking" the situation in&nbsp;Brazil, where social media platforms have been ordered to block users accused of supporting the&nbsp;attack.
"Our Trust and Safety team is removing&nbsp;content&nbsp;that violates our Community Guidelines, including livestreams and videos inciting violence," the spokesperson said.
"In addition, our systems are prominently surfacing authoritative&nbsp;content&nbsp;on our homepage, at the top of search results, and in recommendations. We will remain vigilant as the situation continues to unfold."
'PROACTIVE MONITORING'
A representative for Telegram said the private messaging app was working with&nbsp;Brazil's government and fact checking groups to prevent the spread of&nbsp;content&nbsp;inciting violence.
"Telegram is a platform that supports the right to free speech and peaceful protest. Calls to violence, however, are explicitly forbidden on our platform," a spokesperson said.
"Our moderators use a combination of proactive monitoring in public-facing parts of our platform in addition to accepting user reports, in order to&nbsp;remove&nbsp;such&nbsp;content."
TikTok and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Twitter's&nbsp;Brazil&nbsp;staff was severely cut in layoffs following Elon Musk's takeover in October, which included eight employees who oversaw trending topics and helped add context to tweets that had been labelled for misinformation, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Messages seen by Reuters throughout the week showed members of such groups organising meeting points in several cities around the country, from where chartered buses would leave for Brasilia, with the intention to occupy public buildings.
Social media companies were criticised for not doing enough when supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump invaded the U.S. Capitol two years ago. Platforms like&nbsp;Facebook&nbsp;and Alphabet's&nbsp;YouTube&nbsp;have said they are working to&nbsp;remove&nbsp;misleading information about elections and voting.
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm and Martin Coulter in London; Additional reporting by Brad Haynes; Editing by Alexander Smith and Aurora Ellis)

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Facebook, YouTube remove content backing Brazil attack