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In 2025, both Meta and Google banned political advertisements on their platforms in reaction to the European Union’s new transparency law (TTPA). As found by earlier research, this decision did not, paradoxically, eliminate paid political content online but merely shifted it to somewhere less traceable. Liberties’ most recent monitoring brief on the TTPA investigates this phenomenon in the lead-up to Hungary’s April 2026 parliamentary elections.
Our latest research confirms the findings of two earlier policy briefs: In Hungary, Meta and Google’s bans on paid political ads have not eliminated their use but have merely led advertisers to exploit regulatory weaknesses. These include simply not declaring ads as such, using proxy pages, coordinated manipulation of algorithms and paying smaller influencers. Additionally, we looked at TikTok, a platform that has long banned paid political ads. Overall, we found that it is unclear what kind of political campaigning was happening on YouTube and TikTok, and that Meta did little to prevent the circumvention of their political ad ban.
Why is this important?
The EU has, in recent years, introduced legislation that, in theory, significantly protects the integrity of online political discourse and therefore strengthens democratic processes. However, if these laws remain weakly enforced and easy to circumvent in practice, their effectiveness is limited. The TTPA will only work if platforms cannot by default presume that their own formal ban on political advertising in reality prevents such advertising from circulating on the platform. Likewise, the Digital Services Act (DSA) calls on platforms to address potential harms their designs may pose to electoral processes, but companies have not yet adequately followed up to date.
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What did we find now?
Meta has not effectively enforced its ban on paid political ads. While it deleted many of the political ads still posted online, the pages and accounts behind repeated attempts to circumvent the ban often still have access to the advertising system. This is highly insufficient, as it not only allows such accounts to repeatedly reach users with paid ads until they are removed, but also incentivises non-compliance with its rules, as accounts are not sufficiently penalised. In Hungary, the Orbán-linked NEM (the Hungarian activists group known for disseminating pro-government political advertisements) launched 183 political ads on Meta platforms since political advertisements were officially banned, totalling at least €200k in volume. Meta classified 84% of them as political, but not immediately, allowing many ads to reach significant numbers of voters. Overall, Meta is enforcing its new rules very weakly. At the same time, experts have fewer available transparency tools to assess online political campaigns.
Similarly, this lack of tools constrained our research on Google’s YouTube. As Google formally stopped political advertising in the EU, its ad repository does not list any breaches. This made it impossible for Liberties to determine whether paid political ads were published and in what volume.
Having had bans in place for much longer, TikTok was found to have a more holistic definition of what constitutes political advertising. This is reflected in a more active approach: the platform removes violations, accounts, and networks. The main risk here is constituted by paid political statements spread by small influencers, which are difficult to detect. As with other platforms, TikTok’s monitoring system lacks transparency, making it difficult for outside actors like Liberties to make assessments.
To address these concerns, Liberties calls on…
…the TTPA team to build the European online political advertisement database quickly, comprehensively, and so that it allows outside actors to scrutinise platforms. At the same time, enforcement authorities in the Member States must be fully operational to ensure compliance.
… the DSA team to pay increased attention to how platforms address risks related to elections that are not as straightforward as formal political ads. Meta’s weak enforcement approach requires special observation here.
… the DFA team to look into ways of targeting paid political advertisements more directly in the Digital Fairness Act. We propose creating a repository for paid influencer content.
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