As political campaigning increasingly moves online, a new form of influence has quietly gained traction across Europe: political messaging delivered by social media influencers. In our latest policy paper, Undue Influence(rs): How Platforms Must Step Up under the DSA to Protect Democracies, we explore how influencer-driven political content poses a serious challenge to transparency, accountability, and electoral integrity — and what must be done about it.

This paper builds on Liberties’ broader work monitoring digital political communication and platform regulation across the EU. In 2024, we observed election advertising trends in six Member States and assessed how Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Search Engines (VLOSEs) responded to their obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA). While many efforts focus on traditional political ads, influencer content has remained largely overlooked — a blind spot with real consequences.

Why this matters

Influencers are trusted voices for millions of users, especially young people. When political actors pay influencers to promote their message — whether directly or indirectly — without clear disclosure, voters are misled. What appears to be an authentic personal opinion may in fact be a paid promotion. This undermines informed decision-making, erodes public trust, and allows political campaigns to bypass transparency rules, especially during election periods.

This tactic has been widely adopted by political actors, distorting democratic processes through both domestic manipulation and foreign interference aimed at gaining geopolitical advantage. In Romania, the 2024 presidential elections were annulled after a scandal involving paid TikTok campaigns, fake engagement, and suspected Russian influence. Far-right candidate Calin Georgescu surged from obscurity to frontrunner status after going viral on TikTok, despite declaring no campaign budget or formal outreach. Investigations found that over 100 influencers were unknowingly paid to post vague political messages, while thousands of fake accounts flooded the platform with pro-Georgescu comments to boost visibility. A well-known influencer, dubbed the ‘King of TikTok,’ was later arrested for allegedly distributing nearly $1 million in covert payments. The case exposed how influencers, bots, and opaque marketing platforms can be weaponised to sway voters while evading political transparency laws.

Despite clear expectations from the European Commission’s 2024 Guidelines, major platforms like Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and X have failed to implement meaningful transparency measures for political influencer content. Some ban political ads outright but offer no tools to detect or disclose covert sponsorships. This drives political messaging further underground, beyond public scrutiny.

What are our main findings?

1. Political influencer content often goes undisclosed. Platforms lack mechanisms for influencers to declare paid political content.
2. Platform responses are inadequate. Self-regulatory measures are patchy, opaque, and difficult for users or researchers to navigate. Political ad libraries are often incomplete, hard to search, or simply non-existent.
3. Covert monetisation creates risks. These include voter deception, lack of accountability for political actors, and amplification of disinformation — especially during elections.

Current implementation of the DSA falls short. Platforms are not living up to their risk mitigation obligations under Articles 34 and 35 of the DSA, particularly regarding emerging threats like influencer-driven political messaging.

Our key recommendations

To protect electoral integrity and democratic discourse, both platforms and regulators must take stronger action.

For Platforms:

• Enable voluntary disclosures and implement mandatory labelling of influencer content paid for or coordinated with political actors — including when posted organically.
• Deploy algorithmic tools to detect political content from high-reach accounts and prompt disclosure.
• Ensure that political ad libraries include all monetised political content, are searchable, and disclose funding chains.
• Implement boosting restrictions and human review mechanisms around election periods to prevent covert content from going viral unnoticed.
• Provide users with digital literacy tools and transparent explanations about how and why certain influencer content appears in their feeds.

For the European Commission:

• Strengthen and update the Guidelines on election-related risks, and issue new guidance on civic discourse outside election periods.
• Clarify compliance expectations and stress that voluntary guidelines reflect the Commission’s understanding of good-faith application of the DSA.
• Enforce transparency obligations, including against platforms that systematically fail to provide adequate safeguards.

Transparency, accountability, and public trust are not optional in a democracy — they are essential. As influencer marketing becomes an increasingly powerful tool for political actors, we must ensure that covert campaigning does not undermine the legitimacy of our democratic institutions.

Reads & Resources

• Undue Influence(rs): How Platforms Must Step Up under the DSA to Protect Democracies
• DSA: New Risk Assessments To Protect Civic Discourse and Electoral Processes

Image Credits:

• pikisuperstar/Freepik
• Freepik