00:00Are Hungarian Parties Bypassing Meta's Political Advertising Rules?
00:08Disinformation researchers from the HGMO, part of the European Digital Media Observatory,
00:13are warning that Hungary's ruling party Fidesz and its proxies could be bypassing Meta and Google's ban on political advertising,
00:21ahead of elections on 12 April.
00:23Tech giant Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, banned all political ads on its EU platforms in October 2025,
00:31citing unworkable requirements and legal uncertainties.
00:34Google also took similar measures in response to the EU's regulation on transparency and targeting of political advertising.
00:42Unlike regular social media posts, a political advertisement is sponsored and promotes a party or message to a targeted user
00:49group.
00:49Fidesz and entities connected to Fidesz are still managed to run many ads that can be clearly characterized as political
01:03on Meta's platforms.
01:06It relies on the goodwill of the actors to not to do this or to declare if an ad is
01:13political, they are getting better.
01:16So now in many cases they remove the ad within a day or maximum after some days.
01:23Disinformation experts have stated that political ads have been more common on Meta than Google since the ban.
01:29They have also pointed to flaws in Meta's ad filtering system.
01:32The company does not publicly list how its algorithm and filters work to flag content that violates political advertising rules.
01:39A Meta spokesperson told us that it is against company policy for advertisers to run ads about social issues, elections
01:46and politics in the EU.
01:48They added that Meta rejects these ads once they are made aware of them and confirm they are violating their
01:53rules.
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