Orbán's Fidesz bypassing Meta's political advertising rules, researchers warn

Disinformation researchers are warning that Hungary's ruling party, Fidesz, and its proxies are bypassing a ban on political advertisements across Meta platforms, ahead of the country's national elections scheduled for 12 April.

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According to research by the Hungarian Digital Media Observatory, "there is a real risk that the Hungarian election campaign and other upcoming campaigns will be influenced by a significant number of illicit political ads — including deepfakes — with a huge reach."

Tech giant Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, banned all political, electoral and social advertisements on its EU platforms in October 2025, citing "unworkable requirements and legal uncertainties", while Google has also opted to stop showing political ads in the EU.

These measures were introduced as a response to the EU's updated political advertising rules, which came into effect in the same month, through the regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA).

The TTPA stipulates that political adverts "at EU, national and local level" must be "clearly labelled" and, for instance, stipulate "who paid for them, their costs, and — when targeting or ad delivery techniques are used — the specific audience which is being targeted."

Unlike a regular social media post, a Meta political advertisement is a paid message on Facebook or Instagram that promotes a party or message to a pre-determined specific user group selected by the buyer.

It includes a "paid for" disclaimer and is stored in Meta's Ad Library for at least seven years.

Disinformation researchers say that while the October ban has led to a reduction in the prevalence of active ads from major political advertisers, Fidesz and its allies are still managing to use paid-for political advertisements, accompanied by enforced difficulties in tracking them.

"Fidesz and entities connected to the party have still managed to run many ads that can be clearly characterised as political on Meta's platforms", Szilárd Teczàr, editor of the Hungarian fact-checking site, Lakmusz, told Euronews' verification team, The Cube.

"Meta relies on the goodwill of the actors to declare if an ad is political," he said. "They remove or stop ads retroactively. In October and November, many ads could run for a week or even more. Evidence does show that Meta is getting better; in many cases, they remove the ad within a day or maximum a few days."

Teczàr explained that the ads are shared by Fidesz politicians through official Facebook pages, but more often than not, they are spread by proxy organisations that are clearly connected to the governing party and spread the same messaging.

One example is the National Resistance Movement — a pro-Fidesz political activist group and NGO — which has ties to Megafon, an opaque pro-government organisation, which spent more than €1.7 million on promotional content on Facebook in 2024.

"They have repeatedly posted AI-generated videos, mostly attacking the opposition Tisza party, which they have advertised predominantly on Facebook, reaching millions of views in some cases", said Teczàr, citing a video which was shared in late December with clear political messaging.

The video, which ran as an active advertisement on Meta's platforms, featured members of a family unwrapping gifts labelled "TISZA", only to find political messages pop out of the boxes that misrepresent the opposition's campaign.

The Hungarian hub against disinformation also flagged what appeared to be a harmless cartoon upon first glance. The animation featured a group of animals living on the banks of the Tisza River, who received a warning from a fox, concerning an alleged upcoming property tax that would supposedly be imposed by the Tisza party.

Such ads, although affiliated with the government's messaging and promoting a political message, are not clearly labelled as belonging to the ruling party.

For example, the policy research institute Political Capital in Budapest found multiple ads were classified under non-political labels, for example, as "business" and "finance".

The think tank said that between January and February, researchers identified 457 political advertisements running on Meta's platforms from pages linked to Hungarian political actors.

It said 456 were linked to Fidesz-affiliated politicians and organisations, whilst researchers identified no ads from Tisza-affiliated pages during the same period, and just one from the social-liberal Democratic Coalition party(DK).

Researchers found that many of these ads were only classified as political after they had already run.

Balázs Németh, a Fidesz candidate for Budapest's 13th constituency, was the most active advertiser, according to Political Capital. Németh has posted 81 ads since January, typically local campaign videos.

The second most active advertiser was the Fidesz parliamentary group, sharing 76 adverts — the vast majority of which were eventually classified as political, many of which promoted the pro-Orbán political show "The Hour of Truth".

Fidesz 'experimenting' with how to run ads despite ban

Fidesz is no stranger to using paid-for Meta advertisements to target specific groups with its messaging.

Political Capital estimates based on available data that Fidesz was responsible for up for 87% of total ad spending in the country between January and September 2025, before the tech giants imposed their ban on political advertising.

Fidesz also spent more on social media advertising both on Google and Meta than any other political party within the EU, ahead of the 2024 European Parliamentary elections.

Bulcsú Hunyadi, head of programmes of Political Capital, told us that, despite Meta's ban, Fidesz is "experimenting with how to run ads that circumvent the regulation of the platforms."

"Fidesz and their allies have really tested what videos and content can be advertised, as well as what will be removed," he added.

Hunyadi pointed to ads calling for participation in the government's "National Consultation", sharing ads on billboards depicting their political opponents as puppets of the West and Brussels.

One identical advertising campaign relayed by Fidesz took aim at European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"In the social media advertisements, you could not recognise these figures because their faces were not there, but if you saw the billboards in the street and you saw social media ads, you could connect the two; their clothes were the same, for instance", Hunyadi said.

Researchers say Meta has removed some ads after review, but often only after they have already run.

"Meta and Google's filtering systems are supposed to assess whether content that is about to be advertised contains political messages, but it seems that ads actually slip through the filtering systems," Hunyadi said. "Meta has two rounds of checks to assess political ads, and the second check seems to actually be more thorough than the first one."

"We are seeing more ads slipping through on Meta platforms, but this might also be impacted by the fact that Facebook is especially popular in Hungary", he added.

Meta does not publicly list how its algorithm and filters work in terms of flagging content that violates political advertising rules.

A Meta spokesperson told The Cube that it is against company policy "for advertisers to run ads about social issues, elections and politics in the EU."

"We reject these ads when we are made aware of them and confirm they are violating our rules," the spokesperson added.

Euronews contacted the European Commission for comment, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.