Political ads on Facebook, after the Meta ban – EDMO

Lessons Learned from Six Elections
Lessons Learned from Six Elections
This text was published by BROD, one of fifteen EDMO Hubs.
Since 6 October 2025, Meta has no longer allowed paid advertising on political, electoral or social matters in the European Union. The company decided in response to Regulation (EU) 2024 / 900 on transparency and targeting political advertising (TTPA), applicable from 10 October 2025, the requirements of which it considers “impossible to apply ‘.
This report shows that the ban did not eliminate political advertising from Facebook, but it removed it from the transparency zone. We analyzed 568 paid ads from 26 Romanian pages in 2025 and 2026. 437 of them promoted politicians, electoral messages or communist nostalgia. Only 21 were marked as political. For unmarked ads, the Meta ad library does not show how much was spent.
The situation is not unique to Romania. Research from Hungary, Cyprus, and Ireland documents the same pattern: political ads passing Meta filters, late removals, and missing spending data . In parallel, the same filters have blocked legitimate independent media campaigns .
Read the full article here ❯
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