Anonymous third-party paid political advertising in the Cyprus 2026 parliamentary elections
By Michael Sirivianos and Andreas Andreou
MedDMO researchers tracked ads naming Cyprus’s 753 registered candidates across Meta, Google and TikTok ad libraries/APIs and identified five anonymous third-party advertising operations totalling more than 450 political ads, including one spreading fabricated polling data days before the vote. Enforcement was weak and reactive: Meta removed less than 1% of flagged ads while still live and TikTok logged only one removal in 220 days, but after researchers escalated directly to the platforms and the European Commission, Meta removed 687 ads within 30 hours and TikTok removed 631 ads within five days.
Executive summary
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MedDMO, EDMO’s Cyprus/Greece/Malta hub, monitored Meta’s, Google’s and TikTok’s ad libraries and APIs throughout Cyprus’s May 2026 parliamentary campaign, searching for ads tied to any registered candidate or party. The analysis surfaced five coordinated anonymous or pseudonymous advertising operations that evaded the platforms’ own political-ad bans and the EU’s Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising Regulation, one of which spread fake pre-election polling data. Enforcement across all three platforms was minimal and almost entirely reactive, accelerating only once researchers escalated specific ads through the Code of Practice’s Rapid Response System directly to the European Commission and the platforms.
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