Michael Sirivianos

Anonymous third-party paid political advertising in the Cyprus 2026 parliamentary elections

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.