Author: Lakmusz, member of HDMO
What a week! We are only two days away from the Hungarian elections, and it seems that the final week of the campaign has condensed every major disinformation tactic: we’ve seen AI-generated videos combined with prohibited political ads, Russian disinformation operations, and some classic news falsification. This is our ninth weekly digest of the digital trends shaping the campaign period and the very last one before Sunday’s elections.
3,000 videos, and more to come?
Let’s start with a network containing roughly 80 Facebook and TikTok pages that spread the ruling party’s messages in at least 3,000 videos. Yes, you read that right: three thousand.
According to Lakmusz’s findings, at least 63 TikTok accounts and 17 Facebook pages were created with the aim to use AI-generated videos to disseminate the government’s messages. There are numerous signs indicating that the pages belong to a network: for example, the similar length of the videos, the similar frequency of posting, and the fact that the descriptions of some of the videos include similar text warning that the content is AI-generated.
TikTok deletes the accounts, but to no avail: new ones keep popping up. And what about the Facebook pages? They continue to thrive, almost without interruption.
It’s hard to tell who’s behind these pages. What we can say for sure is that roughly half of the pages we found in our initial search followed a TikTok channel linked to a celebrity close to the government, as well as a journalist working for a pro-government newspaper who had previously undergone training at Megafon, a pro-government influencer group.
We also detected a newly created Facebook profile: although Károly’s profile appears at first glance to be that of an ordinary digital content creator, his activity tells another story. First, he shares AI-generated videos spreading misleading information about the Tisza Party’s energy policy; second, he massively promotes contents from pro-government influencers; third, he ran more than 30 ads, despite Meta’s ban on political advertisement, spent over 2 million HUF, and reached more than 7 million users; and finally, he uses the profile picture of a young Russian businessman.
If you missed our story from February about the mysterious page that flooded Facebook with ads resembling Fidesz’s horrific war video, we have good news for you: now you can read it in English.
A coup, mandatory conscription and dirty pants
Even in the days leading up to the election, we are not spared from Russian disinformation campaigns: in line with the trends of recent weeks, articles attempting to discredit the Tisza Party have appeared on fake news sites, and the fake news were also supported by Facebook posts and ads. This time, the party’s prime ministerial candidate, Péter Magyar, has been targeted.
One article attacked him by claiming that, according to a leaked Signal message, he and Manfred Weber, president of the European People’s Party, are planning a coup if the Tisza Party does not win the election. Another text revisits the now-classic claim that the Tisza Party would reinstate mandatory military service in Hungary. This material was published on a website that copied the Tisza Party’s official website.
We found a Facebook page that shared both pieces of content and of course ran them as ads. The fake articles thus reached tens of thousands of people. Before the publication of our article, the now-deleted Facebook page had promoted content—which, according to the Gnida Project, was AI-generated and linked to the Russian group Storm-1516—that depicted Péter Magyar in dirty pants.
Blaming Ukraine one more time and a lot of figures from the Tisza Party’s program
Fidesz politicians and pro-government media outlets did not let this week go by without some cheapfakes. The Minister of Agriculture, István Nagy posted a video in which he spoke indignantly about Ukrainian farmers, who, after joining the EU, want to receive all agricultural subsidies but are unwilling to meet the requirements for 10 years. In fact, Ukrainian farmers have only asked for a 10-year transition period during which they will continuously work toward compliance with EU rules, and they also want to gain access to agricultural funds gradually. Do you know who else had such conditions? Every new member state, including Hungary in 2004.
The pro-government media Mandiner wrote about an economist who – according to their report – claimed that if the Tisza Party wins, they will repeal the utility bill cuts and the 14th-month pension. But what did the economist really say in the interview quoted by Mandiner? Exactly the opposite: that he doesn’t believe that the Tisza Party would take these government benefits away.
Before the elections, we read Tisza’s party program, which cites 30 statistics to support its claim that Hungary has fallen into a catastrophic state since 2010. We checked what we could. We, as well, obtained some new data on one of the Tisza Party’s favourite campaign topics, namely how many Hungarian babies were born abroad, but even these figures do not reveal the exact number.
That’s all for today. Next Friday we are coming with a post-election analysis, so stay tuned! Share this article and tell us what you think!
Cover Photo: Annamari Dezső/Lakmusz