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Same goes for the largest local party in Emmen, Wakker Emmen, who subsidized their campaign with Meta advertising that reached 225k+ impressions. I could go on, as there are many more examples.

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In Katwijk, a small beach town in South Holland with 70k inhabitants, the largest party DURF ran dozens of ads that garnered over 300k impressions in total over months.

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In The Hague, Hart voor Den Haag won the municipal elections, almost doubling their previous vote share. On Meta, they reached almost 100k people with unlabeled political advertising that ran for a month and a half.

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 16/03/2026

The municipal elections in the Netherlands were held yesterday in a free and fair manner. And yet, I believe they happened on an unequal playing field when it comes to voter outreach opportunities, for which I squarely lay the blame on Meta and its non-enforcement of its own political ad ban policy.

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🚀 Launching our CampAIgn Tracker for the Dutch municipal elections! We monitor AI-generated content across 4 platforms in 30 municipalities. PVV leads AI use again. And 90% of posts without any label. Can you spot the AI? Try our "AI of Niet?" game! gr26.campaigntracker.nl

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 11/03/2026

I have ALSO heard through the grapevine that @noonabdulqadir.bsky.social is looking for a postdoc or equivalent, so if you are hiring you REALLY shouldn't pass up on her. She's brilliant! You can explore her dissertation findings through interactive games here: www.noon-abdulqadir.com/games

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 11/03/2026

If you've ever thought "hey, that Fabio guy does interesting work on political ads but I am more concerned about the labor market" then you should 100% check out Noon's research. She's tackling many of the same questions I do (e.g. algorithmic ad delivery), but in the domain of hiring and job ads.

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 11/03/2026

My best friend Noon Abdulqadir is defending her PhD on April 9th and I couldn't be more excited and proud! 🎓 Her dissertation "Hiring in the Digital Society" digs into how gender and age stereotypes show up in job advertisements🧵 www.noon-abdulqadir.com/defense/

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 10/03/2026

Today, @laurensdassen.voltnederland.org questioned the Interior Minister on our research finding political ads on Meta, despite ban. Glad to also see one of my core concerns reflected: if platforms can't even detect obvious ads by political parties, how would they catch covert influence campaigns?

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 09/03/2026

You are laughing? Some High IQ gepolitical takes are happening on X and you are laughing?

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 08/03/2026

also here are 12 political ads I found in the Netherlands with the word "verkiezingen" (i.e. election) and that didn't seem to be a problem (most were online for days, I think only one was taken down).

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Interesting to see: the self-reported political campaign spending in the Netherlands during the upcoming 18th March local elections surpasses even how much money was spent in the national election.

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Though complaining about EU regulation or promoting your new party is hardly posting "photo with a pizza" :)

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The account is self-identified as a politician. This would be the simplest enforcement in the world if Meta actually cared. Political actors who break the rules get access to Meta's powerful targeting infrastructure. This distorts political competition in their favor over those who follow rules.

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 25/02/2026

There is no "political ad ban" on Meta. A ban that isn't enforced isn't a ban. Former AfD leader Frauke Petry and now leader of a splinter party is running several political ads on Meta. One has been active since Oct 23 and reached 171k people across Germany.

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How can you not love the ASoIaF fandom? Everyone is everyone.

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 12/02/2026

This sounds amazing! Instead of spiraling at 2am with your own thoughts you will have five half-baked text predictors spiraling with you! So you can finally stop arguing with yourself... and START arguing with sycophantic LLMs that enable your late-night anxious ruminations FROM EVERY ANGLE!

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 08/02/2026

Check out the gallery if you are curious how dashboardr looks like! And obviously if you build a dashboard with it, we'd be happy to feature you! :) favstats.github.io/dashboardr/g...

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 07/02/2026

Check out the gallery if you are curious how dashboardr looks like! And obviously if you build a dashboard with it, we'd be happy to feature you! :) favstats.github.io/dashboardr/g...

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 05/02/2026

🚀 dashboardr is out! An #rstats package for building interactive dashboards with tidyverse-style syntax. Launched with a fun hackathon at @ascor.bsky.social (🍕 included). 📦: favstats.github.io/dashboardr/ Big thanks to the dashboardr team, Digicomlab, and @vivifabrien.bsky.social for the logo 🎨

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 04/02/2026

Love this! I was wondering about this a year ago and glad someone has actually worked on this. Fascinating stuff. osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 15/01/2026

Excited to share our new report on Dutch election integrity! As an academic researcher, one of the most rewarding aspects of my work is when our research can directly inform public debate. That's exactly what happened with the Hybrid Election Integrity Observatory (HEIO). Full report: www.heio.nl

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 07/01/2026

🚨 New CampAIgn Tracker + Hiring 3 Research Assistants! 🚨 Together w/ @meinungsfuehrer.bsky.social & colleagues at UvA (@claesdevreese.bsky.social @teresaelena.bsky.social, @nickmattis.bsky.social, @philippdarius.bsky.social), we’re launching a project on GenAI in the 2026 Dutch local elections 🇳🇱

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 03/01/2026

In the new year, political ads on Google and Meta continue to run in the EU despite both platforms having policies that supposedly ban them. The rules are so badly enforced that official political party accounts (even self-labeled with the category "political party") can run ads without problems.

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 02/01/2026

Also with those ads the DHS is heavily racially profiling the Latino community specifically as I wrote about in a blog post last year: www.favstats.eu/post/dhs/

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 27/12/2025

Pokémon or Pill? 💊 I made a silly little game where you guess if a name is a Pokémon or a pharmaceutical drug. Can be harder than you'd think 🙂 Maybe something to challenge your family and friends with over the holidays? pokepill.net

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 14/12/2025

Last summer I was knocked out with Covid and some friends and I cooked up an AI powered online party-game idea and you can now play it too! 🎰 Prompt Roulette 🎰 You copy-paste a prompt into an LLM, it generates a game, and your job is to beat it. Try it out here: favstats.github.io/prompt_roule...

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 12/12/2025

Happening now! :) 👉 Register here to join: lnkd.in/eUZZDCk4

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 26/11/2025

Ok, I understand the point but also I do not see any reference to *actual* ads being bought? Obviously, using auto-translate here so maybe I am missing something but it seems to strongly suggest that the buying of ads isn't just hypothetical but something they are doing?

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 26/11/2025

In an ironic twist, an ad I could find is a Moderaterna politician attacking the social democrats over this (a political ad that should be banned :D)

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 25/11/2025

Meta’s “political ad ban” in action: a Nazi ad calling for protest & Nazi symbols is classified as not political & still running (has been for days). The consequences of the self-imposed ban were clear from the start: bad actors continue, Meta profits, and those following the rules are punished.

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 05/11/2025

"No" Ned said with sadness in his voice. "Now it ends.'

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 31/10/2025

It is even more now, see our dashboard: www.campaigntracker.nl/en/

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 29/10/2025

I have always exaggerated with dashboards, but this 🇳🇱 Dutch election campaign I did not make 1, I did not make 2, but I made 3 dashboards 😅 1. tracking the use of AI (campaigntracker.nl/en) 2. tracking campaign spending (lnkd.in/eUKgeV9V) 3. tracking targeting on Meta (lnkd.in/eXrp454E) #tk2025

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 29/10/2025

🚨 CampAIgn Tracker Update: we now identify 584 AI posts found in our campaign monitoring. 60% from far-right accounts, mainly PVV MPs' "Geen Aangifte" page (now, ironically, facing charges). We find: AI was more succesful on Facebook but flopped elsewhere. #tk2025 🇬🇧: campaigntracker.nl/en

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 27/10/2025

Guess who is on national TV tonight

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 27/10/2025

I think this Facebook page is a terrifying case study in how gen AI slop has enabled the creation of an automated hate machine, churning out endless caricatures of made-up enemies, immigrants and politicians, optimized for engagement. In many ways, it embodied the very nightmare many of us feared.

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Fabio Votta📊🐧 @favstats.eu · 27/10/2025

The Facebook page behind these images was the most active spreader of political AI content, posting multiple times a day and becoming the most engaged-with pages on Facebook among all those we track. Even surpassing Geert Wilders in total engagement during October. The page has now been deleted.

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In conclusion, while AI use in politics remains limited, smaller parties, right-leaning, and satirical networks lead adoption. Importantly, the lack of transparency labels & use of deepfakes do raise concerns about voter manipulation. See more: 🇬🇧 campaigntracker.nl/en 🇳🇱 campaigntracker.nl #tk2025

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Ordinary people appear most often in AI content (239 posts). Politicians are also deepfaked: especially Geert Wilders, mostly shown in a positive light. Parties and politicians in general use AI mainly for positive posts and GOTV purposes, while other actors use it negatively, often on migration.

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We found 404 AI-generated visuals (~2% of posts). Pro-right (party) accounts make up the largest share, with PVV-linked accounts leading (120). Small parties like Vrede voor Dieren (18%), 50PLUS (17%) also use AI more often. Worryingly, 61% lack proper labeling and are not identified as AI.

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