Hungary: How Facebook Downplayed Orban’s Message

Hungary’s elections may appear democratic and clean at first sight, but the real question is: at what point does the level of external influence become so strong that it effectively intervenes in the outcome?

As a citizen of Hungary, a democratic state and member of the European Union, I accept the outcome of our elections. That said, the shock and surprise have not yet fully settled. For full transparency, I have never hidden the fact that I voted for Viktor Orbán.

Yet, regardless of the labels one receives during the campaign for supporting Orbán, there are pragmatic realities that must be acknowledged as genuine interference.

Let’s start with Meta. While Meta is technically an independent corporation, it is powerful enough to swing elections. Just as we saw in the United States, Meta can shape visibility through algorithms that prioritize engagement in ways it wants. In countries like Hungary, where Facebook remains a dominant source of news, even small algorithmic shifts can have outsized political effects. In this case, however, the shifts were not small.

Content from figures associated with the governing party, including (outgoing) Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, was not removed per se but systematically demoted. Posts were pushed lower in users’ feeds, significantly reducing their reach, even among their own followers. Conservative voices—including mine—reporters, and journalists were noticeably toned down. Meta has repeatedly suspended the leader of Mi Hazánk, with his profile being deleted, re-established, and deleted again. Consequently, Mi Hazánk has announced it will take Meta to court. They argue that this constitutes unfair interference in Hungary’s elections, especially given Facebook’s dominant role as a news source in the country.

Meanwhile, opposition influencers, particularly Péter Magyar, the incoming prime minister, flourished. When you opened Facebook during the campaign, their content dominated the platform. Péter Magyar’s reach systematically exceeded that of global superstars like Beyoncé or Ronaldo. His posts generated interaction rates that were neither believable nor logical for an organic campaign. This strongly suggests algorithmic amplification, allowing his messages to reach far beyond his existing audience and into the feeds of users who had not actively sought them out.

This phenomenon was reinforced by the deployment of the Digital Services Act (DSA), a European Union regulation adopted in 2022. In theory, it serves as a safeguard against falsehoods and disinformation. In practice, it creates a centralized mechanism for determining which political messages are seen and which are quietly buried.

Once you control the feed, you shape the conversation.

This form of intervention is subtle but extremely powerful. It leaves no trace on election day. A similar turning point occurred during the 2016 United States presidential election, when it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had harvested data from tens of millions of Facebook users to build psychological profiles and deliver highly targeted political ads. At the same time, investigations into Russian interference showed how foreign actors exploited Facebook’s systems by creating fake accounts and pushing divisive content.

Then, the Congressional hearings in 2018 and 2020 established that Facebook had been used as a tool in election influence operations. In the United States, various political groups (especially conservatives) have long claimed bias and unequal enforcement of rules. However, U.S. courts have generally ruled that platforms like Meta are private companies and can moderate content under the First Amendment.

Europe—and Hungary in particular—operates under a different legal framework. Sadly, the European Union’s digital regulations appear to be reinforcing rather than checking this power. In effect, they allow platforms like Facebook to decide what is acceptable to say and what is not.

Welcome to the era of contemporary censorship.

Then there was the seemingly non-interventionalist pressure coming directly from the European Union itself. After the election, this was openly admitted by none other than Ursula von der Leyen and Manfred Weber. Both acknowledged that they had been very harsh on Orbán and Hungary and recognized how the withholding of EU funds had hurt the economy of a relatively small country and that this inevitably played a role in the election’s outcome.

We knew this throughout the entire campaign. Yet whenever we raised concerns about the EU’s unbalanced treatment of Hungary, we were immediately dismissed as “propaganda.”

The EU’s current leadership actively fueled the narrative that became one of the strongest slogans of Péter Magyar’s campaign: that Hungary is not a democracy but, at best, an autocracy and, at worst, a dictatorship. The events of April 12th and their aftermath have once again shown how unfounded and purely political the language against Orbán and his government was, used only to push a narrative designed to defeat Viktor Orbán.

Withholding billions in EU funds was widely seen as economic coercion, deliberately timed to hurt Hungarian voters and weaken Orbán ahead of the election. This inevitably helped the opposition, whose central motto was that they would “bring home the money,” a message we had already seen used successfully during Donald Tusk’s campaign in Poland.

EU officials and MEPs repeatedly expressed concerns about alleged ‘Russian interference’ on Orbán’s side, misuse of state resources, and intimidation of journalists. Many pro-EU voices openly hoped for Orbán’s defeat. They claimed that the Hungarian election was a test case for reversing ‘illiberalism’ in Europe. Ursula von der Leyen didn’t hide her celebration of the result, stating that it made “Europe’s heart beat stronger” in Hungary.

During JD Vance’s visit to Budapest just days before the vote, he described the EU’s actions as “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference” he had ever seen, accusing Brussels of trying to destroy Hungary’s economy and energy independence simply out of hatred for Orbán.

While one could argue that direct, provable intervention is difficult to establish in such a supranational institution as the European Union cases, one thing is unquestionable: Péter Magyar’s victory was widely interpreted in Brussels as a major win for EU alignment. Currently, it seems to have removed a significant veto-wielder on issues such as Ukraine aid, sanctions, and broader foreign policy, potentially opening the door for pushes toward qualified majority voting in several key areas.

The outcome of the April 12 elections is rooted in several factors. Neither Meta nor the EU alone could have swung this election. It is evident that Péter Magyar ran a stronger campaign, especially when tailoring his message to younger voters and first-time voters. Undeniably, domestic factors also played a major role: particularly the record-high turnout of nearly 80% and the decisive shift among younger and first-time voters toward Péter Magyar. I use the word “stronger” deliberately, even if stronger does not necessarily mean better. A campaign that fails a basic morality test might reach more people, but that does not mean it is building a better future.

All things considered, the results are clear. We now take our seats on the opposition side. That means accepting the results, but it does not mean stopping our questions. The central question remains: at what point does external influence become so strong that it effectively intervenes in the outcome?