Orbán’s government accuses Facebook of undermining his reelection campaign

BUDAPEST — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government is complaining his reelection campaign has been undermined by Facebook’s internal features favoring his rival Péter Magyar, who is ahead in the polls ahead of Sunday’s crunch election.

The American tech giant’s “algorithm is basically working against the government parties,” Orbán’s Government Spokesperson Zoltán Kovács told POLITICO. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, denies the claims.

The prime minister faces an unprecedented challenge to his 16-year rule from Magyar, who made his first splash with a Facebook post blasting government corruption and cronyism.

Facebook is an important platform in Hungarian politics, and Magyar has regularly used it to appeal to voters and react to events, clocking millions of views with his self-authored posts.

While Orbán has 1.6 million followers to Magyar’s 930,000, the latter has received more user engagement in terms of comments and likes: In March, Magyar made 287 posts, generating 14,077,000 interactions — nearly double the 7,868,000 interactions Orbán received from his 342 posts, according to a Telex tally published on April 3.

“He speaks the language of the algorithm … and he can keep up with the speed of the news cycle without losing strategic clarity,” said Márton Hajdu, EU affairs chief for Magyar’s Tisza party and one of its parliamentary candidates.

But according to Kovács, Magyar’s success on the social network is due to two different user profiling systems used by Meta, which are putting Orbán at a disadvantage.

“The prime minister is required to have a political profile with obvious limitations … and then we have an opposition leader whose profile is run by a different algorithm,” he said in an interview last week. Magyar operates a personal professional profile under the category of “public figure,” while Orbán has a politician “page.”

The heart of Kovács’ complaint is that the algorithm is more restrictive in terms of how many people get to see a “politician” page compared to a personal professional profile.

In mid-March, Orbán’s camp claimed that Facebook had started restricting the prime minister’s posts after a massive campaign by the opposition to report content from the ruling Fidesz party. At the end of March, Orbán’s Political Director Balász Orbán also claimed that supporters had been unable to like the prime minister’s posts for several days.

A Meta spokesperson denied the allegations. “Our systems do not treat ‘Profiles in Professional Mode’ any differently than ‘Pages’ when it comes to distribution on Facebook,” they said.

“There are no restrictions on the prime minister’s accounts, nor have any posts been removed. Our community standards and policies apply equally to everybody and we have systems in place to detect any coordinated efforts to abuse our reporting systems,” added the spokesperson.

Ban of political ads

Social media networks have grown into key campaign platforms for elections in Europe.

In Hungary, Facebook is the most used social media platform, with 4 million site visits in February 2026 alone in a country of 9 million people, according to the preliminary observation report of the expert long-term electoral observation mission sent by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

And when Meta banned political advertising on its platforms in October 2025, following EU legislation that forced high burdens of disclosure, it presented a serious obstacle to Fidesz’s strategy, which had heavily relied on ads to ensure its online presence, explained Bulcsú Hunyadi of Political Capital, a Budapest-based think tank and political consultancy, when speaking to POLITICO.

Fidesz was the EU’s biggest spender in political advertising during the 2024 European Parliament election campaign. The party and its supporting organizations spent €5.4 million on Meta and Google ads from the start of the year until June 15, while opposition parties and their associated organizations spent €1.4 million, according to research from Political Capital.

According to Hungarian fact-checking organization Lakmusz, Fidesz has tried to bypass the ad ban, as Meta’s oversight mechanisms still have pitfalls.

The party also organized online activist networks to amplify its political messaging on social media, said Hunyadi. For example, one such Facebook group — the so-called “Fight Club” made up of about 60,000 activists — shares posts alongside instructions on how to boost them through likes, shares and comments.

Despite that, Magyar has gained an edge: His more personal and direct video style better resonates with audiences — and platform algorithms — than traditional political messaging. This has allowed him to bypass Orbán’s closely controlled public and private media — the prime minister controls around 80 percent of the country’s media landscape — which largely relay government narratives.

Government Spokesperson Kovács said it was not true that “there is an overwhelming majority of media outlets that help the work of, say, the government parties. “

“People are getting their political information increasingly and overwhelmingly from social media by now,” he said.