It imposes substantial bureaucratic compliance burden on advertising platforms to accept ads that deal with political issues.
Meta decided that the revenue wasn't worth the compliance burden, so they do not accept any political advertising at all. They filter anything that smells like political or social issues, whether it be a campaign about anti-immigration or a play about feminism, because if they accept it they will get heavily fined by the EU.
This is why Meta does not ban this advertising outside of the EU. It's a EU regulatory problem. The Register does not mention this anywhere in the article.
It does impose significant compliance burdens with massive fines.
You have to report who paid for the ad, where the money came from, what political process it relates to, you have to do this through the entire chain (i.e., ad agency, ad exchanges, publishers), you have to attest to the ad's accuracy, they have to publish all the information through a central EU repository, they are not allowed to use any person-level ad targeting, they have to track whether it pertains to any active EU bill or legislative process within three months of decision-making and, if so, they have to attest that the entity and funds come only from the EU (not just directly, but indirectly).
The penalties for mistakes are enormous. The act allows penalties of up to 6% of global revenue. That's around $10 billion for Meta.
I'm pretty sure I would make the same decision when the EU is threatening to fine me for $10 billion for making any mistake on the rules for the TTPA.
These are also the folks this law is actually aimed at. So mission accomplished...
They didn't claim that. Many EU regulations don't actually ban the thing, but make it more expensive, cumbersome, risky, etc... This has a similar effect as censorship, but doesn't imply there is some law that say "it is illegal to say X".
> liable and designed to influence the outcome of an election or referendum, voting behaviour or a legislative or regulatory process, at Union, national, regional or local level
Now, we all agree feminism is an important civil rights topic and Virginia Woolf should be (and is) celebrated in the western world. But how can a platform that is explicitly not allowed to permit advertising for political or social causes be allowed to run paid ads about "feminism" especially while Equal Pay for Equal Work is such a hot-button political issue [1] all over Europe?
So on the one hand we have the EU saying that no political or cause-centric advertising is permitted, and on the other hand the regulation is so overly broad that it is left up to everyone else to "figure it out".
As a result, and as we see here, most social media has just chosen to ban it all completely.
[1] https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/ju...
I don’t know how the cost-benefit analysis happened within Meta when considering approaches but presumably they would rather be getting paid to show more ads rather than not being paid. Their policies may also change over time as they invest more in their systems or if the rules change.
Ultimately it seems to me like the real problem was that the advertiser in this case was quite tiny and the representative they spoke to perhaps didn’t do a great job of explaining the issue (and the customer was too insignificant to justify a more high-touch approach). Presumably if you’re paying a lot more for advertising you can get better treatment and perhaps Meta would also appropriately label political ads if you were wanting to spend a lot on them.
This doesn't sound like a good thing. Why shouldn't a political group be able to target people who are going to care the most about an issue/politician with an ad? Basically Meta has too good of a profile, so they aren't able to target ads. I would want to know personally, if Politician X is for/against a policy I feel strongly about.
Also if you think about it, it would be bad if different people saw completely different political ads. Party could "promise" one thing to some people, and completely contradictory thing to other people. Since people would live in their tight bubbles, most of them wouldn't notice. And this ("dark ads") is something that is definitely technically possible right now.
Obviously, Meta's most important revenue stream comes from scam advertisements, so all other ads are expendable.
As far as I know, political ads just must be labelled as such and there are some other small restrictions. Definitely not something that is hard for meta to implement, if they wanted to. But I admit that fines are very severe (up to 6% of annual turnover, in theory), so I see why they don't want to risk it.
But there's also the Targeting part, which prohibits using people's personal data for targeting political ads unless they explicitly opted in. Meta describes this as "people seeing less relevant ads on our platforms." https://about.fb.com/news/2025/07/ending-political-electoral... Of course people seeing ads intended for other demographic groups is precisely the point, to force political actors to present a coherent image of themselves to the public.
The same requirements apply to traditional billboard and newspaper ads, but since those can't do microtargeting by design, they don't lose value as a result in the way Meta ads do.
Folks want Facebook or whatever to be regulated into some perfect idea they have in their heads of how it should work and how it should be regulated. Sorry, many people have many views on that, and you're never going to be happy with an outcome. Even this article - Facebook is complying with EU rules/regulations and now you're not happy that your voice isn't heard through your preferred form of political activism. If Facebook allows this content, they break EU laws, or they have to allow some content you disagree with and now you're mad.
I don't know why people, right, left, or sideways keep putting up with this stuff.
There is a particular amount of economic privilege in this statement. While I am a person who doesn't use those services (and recently stopped using reddit), a large number of people are required to use those services for their job, so they can get money, so they can put food on the table.
Worse these companies ingrain themselves into a lot of physical locations and data collection from other sources so your not free of them.
Individual boycotts rarely work, even ones that attract attention from a good number of people, companies are better at waiting than individuals seem to be. Political action has a much higher likelihood of success when driven by smaller motivated groups.
Good, I am pro-privilege and support being privileged. I'm not sure how and why we came to the point in our society where if someone says "hey these products suck and I'm not going to use them", someone has to come along and attempt to guilt them into using them? You want me to create a Facebook account and post pictures of funny cats because Joe and Sally podcaster need eyeballs for their rage-bait podcasts or quirky coffee mug they drop-shipped from China?
Sorry, not buying it. Don't like the products? Stop using them. Reliant on them? Go complain to regulators. Not my monkeys, not my circus.
I live in a community (outside USA) where it is common to advertise offline or alternative outlets.
There's no dependence "because others do". That is just defeatism. If people choose en masse to change their habits, the world has to follow suit, imho.
This is nearly saying "If people stop murdering each other we won't have murder any more". Well, yea no shit, a tautology is a tautology. The question is how do you elicit social change in an environment that is actively fighting back against you doing so and has a massive amount more information than you do.
One of the key points here is you live outside the US so it's much more likely that your communities are far less digitally integrated and have a much different history of social change and dynamics. For example car culture presents an absolutely massive amount of friction to social change. It literally physically separates us at much larger distances than states that do not have car culture. There is also the fact the modern social media swept over the US first drawing in most of the population long before we recognized the dangers of it. Government agencies and businesses moved a healthy amount of their communications to things like social media platforms. The network effects are powerful.
The next thing I'd like you to do is get on social media where all these people you want to change are and tell them to get off.... oooh, your account was banned. These companies are organisms that will fight back against what your trying. You forget the tobacco companies fought in the US for 30+ years inventing entirely new methods of propaganda before we developed laws to protect the rest of us against smoke in public.
You are not talking about a choice. You are talking about a war that is actively being fought.
Okay, but their job is a net drag on our society, so you haven’t quite convinced me.
Counterproposal: ban influencers
You mean 'influencers'?
Nothing of value has been lost.
> Worse these companies ingrain themselves into a lot of physical locations and data collection from other sources so your not free of them
Please can you provide an example. I can't say I've ever experienced such a thing (and would never GDPR opt-in to such data sharing even if the opportunity was there).
My wife for example has a $200k+ job that involves a whole lot of interaction with social media. For her that would mean ending her job and moving on to god knows what, but probably not anything that pays near as well.
And then you come to the people that represent her customers. They make 70%+ of their income advertising services either on line or social media platforms.
So you end up in a race conditions. These people can't quit social media in one way or another or they stop eating. The customers have to move somewhere else first to redistribute the power the companies hold over those needing to advertise. Mostly what we see is not people quitting social media, but just moving to another social media platform shifting the problem. But also, because these people are advertising and doing tangentially related things on social media it brings their users to social media to get information.
If a programmer says I'm not going to use AI and the company says use AI, the programmer can absolutely walk, but god, I would not want to try to find a new job right now.
This is why things like unions and consumers pushing for consumer protection laws are fought by companies so hard. They are far more effective than individual actions because the incentives are against individual success.
Do you support the coal miner's union and protecting those jobs? What if it's at a loss? What about the environmental impacts? I see parallels with social media. Is your wife's $200,000 job worth the creation of iPad kids or the lives lost due to vaccine misinformation?
I'm not judging you or anything, you guys gotta do what you gotta do just like the guy selling cigarettes, the gal working in the coal mines, or the folks getting kids addicted to sweets.
But going back to the OP here you posted about this as though there's some "privilege". I strongly disagree with that assertion. If anything, I'd argue your point of view is the privileged one. You get to make as a household $200,000 selling using Facebook. What about the barista? What about the mom struggling whose kid learns about Tide Pods and goes and eats one and has a $15,000 medical bill?
Separately I find it quite annoying that somehow accusing me or someone else of privilege when you're bringing in $200,000 just from Facebook lol. Like really? I mean I don't care, I am proud of my privilege (whatever that amounts to) and will use it to my every advantage, but you should take a hard look in the mirror.
I want to mention there's a lot of nuance in these discussions and specific instances and we're painting in broad strokes. There are connecting themes but also meaningful differences.
That’s Meta response. There is no mention of any regulation in that article.
Businesses are allowed to and routinely comply with regulations to their best ability even if it wasn't as intended based on the act of the regulator/government.
For ex:
[1] https://efa-net.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/META_EU_Update...
[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/transpare...
Have you read that regulation? Because I did, and it’s not any form of ban on political advertising
You can ban something by requiring excessive compliance with a regulation that is unobtainable or very unprofitable. The Guardian failed to even mention the regulation or what may have motivated Meta's actions.
https://efa-net.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/META_EU_Update...
This was either an automated filter set to 'anti-woke' or some childish attempt at malicious compliance, or both. Thousands of such plays are advertised on numerous platforms across Europe every year without incident or comment.
This is especially an issue with insurance in disaster prone areas. Insurance company comes along and notices that in the east it's houses very close to the beach (hurricanes/storm surge), in California it's wildfires. Insurance companies raise the premiums in such areas to reflect the risk, the people living there scream. The state does things that mandate spreading the risk--now the dangerous behavior continues but others pay the cost. And those others start screaming because they are paying insurance rates way above the value delivered. And sometimes we insurance companies simply pull up stakes and leave--and we see states responding by saying if you want to do any business in the state you'll provide the homeowner's insurance at a "fair" (not fair, it's a price they're losing money on) rate. I'm not aware of any insurance companies completely leaving a state yet.
We have seen this with malpractice insurance for doctors, though. The biggest carrier simply quit and the market went crazy. Locally we had doctors who would pay more for malpractice insurance for delivering a baby than the insurance payment for delivering said baby.
It is a general thing that people only want to ban or regulate things that are against the social standards of their political organization, feminism and civil rights are two things that are pretty central to the EU. I know they must be, because I always read American right-wing commentators say about how feminism and civil rights are destroying the EU. For this reason I do not believe it is actually normal compliance with any regulation, it is malicious compliance meant to undermine the regulation.
I am sure some person who is glad for the malicious compliance would like to make a statement to the effect that it is the EU's fault that Meta has done it this way, so allow me to forestall it with some other observations.
If Meta feels the law requires them to remove ads for any art that supports a cause, including causes that are considered mainstream and accepted in the EU, then almost no art can ever advertised.
Guernica may not be shown, as it was anti-fascist, AND I should note Picasso's works are still under copyright so we know that's got to be regulated STAT!
The works of anyone who has ever been against slavery must not be mentioned, no Twain, Melville, Stowe, etc. etc.
But let's not stop there, surely Shakespeare's Richard III did not support that fellow's claims to the throne of England and we should not discuss it, don't tell me anything about it being a long time ago - if for Meta Virginia Wolf springs eternal then surely Shakespeare should get the same benefit of censorship. Dante's taking sides in the civil wars that damaged the Italy of his time should allow us to throw him off the platform as well!
There is very little art and few artists in this world that have been so anodyne that Meta could not censor them for having supported a social issue. I certainly hope they will do so, and quickly, so that people may be persuaded to abandon the platform. I also hope that this post is clear enough that I don't have to hear any more about how Meta had to do it the way they did, as I have recently been talking with my ex-wife, so my allowance for hearing dumb stuff is all used for today.
I don't have any of those but I do need one messenger to communicate with my buddies in the EU. As I'm a "fuck the Zuck" person and an "ABM" (Anything But Microsoft), Telegram is my poison.
I don't have any doubt: I know it's not E2EE (and I doubt that one-on-one encrypted communication --it's a setting you MUST turn on-- in Telegram is actually really E2EE).
But Telegram is neither from the Zuck nor from Microsoft, so that's a big win for me.
Also basically everyone in the EU has Telegram now.
True. But there is a social cost, for now
In my neighborhood Facebook became the defacto "town square" where community organising happens. A bad idea in hindsight, but there it is
I nolonger use Facebook. Not my choice, my account disappeared and I decided not to reconstitute it, and now I pay the price
But the price gets less as time goes by as Meta killed the goose that lays the golden eggs. Their greed and carelessness is making the service less valuable or useful
This (ban Virgina Wolf FFS) is another example. If you cannot advertise what you are doing as part of your community, then what is the point?
Why be part of a service that no longer links people without fear or favour (Facebook of fifteen years ago) but solely exists to market at you?
It’s the same bullshit as “we could stop climate change if only we bothered to bring cloth bags to the store instead of picking up a disposable plastic bag each time”.
“We” don’t have any power. And once you accept that, you can stop blaming yourself and your neighbors for the world you live in, and direct your anger where it belongs.
Your take is exactly what keeps people apathetic and reliant on others.
"It's someone else's fault and someone else's responsibility" is what you're saying.
It relieves the individual of the outcome of their actions. 8 billion people matter.
If I were an abuser, I would LOVE to hear my victims say they are powerless. Think about that.
And no, the power is very much not with the people: 4/4th of the pop sure as hell don't want to have precarious lives, yet they don't seem to manage to change that since forever, except if you squint.
I doubt that even 8,000 people “matter” in the sense of having meaningful power.
The above is just a tiny sample of what will happen to you when you start challenging people with power. You see, powerful "bad" people don't care how many accusations you make against them. They will flood the field with noise so people just ignore it. Now you, because you're a good guy have to be the most perfect little angel or all your followers will run away in disgust.
You know nothing about power and how to wield it. There better not be any skeletons in your closet because I will surface them. Hell, it doesn't even matter, I will plant them there.
Of course all the above is fictional, I'm not going to do these things to you because I'm not a person with millions of dollars threatened by your actions. But don't think threatening people with billions of dollars comes without cost.
If only everyone would round up to the nearest dollar at checkout, we could end poverty!
I would hazard a guess theres stuff that I don't agree with you on, and we would want certain laws written differently. Its important to remember that we all vote for what we think is right, based on a system evolved over thousands of years to cater for human fallibility. The modern rhetoric of "us against the billionaires" is simply not how the world works, despite how much people want it to.
The comment was about 'us vs the ruling class', which is very much how the world works.
Your knowledge of history is equally flawed, if you believe modern democracy is some kind of evolutionary apex tenderly nurtured for the greater good for thousands of years.
<Ned Flanders' father>: We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!
People who say this have never tried, do nothing themselves to contribute to improving the problem or to convince others or the government to improve the problem besides perhaps complaining on the internet in a bubble of likeminded people who don't need their minds changed.
causally I think this is because we all grew up watching government operate glacially and so nobody really believes there's an alternative... but I eagerly await the day that millennials realize they can just win every election and fix everything that sucks about their world by basically trying really hard and coordinating with each other.
The public's disenchantment with politics didn't appear out of nowhere: most of them have personally experienced voting for one thing and getting the same old.
And I'd disagree that democracy still exists [0], if it ever did. The most speaking example, among many [1], is the Gaza genocide: I've never in my life seen as much 'trying really hard and coordinating', the vast majority of the population of almost every country wants this to stop, and yet, 3 years in, it doesn't, and the split on this between the population and the ruling class (politicians, the rich, what have you) is stark and the position of the ruling class very much correlates with the outcomes.
[0]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/16/vilificatio...
"Everybody" wants something to stop and yet nobody goes out and takes power and stops it so nothing changes. People experience voting doing nothing and then they do nothing about the fact that it did nothing so it does nothing tomorrow as well.
The only way this changes is a widespread shift in belief in personal agency. It is not hard for a group of coordinated people to win for example a local election. Well, it is hard in the sense that they have to agree to do it and actually put effort in. But it's not hard to get the requisite numbers---very few people are voting anyway. But if they don't believe in trying and instead post memes about how mad they are, of course nothing changes.
> The only way this changes is a widespread shift in belief in personal agency
Yes, but this also implies a paradigm shift on the subject of this personal agency.
> very few people are voting anyway
There are countries where voting is mandatory (Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, Turkey): they're not utopias and they suffer from the same polarisation, corruption, inequalities, threats of fascism, and disenchantment as other countries do.
> they do nothing about the fact that it did nothing
Because doing something about it is either against the rules of the system or requires such an effort in coordination that it'd be effectively indistinguishable from a revolution. A tiny example, the EU Commission tries to pass Chat Control every 6 months: when it does pass (all.according to the system's democratic rules), you won't get referenda on maintaining it every 6 months, I assure you. The power imabalance between the 99% and the ruling class is so massive that positive outcomes from voting alone are effectively flukes, not representative of future performance.
1. yes, it will require a widespread shift in people's beliefs for anything to change significantly. So such a shift is necessary.
2. I also personally believe that such a widespread shift is sufficient to fix a lot of this stuff. Nobody has any recent data for this because it hasn't happened in our lifetimes, but there is plenty of further-back historical evidence for it.
3. A prerequisite for the shift to occur is for everybody to believe both (1) and (2), such that they are motivated to try.
4. Anecdotally it seems like most people really believe (1) but severely doubt (2), which unfortunately means they have no motivation, so nothing has any hope of occurring right now.
5. Therefore I would encourage everyone to at least try out believing (2) as well. After all without it we have no data on what is actually possible with it.
And yes, the actual result probably looks like some form of revolution, but it is not required that such a revolution be violent. Of course it might turn out to be, but that is more about how the entrenched power reacts. You need the movement first, and then you can see what the reaction is.
re chat control or similar things---it seems to me that if your system's democratic rules pass it, then things are working as intended. Complaining about the democratic system is rather a joke when it is operating and doing things legitimately (I don't live in Europe, though, so I don't know anything about how legitimate it actually is.) In general one "votes" in this paradigm by actually convincing large groups of people that they should take difference stances on issues, not by casting a single vote themselves. If a person's reaction to political outcomes they don't like is not "campaigns of influence" then they're not really playing the game at all, are they?
And to be clear, such a campaign of influence is not only available to powerful people. In fact they are cheaper to carry out than ever---we even have a new job title for them, "influencer", and it is revenue-positive for many people! So when someone complains about legitimate political systems but they don't personally decide to influence others to change the outcomes... they are just a non-entity in the system, that's their problem.
(I do not have anything charitable to say, however, about illegitimate politics, e.g. the Trumps administration's widespread illegal behavior. That seems like a failure of basic rule of law that might be considerably harder to dislodge. But, as much as I hate it, their winning an election and then fucking everything up on purpose is largely allowed... the underlying problem is that so many people seem to be okay with that. If a country wants to cut its own limbs off itself I guess that's fine at a level of politics. Not so good at a level of morality or philosophy---so I guess it shifts the battle to be at the level of hearts and minds instead of democracy. But the general point still stands: campaigns of influence are how you affect this, not individual votes.)
(edit: i did not, however, reread the other comments here to see if I actually misunderstood anyone. I'm just ranting)
This is another “if everyone just …”. Everyone will not “just”. We can’t even agree on basic facts like your claim of genocide.
The conversation is not about that claim either.
As for the conversation, that claim, and others, are not as self-evident or universally held as was posited.
> Ending Political, Electoral and Social Issue Advertising in the EU in Response to Incoming European Regulation
I guess rather than micro-regulate what constitutes "designed to influence an election/referendum, voting behavior, or a legislative/regulatory process", they just decided to refuse to run ads for anything potentially politically or socially "sensitive".
I'm guessing that they also refuse to run ads for things that are less socially acceptable such as anti-feminism which I would say is a good thing.
[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2025/07/ending-political-electoral...
Look at Meta argument in the article you linked to:
> For example, the TTPA places extensive restrictions on ad targeting and delivery which would restrict how political and social issue advertisers can reach their audiences and lead to people seeing less relevant ads on our platforms. It is yet another threat to the principles of personalized advertising, ignoring the benefits to advertisers and the people they want to reach.
They don’t complain advertising is banned, they complain they cannot achieve their dream of perfect “personalized advertising”. It’s such a lame complain
As per Meta's own guidelines, they simply require increased authenticity and transparency to run social issue ads that seek to influence public opinion through discussion, debate or advocacy for or against important topics, like health and civil and social rights.
Meta literally spell it out with an equivalent example of advertising for an equivalent event - in this case a 'Civil Rights Exhibition' - on Slide 6 as eligible to run in the EU.
https://efa-net.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/META_EU_Update...
This is meta's choice.
"Jane, an employee at a big tech company, has been placed on leave after video of her emotional breakdown at work went viral. Her employers tell Jane she must be evaluated by crisis therapist Loyd before she can be reinstated to the job that gives her life meaning."
Meta doesn't do this outside the EU, and they didn't do this in the EU prior to the TTPA. Draw your own conclusions about whether this is a "meta problem."
If the law mandated exactly one thing, then it'd be the law's problem. Since it doesn't, of course the choice of how to comply can be criticized.
As per Meta's own guidelines, they simply require increased authenticity and transparency to run social issue ads that seek to influence public opinion through discussion, debate or advocacy for or against important topics, like health and civil and social rights.
Meta literally spell it out with an equivalent example of advertising for an equivalent event - in this case a 'Civil Rights Exhibition' - on Slide 6 as eligible to run in the EU.
https://efa-net.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/META_EU_Update...
In my community (outside USA), we use local websites and posted bills. There's no magic to it.
>Network effects
If people decide the cost/effort is too high, that will dissipate.
>"Somebody else will"
This amounts to a thought-terminating cliche at this point. You are responsible for your own choices, not what others do. It's the worst cop out, you are claiming no agency.
*royal "you" where applicable.
I find a lot of responses to these stories fiendish. It is not "privileged" to refuse a bad deal. If anything, it is "privileged" to say one has no choice.
Sorry if this comes off as rantish... I find a lot of the conversation around big conglomerates tedious and usually just laden with overtly bad-faith arguments and lazy defeatism. Conversely, love or hate Woolf, surely there is enough respect for simple arts people should find these behaviors abhorrent.
The fact that Meta is choosing instead to refuse the ads is therefore purely performative and likely intended to elicit precisely those sort of anti-regulation comments in their aid.
Does the theater have a right to advertise? Is FB obligated to carry their ads?
Can FB unilaterally reject their ads, even without giving a reason?
It seems only fair they control what happens inside their walled garden. But they are effectively holding their user population as hostages. Don't like the decision? You can fuck off.
Move along now, don’t make a racket, don’t do anything to disturb count Zuckerberg and his masters. Go away with your progressive ideas like… Allowing women to express themselves.
Beginning October 2025, Meta – like other platforms – will no longer allow social issue, electoral and political ads our platforms in the EU, given the unworkable requirements and legal uncertainties introduced by the EU Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation.
The TTPA will restrict how advertisers can reach their audiences, which means people will also see less relevant content.
We remain committed to enabling political speech and fair elections. This won’t prevent people or candidates in the EU from posting about and debating politics on our platforms.
...
Ads about civil and social rights, with ad content that includes discussion, debate or advocacy for or against topics including but not limited to freedom of religion, LGBTQ+ rights and women's rights are subject to review and enforcement.
Ineligible to run in the EU:
"Free speech is under attack across college campuses — excessive censorship needs to stop. ”
“It's time for us all to stand up and demand equal rights for women. ”
"It's critical for trans people to be given their own voice. "
Eligible to run in the EU
“Civil rights exhibition opens on Monday. ”
That document describes how Meta has chosen to comply (and complain about) TTPA.
The question here appears to be "is Meta willing to risk going to court and getting fined about an advertisement for Virginia Woolf in Spain?" The answer has always been "no".
The translation that I got for the text in the image in the Guardian article is:
Clara Sanchis returns to Barcelona with this ironic and provocative show, an icon of feminism, with live music.
Anything other than entirely milquetoast wording on any social issue is likely to get banned on Meta in the EU.
From Meta's point of view, anything they do gets them brought into court in the EU, and it's likely cheaper to be brought this way rather than getting fined and brought into court.
Take the advertisement to the courts in the EU and get them to declare that it's not in violation of the TTPA.
I know banning or forcing meta to obey laws in the US is impossible due to bribes (political contributions), but in the EU I would think meta could at the very least be reined in.
And your point about Meta being forced to act is also wrong, companies aren’t just passive institutions that only react to regulations, they constantly take decisions and actions, and regularly manufacture that type of situation as a way to lobby regulators
It also defines political ad narrowly as placed by a political actor or campaign, or intended to influence some part of the political process, like voting, legislation, or regulatory action.
I don't know what motivation Facebook has to automatically limit certain political advertising and not other, but it certainly has nothing to do with EU regulation
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2026/09/19/the-lucr...
that _really_ doesn't seem what is happening
an AD for a theater play is by no standard political advertisement
Political advertisement in the regulations context is reasonable clearly defined.
An AD for a theater play is in general very clearly _not_ covered by it.
To add to it: Civil rights & feminism (in it's official non hijacked definition, aka. equal fair treatment of man and women) are fundamental rights in the EU, something the regulation very clearly states it doesn't want to impeach on. So arguments that you could accidentally misread the regulation to include banning _non-political advertisement about artistic work covering fundamental rights are a bit absurd_.
Anywhere here is the definition of political advertisement in given regulation:
> political advertising’ means the preparation, placement, promotion, publication, delivery or dissemination, by any means, of a message, normally provided for remuneration or through in-house activities or as part of a _political advertising campaign_:
> (a)by, for or on behalf of a _political actor_, unless it is of a purely private or a purely commercial nature; or
> (b) which is liable and designed to _influence the outcome of an election or referendum_, voting behaviour or a legislative or regulatory process, at Union, national, regional or local level;
(emphasis mine)
So to put it simple: Meta is engaging in censure.
Stretching the term political to include more or less everything (like any topic people have opinions about a politician might speak about) is IMHO a pretty dishonest misinterpretation, especially given that it isn't even everything, but "everything Meta doesn't want to get involved with due to the current political environment".
At best this misinterpretation is due to laziness, at worst pushed by malicious actors in the US.
Given that Meta is a US company and the currently people in power there find this topics quit unpleasant and Metas long history of not faithfully complying with law and allowing all kind of ADs this looks very bad for them.
More relevantly, a broad, vague policy means an EU regulator can prosecute Meta whenever they feel like it if Meta does not go overboard.
This also isn't reverse construction in any form, just because something might end up influencing voting behavior doesn't mean its "political". Advertising for artistic work covering common social topics doesn't make this political ads. Nor does advertising for documentations, even if they cover a topic which could influence votes. If you look at the definition in the actual regulation that is pretty clear.IMHO
No. Meta enforces a broad ban because they don't want EU to regulate them, so they drag their feet and create the most possible "unwanted collateral damage" so people will get upset at the regulation instead of the company. So, pieces like this from The Guardian are surely needed.
Other examples of this bullshit being cookie consent dialogs and Apple acting like a victim for being forced to open their platform a bit.
I personally see fewer and fewer of those original dialogs that had you deny 20-30 items one by one. Most of the pages I land on have the deny all button or have given up on pretending they care.
Meta aren't 'forced' to do anything other than treat the fines imposed by their lack of adherence to the laws of the territories they operate in as a BAU cost. Meta's profits run roughly the same as the GDP of Paraguay ($60.46 billion in 2025) - i.e. that Country's total value added by an economy through wages, profits, and taxes. Their revenue is on track to exceed the Ukrainian GDP next year.
This year Meta will pay up to $16.7bn to settle landmark US legal actions as result of not obeying US law, reporting $2.4 billion in legal fees in Q2 alone.
The sum total of the EU fines issued (read: appealed and not collected) likely won't even exceed Metas legal fees for the 2026 calendar year; i.e.:
* April 2025 - €200m (DMA "consent or pay" advertising model)
* November 2024 - €797.72m (Antitrust re:Facebook Marketplace)
* September 2024 - €90m (Storage of user passwords in plaintext)
* May 2023 - €1.2b (Unlawful EU-U.S. user data transfers)
* January 2023 - €390m (Forcing personalized ads via terms of service)
* December 2022 - €251m (2018 data breach and system design lapses)
* November 2022 - €265 (Inadequate protection against data scraping)
* September 2022 - €405m (Instagram children's privacy)
The answer is right in front of your eyes: theguardian.com
This strategy of "we will lie about what the law enforces, so that we can blame the regulator instead of the company" is getting old.
It’s pretty simple - the EU is unable to produce alternatives. This is because they don’t have the software talent for it.
Any talent they do have immediately runs for the SF Bay Area of the United States at the first opportunity.
You want good alternatives to Meta’s products? Pay engineers a competitive salary.
And no, the lower cost of living doesn’t even remotely begin to make up for the difference in comp. Same with healthcare - it’s effectively free in the United States for people who have jobs, especially so for SWEs.
Plenty of hands seem to be well greased over there given how long it takes to issue fines for clear&cut violations of EU regulation.
Wow, Europeans do have a penchant for recursively banning things :)
My money is that this is manufactured by some PR team.
Possibly the Ad's text was purposely inflammatory (something like "overthrow the patriarchy" or something) so that they can say it was banned.