Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced that it will suspend political and social issue advertising on its platforms in the European Union starting in October. This decision comes in response to the EU’s new Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation, which introduces significant operational challenges and legal uncertainties.
The TTPA regulation, set to apply from October 10, requires Big Tech companies to clearly label political advertising on their platforms, disclose who paid for it and how much, and specify which elections are being targeted. Failure to comply may result in fines of up to 6 percent of their annual turnover. Meta stated that the new rules would ultimately hurt Europeans, as personalized ads are critical to a wide range of advertisers, including those engaged in campaigns to inform voters about important social issues.
“From early October 2025, we will no longer allow political, electoral and social issue ads on our platforms in the EU,” Meta said in a blog post. “This is a difficult decision – one we’ve taken in response to the EU’s incoming Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation, which introduces significant operational challenges and legal uncertainties.”
Meta’s decision follows in the footsteps of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which made a similar decision in November. The EU has been cracking down on Big Tech companies, requiring them to do more to counter illegal and harmful content on their platforms. Facebook and Instagram are currently being investigated by the European Commission over their suspected failure to tackle disinformation and deceptive advertising in the run-up to the 2024 European Parliament elections.
The suspension of political advertising is part of a broader trend of increased scrutiny of tech giants in the EU. ByteDance’s TikTok is also in the EU crosshairs over its suspected failure to tackle election interference. Meta’s content moderation policies have also been under fire, with the company facing criticism for its handling of misinformation and disinformation on its platforms.
In a related development, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently settled a lawsuit brought on by shareholders over alleged privacy violations. The suit alleged that the company failed to comply with a Federal Trade Commission settlement in 2012 in efforts to protect consumer privacy. The lawsuit came amid the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the social media giant gave user data to the firm – without their consent – for political advertising purposes.