EU observers: Disinformation had 'limited impact' on 2025 midterm polls, but...

MANILA, Philippines — Disinformation had a "limited impact" on the 2025 midterm elections thanks to the combined effort of civil society, third-party fact-checkers, and the Commission on Elections in swiftly flagging false and misleading online content, according to a European Union mission that recently observed the May polls. 

Social media platforms were quick to comply with most of the Comelec's takedown requests, according to the EU mission. But poll observers say it is increasingly difficult to identify "troll farms" and coordinated inauthentic behavior on social media, a social media analyst with the EU mission told Philstar.com.

The EU Election Observer Mission in the Philippines presented its final report on Thursday, July 3, that evaluates the entire electoral process in the midterm polls against international standards and Philippine law. It deployed over 200 observers from March to June. 

While the mission had initially expected disinformation to dominate the campaign trail — especially against the backdrop of the bitter political feud of the Marcos and Duterte families — it found that the Comelec and civil society had slowed or stopped the spread of false narratives.

"Disinformation had a limited impact on the online election campaign, in part due to Comelec's efforts, including the establishment of a dedicated task force that collaborated with 24 organizations to identify and remove harmful content," the EU mission's report stated. This referred to Task Force KKK sa Halalan, a Comelec body composed of law enforcement agencies, civil society and media partners tasked with monitoring election-related mis- and disinformation.

During the campaign period, Meta approved 94% of the Comelec's 1,326 content removal requests within 24 hours, while TikTok took down 4,100 posts that violated platform policies between May 7 and 12 alone.

"Even if there was disinformation posted online, usually it was very swiftly taken care of. Within 24 hours, it was just removed from the given platform," social media analyst Lukasz Widla-Domaradzki from the EU observer mission told Philstar.com in an interview Thursday.

What's new this time around?

In past elections, the Comelec has struggled to curb the rapid spread of election-related disinformation due to the lack of an enabling law. Other election observers say the electoral body does not have enough people by itself to sift through social media and flag all false content.  

Was that the case this time around? The EU poll observers said that for the May midterm elections, the poll body took a "tough stance" against disinformation and found success by partnering with other organizations.  

"A COMELEC tough stance against these issues and collaboration with 24 organisations, was a positive step to curb the harmful content that contributed to [identifying] and [neutralizing] disinformation," the report stated.

Social media platforms also implemented several measures to combat disinformation during the campaign, according to the EU report.

The report cites Meta for implementing two key initiatives: an AI model designed to identify violations of community standards and increased paid detections by fact-checking organizations working with the platform.

"Each time we are praising [civil society] organisations, especially fact-checkers... And we really think that these fact-checking initiatives are super important and need to be strengthened," Widla-Domaradzki said.

Meta runs a third-party fact-checking program with independent organizations certified by the nonpartisan International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). These partners review and rate content on Facebook and Instagram to curb misinformation. In the Philippines, Meta works with VERA Files, Rappler, and Agence France-Presse. 

The program, however, is being phased out and replaced with a community notes system, starting in the United States. While Meta says the third-party fact-checking program remains active in other countries, it confirmed in March that it plans to “ultimately... roll out this new approach to our users all over the world.”

For the midterm polls, TikTok also launched an Election Hub initiative providing essential election facts and guides on dealing with disinformation in collaboration with the Comelec, the report noted. 

The EU mission also found that the actual volume of disinformation was smaller than anticipated. The report noted that "the relatively small number of disinformation messages, which contradicts media reports, stemmed from an apparent limited understanding of what disinformation is."
 
"The latter highlighted the need to implement extensive programs boosting digital literacy among the population," the report stated. "It is equally important for those who deal with the concept of disinformation, such as journalists and politicians."

Detecting troll farms. But there is a blind spot that concerns EU observers: the evolution of coordinated and inauthentic behavior that is increasingly difficult to detect.

"It is very hard to find," Widla-Domaradzki said. 

"When we met with the interlocutors from the platforms, we asked them about so-called troll farms and coordinated inauthentic behaviour. They told us that it's getting harder and harder to get information about that," the social media analyst said. 

Widla-Domaradzki said the challenge was determining whether narratives around certain issues were organic or driven by paid influence, but he also noted that the "full picture" was beyond the scope of the mission. 

According to the report, EU observers noted that these operations "have become harder to detect due to their decentralised operations, unlike past tactics using identical messages and hashtags."

Other persistent challenges

Despite the perceived success in containing disinformation, other online challenges persisted during the campaign.

The practice of red-tagging — labeling individuals as members of communist movements — continued despite warnings and resolutions issued by the Comelec, the EU mission found. Cases of online red-tagging were recorded by the mission's social media monitoring efforts.

Tech companies also failed to fully enforce campaign silence rules. The EU mission discovered that paid political advertisements worth approximately €146,000 (about P9.7 million) remained active during periods when campaigning should have ceased, with 54 ads still running during campaign silence periods.

The EU mission's social media monitoring unit also found evidence of several candidates artificially inflating their engagement and reach during the campaign, with some increasing their follower count by over a million.

While this is not illegal, the EU mission flagged this practice as potentially misleading voters on actual levels of popular support for candidates.