Most social media posts flagged as electoral disinformation by researchers during the 2025 presidential election were not removed by online platforms, according to a new report.
The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) found examples of content where “false claims about the legality of the nomination process” were made and shared on social networks during last October’s vote.
The EDMO was set up to promote research on disinformation across 27 countries. As part of its work, local research hubs flag content relating to elections to platforms such as Meta, YouTube and TikTok.
All platforms have signed up to participate in a “rapid response” process, though they are not obliged to do anything with the content that’s flagged to them. All content flagged to social networks is reviewed against their own policies and standards.
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During last year’s presidential election, EDMO Ireland monitored online content between September 24th and November 4th and flagged 117 pieces of content. It said that in many cases, “the flagged content was associated with accounts that were monetised or had previously been banned”. It also noted that the 117 pieces of content represented what had been seen and flagged by moderators, and the total number of problematic content during the election was likely to be much higher.
According to its research report, which was published this week, this included 85 items marked as disinformation, 26 pieces of election content that was generated by artificial intelligence (AI), 49 examples of illegal election-day content and two pieces of content that related to political advertising. The report said that flagged content included “false claims about the legality of the nomination process; fake quotes attributed to public officials; assertions of systemic election fraud in Irish elections; AI-generated impersonations of candidates; illegal representations of spoiled votes; and videos of the harassment of political figures and canvassers.”
Platforms only acted against 13 of the 85 items flagged as electoral disinformation, and the report said “only Instagram and TikTok took action on these items”. Of the 13 pieces of content flagged as harassment and abuse, which included videos of public figures and canvassers being abused and threatened on the street, the platforms acted against nine.
The social network with the highest number of flagged content was Facebook, which had 54 items of content reported. The report said that Instagram “was the most likely to act, responding to 59 per cent of reported items, followed by TikTok (54 per cent), YouTube (48 per cent) and Facebook (44 per cent)”. It said that LinkedIn was “the least likely to act”, as it took no action on reported items.
EDMO Ireland found that while platforms removed or geoblocked “all illegal content”, they only acted on half of the AI-generated content. When action was taken against content, it was generally done within 24 hours, with TikTok having the fastest response time.
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The report was written by Aidan O’Brien, research and policy lead at EDMO Ireland, and Dr Eileen Culloty, who is the co-ordinator at EDMO Ireland and associate professor at DCU.
The report also noted that former mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor had “advanced a narrative that his failure to secure a presidential nomination would constitute a betrayal of democracy and the will of the Irish people”.
“Following his withdrawal, elements of this narrative were taken up, to varying degrees, by other unsuccessful nomination campaigns” including in a campaign encouraging people to spoil their votes. The report said that “spoiling a ballot is a legitimate form of political protest and a valid act of democratic participation. However, in this case, it was sometimes accompanied by false claims, including ones about the legitimacy of the nomination process and, by extension, the electoral system itself.”
A spokesman for YouTube said: “YouTube has robust election misinformation policies that were in place and enforced before, during and after Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election. We reviewed all reports received and removed those that violated our policies.”
