"State advertising is a powerful tool of political favoritism as well as an instrument of market distortion, censorship and building an uncritical media empire aligned with the government", CMDS Fellow Attila Bátorfy and researcher Ágnes Urbán write in their article.
Facebook appears to be the almost exclusive source of traffic for Hungarian misinformation websites, which fall on the spectrum from purely ideological sites to simple money-making machines. Their Facebook pages are stable, directing users to their ever-changing URLs.
The Slovak misinformation industry is growing fast, buoyed by ads and e-commerce, but many people support them directly, too, through donations or tax designations.