A London estate agent posting fabricated videos about immigrants told researchers, “hate brings views.”

He’s right - and the implications run deeper than disinformation.

Algorithmic feeds reward provocation, which means political narratives form and spread in local, identity-driven spaces that most political campaigns have trouble monitoring.

A fake London university TikTok reached 12 million views and damaged real institutions. A far-right party commissioned an AI rapper for a local UK by-election. In Hungary, the governing party built a 58,000-member Facebook “fight club” to flood feeds with deepfakes after the EU ad ban.

Drawing on field evidence across the UK and EU, this presentation argues that Europe’s political communication infrastructure - from platform regulation to campaign strategy - has handed a structural advantage to whoever best understands local algorithmic engagement.

And that isn’t mainstream political communicators.