Blog/X-unrated: The Lawlessness of Twitter Advertising in the AI Age
10th June 2026
If anyone needed proof that online advertising has drifted into a regulatory wild west, they need only have spent a minute or two scrolling through X, formerly Twitter in the past week or so.
Over recent days, users have been inundated with AI-generated advertisements showing Reform MP Nigel Farage apparently fighting Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey on the set of BBC Question Time. The videos and images are entirely fake. Some depict punches being thrown, others show bizarre scenes involving police intervention and even weapons. Yet they have been promoted as paid advertisements and linked to fraudulent investment schemes. The Bank of England has publicly warned that the material is part of a wider scam operation designed to deceive users and exploit vulnerable people online.
The issue is not whether people like Nigel Farage. It is that a major social media platform appears unable or unwilling to prevent obviously fabricated content from being monetised and distributed at scale. These adverts are not hidden in obscure corners of the internet. They are appearing directly in users’ feeds as sponsored content, as frequently as every third or fourth post at times.
This is exactly the kind of regulatory gap that politicians and campaigners have been warning about for years. Newcastle Central and West MP Chi Onwurah has argued that government must reject the idea that technology platforms can “act with impunity” and has called for clearer principles and accountability in AI regulation. She has also warned that reports of AI-generated deepfakes on X are “extremely alarming” and expose citizens to online harms while social media companies escape meaningful consequences.
The Farage adverts are not simply an odd internet joke. They are a warning. If AI-generated scams can impersonate politicians, public institutions and trusted media brands with such ease, the integrity of online advertising itself is at risk.
The question is no longer whether AI advertising needs stronger regulation. It is why regulators have allowed the lawlessness to continue for so long.
It’s quickly getting to the point where we can trust nothing we see on social media. Perhaps that’s the intention from whoever it is peddling this rubbish.
When we get to the point of ‘pure trash’ (it’s largely trash now, but not quite utter trash – a bit like the planet in Wall:E – mostly garbage, but with a green shoot of positivity every now and again!), then what? If we approach everything from the default position that it’s likely a scam, then why visit or contribute at all? And why pay to advertise or to manage a presence on these platforms if your efforts are immediately dismissed, or rubbished or compromised? Does the whole thing collapse?
Time will tell.