Research finds nearly 150 European women MPs targeted by deepfake porn sites, with women 33x more likely to be targeted than men

Researcher Benjamin Shultz (Agora Digitale Transformation, working with the American Sunlight Project) cross-referenced roughly 160 domains hosting deepfake abuse content against a database of over 5,800 EU national MPs. He found at least 138 women MPs from 22 EU countries appeared or were named on these sites, versus only 9 men, a roughly 33x disparity. Shultz notified affected MPs with takedown guidance before publication, and at least six of the identified domains were taken down ahead of the report's release.

This is one of the first systematic, EU-wide counts of gendered deepfake targeting with a male comparison group, giving policymakers a concrete number to cite rather than anecdote. It lands directly in the path of pending UK and EU bans on "nudify" services, so it is likely to be used as supporting evidence in that legislative process. The practical effect so far is narrow: a handful of site takedowns and individual notifications, not a change in enforcement capability or platform behaviour.

The chilling-effect and "discourages women from public life" claims are advocacy framing layered on top of the data, not something this study actually measures. The source domain list was not published, so the headline counts cannot be independently checked by journalists or other researchers, which weakens the finding's evidentiary weight even though the methodology sounds rigorous. Framing this as a single unprecedented reveal also glosses over the fact that individual instances of politician deepfakes have been reported for years; the new part is the aggregated count, not the phenomenon itself.

1. 01Whether Agora Digitale Transformation or Shultz releases the underlying domain list or dataset for independent verification
2. 02Whether the UK or EU nudify-service ban cites this specific report in draft legislation or impact assessments over the next 3-6 months
3. 03Whether the six pre-publication takedowns hold or whether the sites reappear on new domains, as a test of how durable enforcement actually is