For an hour, he sits at a desk and discusses politics - in a country where it makes him enemies.
Adam Nagy is 33 years old and a YouTuber in Hungary, and his channel has 250 thousand subscribers. Nagy recently interviewed the main opposition candidate for prime minister, Peter Magyar, and the conversation between the two has over 1 million views. For a country with a population of 10 million people, this is a lot and is a signal of a new trend in society, notes ARD.
Orban's media empire does not allow dissenters
Criticism of the government is increasingly popular on social networks. The channel “Partizan", for example, has 600 thousand followers. It was there that Magyar began to talk about the corrupt practices of the Orbán government, even as an insider. And so he reached nearly 3 million people.
Magyar and the opposition rarely make it to the airwaves of public media. After 2010, when Viktor Orbán returned to power, the media landscape in Hungary was rearranged in his favor, explains Agnes Urban from the Corvinus University in Budapest.
German media owners, as well as other international investors, sold their shares to local companies close to the government. In this way, the ruling party built a huge media empire, which today is mainly a propaganda tool, Urban tells ARD.
Portals like Origo were once a terrain for serious journalism, but they have fundamentally changed their profile and become mouthpieces for the Kremlin. This is even evident in the colors on their pages. “These are the colors of the Russian flag. The site is full of pro-Russian, anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian articles”, says the media expert.
The Internet is the only free space in Hungary
But the growth of government-critical publications on YouTube seriously worries Orban, he believes. Because the majority of “Fidesz” party functionaries are over 60 and have difficulty navigating this environment.
In May, Orban tried to counter with the so-called transparency law, which would have helped the government neutralize critical media and NGOs funded from abroad. In the end, the bill was not adopted, probably under pressure from the EU. However, observers believe that the package has only been postponed, not canceled.
The Internet is the only space that the government does not control, says YouTuber Nagy - online people can still freely share their opinions. On his channel, he talks about topics that are covered up from the public, such as the current scandal surrounding a Hungarian youth center, where the director brutally beat a boy. The surveillance camera footage was eventually published by an opposition politician. Apparently, the government knew about the incidents, but concealed the information.
A Hungarian shakes Orbán's chair
Nagy fears that Hungary could continue to follow the path of Belarus and Russia. Because the population in small settlements is mostly exposed only to Orbán's propaganda. “For example, we meet many people who are afraid of war. They believe that everyone except Orbán wants war. It is apparently perfectly acceptable for Orbán to keep pensioners in fear and terror to vote for you."
Nagy maintains three YouTube channels and has a team of 12 people. They manage to make a living from the content by selling merchandise.
The number of people accessing critical content on the Internet is growing, especially now, a few months before the next parliamentary elections. The organization “Reporters Without Borders” recently warned of harassment and threats of lawsuits against independent journalists in Hungary.
The election campaign for the April 2026 vote is underway. For the first time in many years, Prime Minister Orbán has a serious political opponent in the person of a Magyar, writes Ana Tilak of ARD. And the outcome of the vote is far from a foregone conclusion.