NSW’s latest news Instagram account has an unlikely group behind it: the Labor party

“Breaking,” a reel from the Instagram account nswnewsroom reads. “Another Liberal MP quits, almost a third now gone.”The post looks like it could have been made by a media outlet. It cites the source as the Daily Telegraph and Jordan Lane, a New South Wales MP, who is the sixth sitting Liberal member to announce they won’t re-contest their seat at the March 2027 election.But the account’s bio tells a different story: it was authorised by the NSW Labor state secretary.The account, which first posted two weeks ago and says “keep up to date with with [sic] news from NSW govt” in its bio, is part of an increasingly common tactic where Australian political parties set up accounts that appear at first glance to be unaffiliated news sources. The accounts feature different names and imagery without prominent party branding, to promote specific messages or highlight their own side.Andrew Hughes, an expert in political marketing at the Australian National University, said these types of accounts take advantage of a “huge loophole in our political communication laws in Australia when it comes to digital and social media communications”. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s Politics, really newsletter here “More and more of us get our news and information primarily from digital and social media,” said Hughes.“There’s more and more potential for that information to be used against voters who aren’t engaged with politics or the news to a really good level of detail to spot disinformation and misinformation,” he said.As unpaid content, the posts are not subject to the same authorisation requirements as paid advertisements at state and federal level. In NSW, an authorisation in the account profile or a website directly linked to that post is acceptable. The nswnewsroom account added its authorisation after reporting by the Sydney Morning Herald.A spokesperson for the NSW government referred Guardian Australia to a statement shared with the paper, which said the page was “a Labor-affiliated social media page, consistent with the practices of most major political parties and a number of minor parties across Australia”.In Victoria a similar account, vicnewstoday, was set up ahead of this month’s Victorian state election. While the account bio contains an authorisation by Victorian Labor HQ, the posts, including videos of Ben Carroll and ministers at press conferences, do not. In one, captioned “BREAKING: Liberals did a deal with ‘the most anti-worker party’”, Carroll criticises a preference deal between the Liberals and One Nation.In late October, the Labor party launched a page titled “Don’t Risk It Vic”, promoting posts that raise concerns about an alliance between the Liberal and One Nation parties.Meta’s ad library reveals that page was the highest-spending political advertiser in the country last week, paying $67,138 to promote its posts between 31 October and 6 November.A spokesperson for the Victorian Labor Party said social media was “an important way to communicate with Victorians where they are, particularly those who don’t engage with traditional media”.“There is a lot at stake for Victoria. And everyone deserves to hear the facts about what a Liberal-One Nation government would mean for our health system, schools, police and cost-of-living.”Monica Attard, former Media Watch host, now professor of journalism practice at the University of Technology, Sydney, said in an age where social media was “awash with deepfakes”, it was “really important for consumers – and probably equally important for political parties – to disclose clearly and always”.“I would think that the possibility of misuse or tampering would be relatively high.”Ahead of the 2025 federal election, Guardian Australia uncovered a string of similar social media pages set up by Labor, the Coalition, Climate 200 and campaign group Advance.All pages carried basic authorisation messages from their creators, but the page names and profile pictures did not immediately denote the source. Labor state divisions in NSW and Western Australia set up at least two anti-Peter Dutton pages, with posts raising doubts about health spending and WA’s GST deal under a Coalition government.The Liberal party launched a page called “Teals Revealed”, scrutinising the voting record of Climate 200-backed independents, while Climate 200, in turn, set up “Independent News”, to promote news about crossbench MPs.