The winner of the first round of the presidential elections in Romaniathe ultranationalist and pro-Russian Calin Georgescubenefited from a digital campaign in TikTok similar to influence operations that Russia has deployed in Ukraine y Moldavia. This is reported in secret documents from the Romanian intelligence services, declassified on Wednesday by the current president of the Balkan country, Klaus Iohannis.
On November 24, Georgescu won the elections with almost 23% of the votes. votesa surprising triumph, since until then his name was very little known and he barely had a presence in the polls. The candidate is ideologically framed in the extreme right: has defended Romanian fascist leaders, embraces Orthodox nationalism, has praised the Russian president Vladimir Putin and has criticized both the European Union like to the I’LL TAKE. Two weeks later, he leads the polls ahead of the second round, which will be held next Sunday, December 8, and which will definitively determine the Romanian presidency.
Manipulation on TikTok
Documents prepared by the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) indicate that ‘influencers‘ for hire, far-right groups and criminals linked to the racketeering promoted Georgescu’s candidacy in Internet. That campaign was mobilized mainly through a network with 25,000 TikTok accounts, which began to viralize the controversial candidate’s content just two weeks before the first electoral round.
Romanian intelligence indicates that behind Georgescu’s campaign there would be “a very good digital marketing company” specialized in breaking TikTok’s rules. The videos of the pro-Russian candidate – who currently has more than 527,000 followers – were coordinated from a Telegram group in which advice was given on how to deceive the content verification system of the Chinese platform. Furthermore, always according to their documents, the 25,000 TikTok accounts had a IP address unique strategy that would make it difficult to identify that coordinated network of political influence.
TikTok directives explained this Tuesday in Brussels that it had eliminated a small network of accounts that violated its rules by covertly campaigning for Georgescu. The Supreme Defense Council of Romania has denounced that TikTok did not mark the videos of the pro-Russian candidate as political propaganda, a priori prohibited on the platform, which would have allowed it to increase its visibility.
Possible Russian operation
“The activity of these accounts could have been coordinated by a state actor,” suggests one of the declassified documents, which although they do not directly point to the Kremlin They suggest that it could be one of their influence operations. The strategy followed in Romania is similar to that Moscow deployed in Ukraine shortly before launching its military invasion or the one it used in Moldova to boost the pro-Russian presidential candidate, who ended up losing to the pro-European and liberal Maia Sandu.
The SRI has identified more than 85,000 cyber attacks coming from 33 countries who tried to exploit the vulnerabilities of the computer systems used for the Romanian elections. Their mission was to steal sensitive data and crash the network. Some web pages related to the elections were published on a platform cybercrime of Russian origin.
‘Influencers’ in the wild
Although Georgescu has claimed not to have spent a single cent on his election campaign, the Romanian Ministry of the Interior reveals that intermediary companies – including at least one shell entity – would have hired influential content creators to share videos in which they talked about the ideal president for the country, a profile that closely coincided with that of Georgescu. The ‘influencers’ charged about 80 euros per publication for every 20,000 followers on their account. The SRI points out that some $381,000 would have been paid in cryptocurrencies to some of them.
