Romanian elections: Tiktokers and an election scandal

Shortly before the elections, a campaign with the hashtag “Stability and Integrity” Romanian Tiktok. Influencers have uploaded videos that describe what they were looking for in a future president: “Stability”, “Progress”, “A Patriot”.

They did not mention a specific candidate.

They were paid to upload videos with these messages via a marketing platform called FAMEUP, with which brands can hire influences to promote products. But the influencers say they didn’t know who paid for it.

Fameup refused to comment on the BBC.

Cristina, a influencer from the city of Iasi, says that when she took the job, she felt “there was nothing shadow -like”. She says “behind the (her) mind” she thought that one of the 14 candidates probably paid for it and she “just thought it was a smart approach. That is not a political propaganda. It just encourages people to go out”.

Some influencers did not mark the messages as paid content. This goes against Tiktok rules, where paid political advertisements are prohibited.

Although the advertisements did not mention Georgescu, described influencers with whom we spoke to a “wave of comments” that support him that appeared under the videos. Romeo Rusu, a micro-influencer from the city Constanta with 25,000 followers, said: “Immediately after I had posted the video, I started to receive dozens of reactions within a few seconds. In the end I received about 300 responses, all of whom were the independent candidate Calin Georgescu … I was absolutely surprised.”

The comments came into the picture after Tiktok stated in a report that it had deleted a network of more than 27,000 non -authentic accounts that “fictional personas used to post comments regarding the Romanian elections”.

It is still not clear who made these bone accounts.

Experts say that floods non-related videos with pro-georgescu comments were a tactic to play the algorithm of Game Tiktok and to get his name trending, which in turn would push his content into more user forms.

A spokesperson for Tiktok said the BBC that during the presidential campaign “millions of fake engagements, the company blocked hundreds of thousands of spam reports removed the imitation of political candidates and three secret influence networks disrupted with a limited range”.

“We continue to work closely with local and EU authorities and work together with local organizations to increase reliable election information,” they said.

The uncertainty surrounding the campaign lasted in the new year, until a surprising turn in January.

The Romanian tax authority revealed that the #Stability Enintegrity campaign was paid by the Center-Recht-based National Liberal Party (PNL), who supported their own candidate in the elections.

In response, the PNL told the Romanian journalists at News Outlet Snoop that their campaign was hijacked to support Georgescu.