Romanian elections: Tikkeer and an election scandal

Shortly before the election, a campaign, which used the hashtag “stability and integrity”, flooded the Romanian TikTok. Influencers have uploaded videos that describe what they were looking for in a future president: “Stability”, “Progress”, “A Patriot”.

You have not called a specific candidate.

They were paid to upload videos with these messages via a marketing platform called Fameup, with which brands can set influencers in scale to advertise products. But the influencers say they didn't know who paid for it.

Fameup refused to comment on the BBC.

Cristina, an influencer from the city of Iasi, says when she took over the job, she felt “nothing so tired of it”. She says “in the back of [her] Spirit “she thought one of the 14 candidates probably paid for it and she just thought it was a clever approach. That does not make a political propaganda. It only encourages people to go out and coordinate.

Some influencers did not mark the contributions as paid content. This contradicts the Tikok rules in which paid political advertising is prohibited.

While the ads did not mention the names of Georgescus, influencers we spoke to described a “wave of comments” that supported him that appeared among the videos. Romeo Rusu, a microphluencer from the city of Constanta with 25,000 followers, said: “Right after I posted the video within a few seconds, I received dozens of comments. In the end I received around 300 comments and supported all the independent candidate Calin Georgescu … I was absolutely surprised.”

The comments came into focus, after Tikkok said in a report that a network of over 27,000 lack of unconditional accounts was removed, in which “fictional personas were used to publish comments on the Romanian elections”.

It is still not clear who created these bot accounts.

Experts say that floods independent videos with Pro-Georgescu comments were a tactic for the game of TikKs algorithm for games and would trend its name, which in turn would press its content in more user feeds.

The BBC announced that the BBC spokesman was “blocking millions of fake commitment attempts during the presidential campaign, hundreds of thousands of spam accounts, which prevented the imitation of political candidates and interrupted three hidden influences with limited reach”.

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

The uncertainty in the campaign took the new year for a surprising turn in January.

The Romanian tax authority revealed that the #stability and integrity campaign was paid for by the National Liberal Party (PNL) of the center-right control (PNL), which supported its own candidates in the elections.

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