Romanian elections: Tiktokers and election scandal

Shortly before the election, a campaign using the Heshtega “Stability and Integrity”, the flooded Romanian tictoc. The influences uploaded videos describing what they were looking for in a future president: “stability”, “progress”, “patriot”.

They did not specify a specific candidate.

They were paid for uploading videos with these messages via a marketing platform called Fameup, which allows brands to hire a scale to promote products. But the influential say they did not know who paid for it.

Fameup declined to comment on BBC.

Christina, an influence from the city of Yasi, says that when she takes the work, she felt that “there is nothing shady about it.” She says that “at the back of (her) mind, she thought that one of the 14 candidates probably paid for it and” just thought it was an intelligent approach. It doesn’t make any political propaganda. It just encourages people to go out and vote. “

Some influenants did not mark the publications as paid content. This contradicts the rules of Tiktok, where paid political advertising is prohibited.

Until the ads mentioned the name of Georgescu, the influential we talked to, described the “wave of comments” supporting it, which appeared under the videos. Romeo Rusu, a micro-influa of the city of Constanta with 25,000 followers, said: “As soon as I published the video, within a few seconds I started receiving dozens of comments. In the end, I received about 300 comments, supporting the independent candidate Kalin Georgiscu … I was absolutely surprised.”

The comments came in focus after Tiktok said in a report that he had removed a network of more than 27,000 non -authical accounts that “used fictitious persons to post comments related to the Romanian elections.”

It is not yet clear who created these boot accounts.

Experts say that flooding unbound videos with Pro-Geeorgescu comments is a tactics for Tiktok’s game and will get its name trend, which in turn would push its content into more users.

A Tiktok spokesman told the BBC that during the presidential campaign, the company “blocked millions of false engagement, removed hundreds of thousands of spam accounts, prevented the presentation of political candidates, and violated three hidden networks with limited scope.”

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

The uncertainty about the campaign continued in the new year, until a surprising turn in January.

The Romanian tax authority revealed that the #stability campaign was paid by the Right National Liberal Party (PNL), who supported their own candidate in the election.

In response, PNL told Romanian journalists in the Snoop news output that their campaign was abducted to support Georgescu.