A report by cybersecurity company Refute uncovered a large-scale international influence operation targeting Romanian diaspora voters on TikTok ahead of the second round of Romania\u2019s presidential elections on May 18.<\/p>\n
The report identifies approximately 32,500 TikTok videos containing slogans promoting the populist candidate George Simion and former candidate C\u0103lin Georgescu. Many of these videos are inauthentic, such as videos that have been duplicated in a coordinated manner across dozens of accounts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The videos these accounts produce deliberately target locations with large Romanian diaspora populations across Europe. Although only 24% of Romanian citizens live outside of Romania, 48% of the interactions with these videos (40 million likes and comments) came from outside the country. The countries with the highest share of interactions were the United Kingdom (15%), Italy (7%), Germany (7%), Spain (5%), and France (2%).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that nearly half of the interactions with videos promoting populist candidates come from outside Romania, double the percentage of Romanians living abroad, indicates that Romanian diaspora voters are being disproportionately targeted to influence the second round of the election,\u201d said Vlad Galu, co-founder and CTO of Refute and originally from Romania.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis surge in interactions from accounts based outside Romania could have a significant impact on Sunday\u2019s election results,\u201d he added in the press release.<\/p>\n
AI-generated videos frequently include generic visuals unrelated to the political narratives mentioned in the audio. These videos are often copied and distributed by other accounts, including those created to imitate other users on the platform.<\/p>\n
According to Refute, this is a tactic used by influencers who attempt to capture viewers\u2019 attention through a specific visual while advancing particular narratives through the audio or \u201csound effect\u201d of the video.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve already seen the use of influencers and bot farms in the November 2024 elections, but this is a new example of a sophisticated influence operation that transcends international borders to target Romanian voters abroad,\u201d added Tom Garnett, co-founder and CEO of Refute.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In April, TikTok said<\/a> that it launched an Election Center dedicated to Romania’s presidential elections as part of its broader effort to protect “the integrity of the platform” and promote access to reliable information. The initiative is supported by a new media literacy campaign and ongoing collaboration with more than 20 fact-checking partners.<\/p>\n The\u00a02024 presidential elections in Romania were canceled<\/a>\u00a0based on intelligence reports, which showed that Russia had influenced voters through social media to support the extremist candidate C\u0103lin Georgescu. The pro-Russian politician was virtually unknown before he became very popular on TikTok shortly before the vote.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n radu@romania-insider.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n (Photo source:\u00a0Bongkarn Thanyakij<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Dreamstime.com<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A report by cybersecurity company Refute uncovered a large-scale international influence operation targeting Romanian diaspora voters on TikTok ahead of the second round of Romania\u2019s presidential elections on May 18. The report identifies approximately 32,500 TikTok videos containing slogans promoting the populist candidate George Simion and former candidate C\u0103lin Georgescu. Many of these videos are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}