Romanian elections: How a few hundred accounts coordinated on telegram can sway the algorithm and an election.
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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Btw if you check the vote count it seems this guy will have a different challenger than expected… This election is full of surprises
That Mf got 2 million votes being an independent candidate with just tik tok bots that’s just sad how can he get so many votes
I guess you’ve all seen the comments on the previous posts from flabbergasted Romanians. Quickly translated a few posts from one of the telegram channels run by “volunteers”.
They contained instructions on how to modify the messages so that the algorithm would not flag them as spam and to make them appear as genuine. Also included were instructions such as “groups of 30 with a 15 minute break and then another 30 groups and so on” (rough translation).
They are very helpful, with a guide on how to edit and post videos before posting them on various social media platforms so that the views get counted and that each video appears as an original clip.
It may be legal to spoon-feed people on how to post for a certain candidate (no idea) but I find it highly unethical for a presidential candidate to entirely fake the interactions with his electorate and to milk an algorithm to such a degree.
Everyone on TV and online was wondering where exactly did this candidate appear from? In just a few weeks he went from the bottom of the polls to the top. Even this morning on TV as I am typing this I am listening in the background on how “experts” say they can’t explain how this has happened.
I am a Romanian. I don’t use Tik Tok. And I’ve barely heard about this person. Last time I heard about him was 2-3 years ago when he said that some communist and legionary criminals are heroes 💀
This Georgescu person said he supports Putin and he spreads anti-NATO and anti-UE ideologies.
edit: our TV stations were all wondering all night who is this Georgescu and why nobody heard of him.
*how a few millions people can be dumb enough to get swayd by a couple of russian accounts*
(not targetting Romanian here, we have the same shit going in every democracy RN)
Disgrace! This is how elections all around the EU are manipulated and we do nothing against it.
It’s still also very strange if he didn’t show up at all in the opinion polls. In the end 2 million actual real people, almost a quarter of the electorate, voted for him. How can you miss that if you are a serious polling institute?
I’m almost literally in shock… the guy’s an absolute nutjob from ANY perspective you can think of. He is pro Putin, anti NATO, anti vax, religious nutjob to only name a few. If posts like this one are true, that’s election tampering and it’s frankly a direct and open attack on a state. No fucking buts about it. Any state that does this directly in the election of another state, is ATTACKING said state and should be considered a national security issue.
This is the result of people in liberal democracies thinking their civic and political activities stop at voting every now and then for representatives or referendums.
Why are bot farms legal? No one benefits from them except the mafias that get paid to spread false information.
Russia has perfected this crap, to really exploit populism
Time to speed a tiktok ban through the EU parliament, I would argue.
Yes, He only showed himself a few times an never spoked to the people, only spreading russian propaganda trough TikTok, he’s willing to start what the people died for in 1989
Is Telegram popular in Romania? Here its pretty much only used by the migrants/refugees from the ex-Soviet East and drug dealers
Social media has been like this for over a decade all of it needs either banning or regulating, yes Reddit included.
My fear is that China is correct to firewall their internet and have extreme censorship.
An open internet is amazing but it is also too easy to exploit. It is like any right. You have a responsibility attached to it.
There is a reason anti-vax, conspiracies, political propaganda aware being spread like crazy. It sucks living in a country and then political propaganda from another country hooks onto the minds of people here.
Same happened in the Netherlands. Colleague of mine voted for PVV because of fake news on TikTok. Something about foreigners taking all our jobs and money.
The fascinating thing is, he really believes every video he sees. For example, he mentioned that he saw a video that nobody is buying electric cars in the US and they sel them to foreign countries for 5-10K. So I said, let’s have a look at used electric cars in the US, and surprise, none of them were 10K or less (and mind you this was 1-2 years ago). TikTok and other social media are a danger do democracies if they are uncontrolled like this.
TikTok needs to banned NOW.
Weak democracies like Romania and Bulgaria are the most vulnerable.
we need to ask ourselves why nothing is being done about baning and criminalizing trol farms? IMO – because all sides are using them…
We need to ban tiktok in europe
Just cut The whole russia off from world wide web. Nothing good comes from there anyway.
Let them have their own siberian wide web instead where they can influence themselves as much as they want to
Romania: we are concerned about the way in which Russia manipulates the elections in the Republic of Moldova.
Russia: wait, in fact, why manipulate the elections in Moldova? if by manipulating those in Romania I automatically win Moldova too😃👍
with the upcomming election in germany in 3 month, i really am worried about this.
Has Z written all over it. 2nd round is coming, and he is history now that the general public has woken up.
We are so long overdue for a government created social media platform.
Open source code, no content algorithms just a chronological feed.
We need to take back digital public spaces or we risk loosing so much to profit driven entities.
Why TikTok is not banned in EU already? We can’t influence the elections in China, why do we let them do it?