“Nobody in Romania knew how to do this,” an investigation by Evenimentul Zilei reveals.
In a story that has shaken Romanian political establishment, a recent investigation show how three Romanian presidential campaigns were hijacked to promote radical anti-Western skeptic Calin Georgescu.
The three campaigns_ the National Liberal Party, the Save Romanian Union and Mircea Geoana were unaware and did not approve sophisticated digital marketing mechanisms which twisted their campaigns into platforms to support Mr. Georgescu, the independent with pro-Russian views.
Mr. Georgescu improbably came first in the Nov. 24 presidential election. The result shocked Romania’s political establishment and eventually led to the cancellation of the elections.
Four days after the first round, Romania’s top defense council (CSAT) met to share intelligence on the election and the result, which was seen as an attack on national security and its ‘European destiny.’
President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence reports for the general public on Dec. 4 to uncover ‘complex and subtle’ manipulation by a foreign actor on the election. He did not mention Russia by name until December 18. Two days later after the reports were declassified, the country’s top court canceled the election, a development that was praised by Romania’s Western partners but also caused unease and was criticized.
An early investigation by Snoop.ro revealed that Mr. Georgescu’s campaign was indirectly and inadvertently financed by the National Liberal Party campaign funds. The money was intended to promote general values, but it was fraudulently redirected to support a radically different message.
A similar process also affected the USR and Mircea Geoana’s campaigns, according to finance ministry sources, Dan Andronic writes.
FameUp, the agency managed by Ionuț Pătrășcoiu, discovered the first use of bots, content cloning and manipulation of algorithms to amplify pro-Calin Georgescu messages following articles in the press. Initially, the agency had created campaigns for PNL (#EchilibrușiSeriozitate) and USR, designed to promote a civic spirit and democratic values. However, through a subtle change of hashtags and comments, these campaigns have become promotional tools for Călin Georgescu, Gândul reported.
An unprecedented campaign of fake accounts, hackers
According to IT experts, these manipulations were carried out either by extremely well-trained hackers or even by members of the FameUp team. Their influencer- and micro-influencer-based system allowed for the rapid spread of messages, amplified by automated comments and fake interactions. Plus, there were tens of thousands of fake accounts.
“No one in Romania knew how to do such a thing. We do not have companies that have the capacity to quickly identify videos with hashes like the one mentioned in the report presented by the CSAT (the Supreme Defense Council) . We talked to people who have managed over 20,000 campaigns in Romania, Spain, Germany and the USA. Not a single marketer – whether he worked for the biggest brands in the world or for the most famous marketing groups – managed to do what those behind Călin Georgescu did in Romania. With the use of bots and the creation tens of thousands of fake accounts, they have effectively turned the TikTok algorithm upside down.
I’ve never encountered anything like this before. Unfortunately, we, ordinary people, companies, parties, consultants, have been caught in the middle of this situation. I want you to know that at that time, any post on TikTok, even from ordinary users, seemed to be hacked. Later, when we analyzed the data, we found the extent of this phenomenon. It was huge!”, a source who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue.
An example: how the PNL campaign was hijacked
To understand the extent of the #ECHILIBRUSIVERTICALITATE (balance and verticality) phenomenon, it was never used in TikTok until November, when the PNL campaign began to take shape. It was a generic message that was supposed to shape Nicolae Ciucă’s personality. From 254 mentions on TikTok, it exploded to almost 6,000 mentions on November 24 (the date of the presidential election). All of them were accompanied by hundreds of messages/per video urging people to vote in favor of Călin Georgescu.
This was the strategic thinking of the PNL. “Kensington (the company paid by the PNL to do the campaign) should have said one thing clearly: “We didn’t pay for Calin Georgescu. Someone hijacked our campaign and used our resources. They didn’t do that and so the speculations began” a PNL member said.
However, it wasn’t just the PNL, USR, and Mircea Geoana’s campaigns that were hijacked by hackers behind Calin Georgescu, but also posts of people reacted to the posts. “We later saw through data analysis that within 5 minutes of any posting, that it was ‘assaulted; by hundreds of comments from bots.”
Romanian company or foreign intervention
Could a company in Romania do something like this, Evenimentul Zilei asked.
“I can say that, in addition to the videos posted on FameUp, where only the PNL campaign used the hashtag #EchilibrușiVerticalitate – while Mircea Geoana used other hashtags – there were thousands of other videos posted by ordinary users that were ‘assaulted’ by comments promoting Calin Georgescu’s candidacy. The huge number of comments had a manipulative effect. When an average user saw hundreds or even thousands of pro-Calin Georgescu comments on a video, other people of similar good faith were influenced to believe that there was real and massive support for him.
To answer your question directly: yes, a significant percentage of the videos posted on TikTok in the last week before the first round of the election – normal videos, made by ordinary users and unrelated to political topics – were targeted by these bots. This operation artificially amplified political messages, affecting the public’s perception in an unprecedented way.”
Romanian authorities still have to answer a key question. Who was pulling the strings behind Călin Georgescu’s campaign?
For years, Russia meticulously prepared election interference, Romanian intelligence reports reveal
