French authorities report on Romanian elections: Widespread manipulation of electoral process

The authorities in France made a report with regard to elections in Romania,from the perspective of the manipulation of the TikTok algorithms in favour of the candidate Calin Georgescu and talk about the coordinated mobilization of some thousands of accounts which artificially grew his visibility.   ‘Candidate Georgescu’ popularity grew extremely quickly on TikTok, especially in the two weeks which preceded the elections’ , said the French specialists, explaining how things happened. ‘After Georgia and Moldova, Romania is the third European country affected, at the end of 2024, by large-scale manipulation of the electoral process’ the report says.   The Secretary General for Defense and National Security in France published on Tuesday a document called ‘ The manipulation of algorithms and instrumentalisation of influencers. Conclusions drawn from presidential elections in Romania and risks for France’.   "The VIGINUM (Vigilance and Protection against Foreign Digital Interference) service has the task of detecting and defining Foreign Digital Interference Operations (FDOs) by analysing publicly accessible content on online platforms and media (...) This report provides information on the manipulation of information that targeted the Romanian presidential elections of 2024 (...) More specifically, the report analyses the modus operandi observed on the TikTok platform, aimed at artificially promoting certain content, as well as the manipulation of influencers. The report also assesses the risk of transposing these methods to France," the document, written in Romanian and French, reads.   The VIGINUM service said that ‘they want to alert internet users as regards the risk of manipulation of the platform content recommendation systems’.   "The victory of Calin Georgescu in the first round of the Romanian presidential elections, which took place on Sunday 24 November 2024, was totally surprising. With a candidacy presented in October and without having declared any campaign budget, he obtained almost 23% of the vote (i.e. more than 2 million votes) by campaigning almost exclusively online, in particular on the TikTok platform. Little known to the general public before the presidential election, the candidate was credited with less than 1% of voting intentions in polls conducted four weeks before the election and 10.6% of voting intentions between 20 and 21 November," the report said. Similarly, according to the quoted document’ following these results, numerous analyses showed the existence of information digital phenomena meant to disturb the good development of elections (…) which signaled manipulations noticeable on the TikTok platform and masked use of influencers for purposes of electoral propaganda, suggesting the implication of a foreign statal actor’.   "These cyber-operations were also accompanied by a large number of cyber-attacks targeting computer systems related to the electoral process, demonstrating a large-scale destabilisation of a major democratic event. After Georgia and Moldova, Romania is the third European country affected, at the end of 2024, by large-scale manipulation of the electoral process," the document said.   According to the French officials, TikTok is social network extremely popular in Romania with almost nine million users.   "Candidate GEORGESCU's popularity grew particularly rapidly on TikTok, especially in the two weeks leading up to the elections. For example, the number of subscribers and the number of views on Calin GEORGESCU's TikTok account tripled between 10 and 24 November 2024.5 Hashtags associated with the candidate also enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity, as is the case for #calingeorgescu which, according to the European Digital Media Observatory , registered over 73.2 million views in seven days. According to TikTok, the growth in the number of subscribers to the accounts promoting this candidate did not follow a normal organic pattern, which indicates a co-ordination process," the document added.   According to the French officials, ‘this campaign relied, on the one hand, on coordinated action of accounts network and, on the other hand, on the exploitation of the popularity of some influencers who were paid in a disguised way’.   According to the French specialists, this information manipulation was based primarily on the coordinated mobilisation of several thousand accounts to artificially increase the popularity of keywords associated with the candidate and thus manipulate the TikTok recommendation algorithm so that they appear in users' feeds.    ‘In conclusion, this process helps to fool the algorithm, generating artificially an emerging trend around a subject (in this case, candidate Georgescu and his programme), including within the communities who watch videoclips on this issue. The algorithm will offer video content in a more regulated way to users, content which is overpresented. Of course, the over presentation of a candidate in the digital space is not enough to explain a vote in his favour. The rules of the TikTok community say that such operations are forbidden. Similarly, the issue of identifying the commander behind this coordinated operation, the Romanian authorities suggesting the implication of a foreign actor. Finally, although this operating mode was going to offer visibility to a certain candidate in the context of an electoral process, it could be reproduced to promote contents with other objectives’, the document says.   The operation involved, according to the report, "over one hundred TikTok influencers with no particular political affinity and a total of over 8 million active subscribers".   The document notes that "the majority of these messages were not identified or identifiable as the subject of a paid partnership."   "This contravenes not only European rules on the responsibility of content creators in remunerated partnerships, but also Romanian regulations on election advertising and, finally, TikTok's own rules which prohibit any form of political advertising on the platform, including third-party funded content," the French added.   They also talk about the non-transparent remuneration of influencers who publicly support the candidate. They also talk about the involvement of a foreign firm in the recruitment of influencers.   ‘The Romanian Intelligence Service says that some of the influencers recruited for the promotion of candidate Calin Georgescu would have been contacted through e-mail by means of a South-African communication agency FA Agency which offered the sum of 1,000 euro for the distribution of a videoclip. On 6 and 13 December 2024, Le Monde newspaper published two successive investigations which showed that the South-African company FA Agency was a firm specializing in marketing services for online casinos, which implements influencing strategies on social networks, including TikTok, allegedly part of ‘a constellation of companeis’ linked to a Ukrainian advertising agency called Zlodej’, the document says.    ‘It is normal to consider that there is a risk of transposing the operating methods into the French-speaking digital public debate in order to target a French audience. Therefore, although the audience and uses of the TikTok platform differ from one country to another, malicious foreign actors could be tempted to choose this platform – due to its growing role among certain audiences – to implement the same operational plan, either with the aim of disrupting an electoral event or launching specific themes in the French digital debate space’ the document said.