Romania held Presidential elections on 24 November 2024. To the surprise of pollsters and the public, the far-right candidate Calin Georgescu received the highest vote share with 22, 94% and would qualify for the run-off elections on 8 December.
There are serious concerns about a manipulative online campaign to mobilise voters in favour of Mr. Georgescu. Despite being relatively unknown to the wider public, his social media campaigns -especially on TikTok – propelled him to prominence within a very short timeframe. His main candidate account on TikTok saw explosive growth in the weeks before the election day: according to numbers from SocialBlade, Mr. Georgescu’s official account grew by 288.8K followers in the last 30 days. There have also been serious accusations by Romanian civil society organisations and other candidates of wrongdoing and illicit campaign financing in favour of this candidate.
Looking into TikTok accounts in favour of Mr. Georgescu, we observed several curious incidents, such as the sudden appearance of accounts with significant numbers of followers. For example, the account @iamcalingeorgescu was created on 26 November and instantly gained 15, 000 followers. This suggests potential coordinated inauthentic behaviour and/or the use of fake engagements —practices identified as potential online risks for elections in the European Commission’s election integrity guidelines.
Mr. Georgescu’s sudden prominence on TikTok warrants further investigation. In this report we focus on one significant weakness in TikTok’s policies and their enforcement: the proliferation of “murky” political accounts that support one party or candidate (often extremist candidates) in violation of the platform’s own rules. This year we have already published five reports on this problem across the European Union. In response, TikTok regularly removed many of the accounts we reported, but never took a proactive stance in removing them.
Because we consider TikTok’s lack of enforcement of (already very lax) guidelines to be a violation of the EU’s Digital Services Act., we have already had several conversations with the company and with regulators. Unfortunately, the issue of “murky” accounts is once again glaringly obvious in the TikTok campaign for Mr. Georgescu.
Our Findings
On 27 November 2024, we identified a total of 66 accounts on TikTok that potentially violate the platform’s rules on impersonation and/or show signs of coordinated inauthentic behaviour or the use of fake engagements. A complete list of account URLs, follower counts, and current statuses is included in Table No. 1.
The identified accounts are not verified as representative of a political candidate, nor do they provide information about what type of account they represent, but they nonetheless use Mr. Georgescu’s image or campaign logo. TikTok’s policy notes that “parody or fan-based accounts must be clearly disclosed in the account name (note that this is different from the @username). The policy also prohibits impersonation and promises that verified accounts represent authentic identities. These accounts create an ecosystem of amplifiers, boosting the overall visibility and virality of far-right content on TikTok.
By 28 November, before the publication of this brief, we reviewed the accounts again and found that TikTok had already removed 19 of them, likely for impersonation violations. It is a continued issue that the platform only appears to have taken proactive action after pressure from the media and the European Parliament, which yesterday summoned TikTok’s CEO to address the platform’s role in the election.
More importantly, a significant number of these accounts remain active. While some may not violate TikTok’s impersonation rules—partly due to the platform’s lax policies that allow users to bypass its impersonation policy by simply adding the word “fan” to their account names—they may still be in violation of the platform’s policies on fake engagements and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
At least 22 of these accounts were created between 27 and 28 November 2024. Some of them, such as @votamcalingeorgescu, @votezcalin, and @justacarwash have already gained 53.3K, 19.9K, and 21.4K followers, respectively. Screenshots of these accounts are shown below.
It is urgent that TikTok address the issue of “murky accounts” in an effective and proactive manner. If a medium-sized NGO like ours can repeatedly identify such accounts manually with ease, it is not unreasonable to expect TikTok to do so in a timely manner (i.e. before the elections!) to prevent their spread. Despite being notified five times since May 2024, the platform has failed to act accordingly.
Failing to address this concern may violate TikTok’s obligation to identify and mitigate risks to democratic processes and civic discourse in the EU, as outlined in Articles 33 and 34 of the DSA. Furthermore, Measure h) i) of the European Commission’s Guidelines on Electoral Integrity under the DSA specifically identifies impersonation, fake engagements, and coordinated inauthentic behavior as potential risks to electoral processes.
In addition to ongoing monitoring and enforcement of its own policies, a crucial mitigation measure would be for TikTok to strengthen its Community Guidelines, bringing them in line with those of other social media platforms. Mr. Georgescu is currently benefiting from numerous high-reach accounts that comply with TikTok’s lax standards (i.e., they do not impersonate the candidate). However, these accounts still present a significant transparency/integrity issue, particularly in the context electoral processes.
This report was written by Michael Meyer-Resende and Daniela Alvarado Rincón with contributions from Sorina Matei. The paper is part of the’202faccess://democracy‘202fproject funded by the Mercator Foundation. Its contents do not necessarily represent the position of the Mercator Foundation.
