Researchers are now picking apart just how Georgescu — who gathered more than 370,000 followers on his TikTok account — managed his sudden rise in the polls, picking apart the activity around his online profile.
“We believed that Tiktok was misused and was led to be misused by him and an army of fake accounts that were used for his purpose,” said Bogdan Manolea, executive director of the Romanian campaign group, Association for Technology and Internet.
Others pointed at the use of influencers that would not have labeled their content as paid advertising. Paid political advertising is prohibited by TikTok.
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu weighed in on Tuesday, saying funding for Georgescu’s campaign on TikTok needed to be reviewed: “It’s a system, I don’t know how legal it is, I understood how the system was used. The source of financing, in my opinion, is to be followed, ‘follow the money.'”
In a statement, TikTok’s spokesperson in Brussels, Paolo Ganino, said the “highly speculative reports about the Romanian elections are inaccurate and misleading, as most candidates have established a TikTok presence and the winners campaigned on other digital platforms beyond ours.”
Ganino added that the platform “proactively partnered with the Electoral Commission to launch an in-app Election Center to elevate reliable election information to our community in Romania. We do not accept paid political ads and require everyone to abide by our Community Guidelines which we enforce on an ongoing basis.”
Nicholas Vinocur contributed reporting.
