Did TikTok influence Romania's presidential election?

The Supreme Court of Romania has pulled the rip cord: On Friday, the judges annulled the results of the first round of the presidential election, held on November 24.  

"The procedure for the election of the president of Romania will be completely reopened," the Constitutional Court announced. It made the decision “to ensure the correctness and legality of the electoral process."  

The short video app TikTok is said to have played a role in the outcome. Calin Georgescu, the far-right and pro-Russian presidential candidate, was massively promoted via TikTok with the help of coordinated accounts, recommendation algorithms and paid advertising.

Georgescu, who was previously largely unknown, does not belong to any political party, polled extremely low in all preelection surveys and did not take part in any of the TV debates. Nevertheless, he won the first round of voting.  

Did TikTok give Georgescu preferential treatment?

This was mainly due to his presence on social media, especially on TikTok.

Georgescu's channel has more than 520,000 followers and has garnered 5.7 million likes, and his campaign videos have been viewed on TikTok millions of times. In them, he not only criticizes Romania's political establishment — often making false claims against politicians — but is also seen doing judo or riding horses, just like the man he so admires: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

When Georgescu won the first round of the election, many observers were incredibly surprised — and dismayed. The election brought the extreme-right conspiracy theorist, NATO critic and Putin admirer within a reasonable shot of winning the election in the second round, originally scheduled for Sunday.

According to Romania's electoral authority, TikTok appears to have played a major role in Georgescu's success.

The short-video platform is very popular in Romania: About 9 million of the country's 19 million inhabitants, especially young people, use the service.

Although other leading Romanian politicians are present on TikTok, none have managed to reach anywhere near as many people as Georgescu. The upshot, however, was that just under a third of 18- to 24-year-olds voted for Georgescu, despite his outlandish theories — among them, for example, that the 1969 moon landing was staged.

However, the electoral authority accused TikTok of giving Georgescu an advantage. Before the vote, it had instructed the platform that presidential candidates must be identified as such and must disclose their financial sources.

It said that in the case of Georgescu, TikTok did not enforce this rule, thereby giving him an advantage over the other candidates. Romania's media watchdog has called on the EU to investigate the video-sharing platform.

TikTok claims no meddling

TikTok has rejected all allegations, pointing to the fact that it removed tens of thousands of fake accounts and millions of fake likes and followers leading up to the election.

The social media service also claimed that it had found no indication of covert interference from either inside Romania or abroad.

Marcus Bösch, a German communications scientist and TikTok expert, told DW he sees this as a glaring contradiction. "How can it be that countless accounts and likes were removed even though there was no indication of interference?"

'Exaggeration,' 'misinformation' is 'normalizing extreme views'

US linguist Adam Aleksic believes the main problem in the algorithms of modern social media platforms, which are no longer based on the follower principle. Simply put, this means users no longer see posts from the people they follow, but from the people who shout the loudest.

Writing for the online magazine User Mag on November 9, Aleksic said "algorithms use engagement as a metric for virality, and misinformation tends to generate more engagement. Claims about, say, Haitians eating household pets are going to elicit the extreme responses needed for virality. Even attempts to correct those falsehoods can paradoxically register as additional engagement."

Aleksic added that the days of detail, accuracy and nuance on online platforms are gone, and that extreme views are becoming normalized.

Social media platforms must 'become more resilient'

As Bösch sees it, the main problem is that TikTok is being used by many people, while strong, independent media brands are disappearing from the market.

However, he said this is true not only of TikTok, but of all social media platforms.

"But TikTok is the 'app of the moment,' and this means that lots of themes and trends are subsequently found on other platforms," said Bösch.

"Societies, politicians and platform operators must understand that these threats and attempts to influence people exist and will continue to exist, and must correspondingly become more resilient, better prepared and more willing to take action in the context of strategic communication," he said.

This article was originally published in German on December 4, 2024. It was updated and republished following the Supreme Court's annulment of Romania's election results on December 6.