Romanian voters are still looking for Tiktok answers to whom to vote

Many young Romanians are again reviewing the Tiktok video sharing platform for how to vote on the Sunday repetition of the presidential election, canceled last year due to allegations of Russian intervention through suspicious accounts on this social network.

With about 9 million Tiktok users, the country of 19 million people has been experiencing a leap in such accounts last year during a campaign canceled due to manipulations that Moscow claims to be not her case. The far -right candidate Kalin Georgezc, who prior to the vote gave a single -digit result in the studies, climbed first against the backdrop of an explosion of content in Tiktok, which favored him.

Now George Simion, the leader of the Radical Right Romanian Alliance (Aur), heads the list of presidential candidates with 1.3 million followers in Tiktok. Significantly back with about 233,600 followers is Victor Ponta, a former left prime minister, whose policy has become ultra-nationalist. Centrist candidates have even less followers.

The 38-year-old Tiktok videos combine nationalist rhetoric with emotionally loaded performance and often use speaking directly in front of the camera, footage of political gatherings and footage behind the scenes to strengthen a sense of personal connection.

« The time to rebirth came, » he told his followers in a video posted on Tuesday. « Our nation will find its path again … We have the power to reborn and move forward, more united and stronger. »

Remus Stefuryak, CEO of InScop Research, said all presidential candidates are now evaluating the key role of social media in the campaign.

« If we analyze our presidential campaign …, we can say that each of the candidates concerned has tried to build strong operations online and on social media, so they have invested many of their resources in this type of campaign, » he said.

Young people interviewed by Reuters in the center of Bucharest this week said they had received information from various online sources, including Tiktok.

Tiktok says it has formed a working group to guarantee effective content moderation and has launched a media literacy campaign to help users recognize misinformation. In January, the company said it had blocked the creation of over 116,000 spam account in Romania in the second half of December.

In a recent report, the company also said that in the second half of 2024 it removed over 27,000 accounts managed through a « fake engagement provider », which promoted Aur and George.

The Romanian government has ordered the materials for the social media campaign to be clearly marked as such, while the local media reported that the Central Election Bureau has ordered the removal of over 500 unverified or incorrectly marked publications.

Following the canceled election, the European Commission has launched a formal proceedings against Tiktok because of the alleged failure in restricting voting intervention.

Stefuri said that Romania’s experience of 2024 should serve as a lesson for the future of democracy around the world – « that we cannot accept our democracies for granted and need to find ways to better control and moderate the way political and electoral communication is managed through social media. »