Najbrž se še spomnite afere s prvo izvolitvijo Donalda Trumpa za predsednika ZDA (v 2017), ko so mediji razkrili, da mu je analitsko pomagala družba Cambrige Analytica z algoritmi, s katerimi so prek družbenega omrežja Facebook targetirali volilce v “swingerskih državah”, da so postali naklonjeni glasovanju za Trumpa. Tukaj sta dva zapisa iz marca 2018 na to temo (tukaj in tukaj).

No, zelo podobna zadeva se je zgodila zdaj v Romuniji – le da je šlo za družbeno omrežje Tik Tok in le da je ustavno sodišče razveljavilo predsedniške volitve. V vsem ostalem je zgodba dokaj podobna. Sponzorji nesojenega predsednika so uporabili sofisticirane metode digitalnega komercialnega trženja, ki se ga sicer poslužujejo velika podjetja, ne da bi se mi tega zavedali.

So te metode legitimne ali nelegitimne? Hja, odvisno od tega, kdo jih uporabi. Georgescu ni bil “naš”, torej te metode niso bile legitimne. Če bi jih uporabila Kamala Harris, ki je “naša”, bi bile legitimne.

Spodaj je vpogled v dokazno breme kot podlage za odločitev romunskega ustavnega sodišča.

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Ok, I had a detailed look at the declassified Romanian intelligence documents on the basis of which the election results were cancelled and the craziest part of all this is that they actually don’t prove foreign interference or manipulation.

What do they show?

They document a social media campaign supporting Călin Georgescu that involved around 25,000 TikTok accounts coordinated through a Telegram channel, paid influencers, and coordinated messaging.

First of all, looking at it rationally, this is actually a relatively small number of TikTok accounts for a national presidential campaign, and the documents provide limited data about actual impact – they mention around 130 TikTok accounts generated between 1,000 and 500,000 views per video, but don’t show comprehensive engagement statistics or evidence of significant voter influence.

Also, importantly, everything described in these documents could just as easily be interpreted as legitimate digital marketing. The documents don’t provide concrete proof of foreign state involvement or manipulation – they merely suggest the campaign “correlates with a state actor’s operating mode” and draws parallels to alleged Russian operations in Ukraine and Moldova.

The payment rates mentioned (400 lei per 20,000 followers, 1,000 euros per promotional video) are actually standard market rates for influencer marketing, though the documents do allege some payments were made illegally after the campaign period (the guy targeted by these allegations, a Romanian crypto entrepreneur called Bogdan Peschir, denies these allegations: https://realitatea.net/stiri/actual/cel-mai-hulit-tiktoker-din-romania-se-apara-este-un-fals-nu-am-finantat-campania-lui-calin-georgescu_6751dcef8681aa0c3c439f52). The campaign coordination through Telegram channels with specific posting guidelines is exactly how modern political campaigns operate.

What’s notably missing from these documents is any concrete proof of foreign state involvement or manipulation. There’s no technical evidence of artificial amplification, no proof the accounts were fake rather than real supporters, and no clear distinction between coordinated campaign activity (which is normal) and malicious manipulation.

The documents try to draw parallels with Russian influence operations in Ukraine and Moldova, but the actual evidence presented is circumstantial at best. They note some accounts were created in 2016 but only recently became active – however, this is completely normal behavior when people become politically engaged during elections.

Also, while the documents show Georgescu’s popularity increased during this period, they don’t prove that the social media campaign caused this rise. There could be many other factors at play – his policy positions resonating with voters, traditional campaign activities, media coverage, public appearances, or general voter dissatisfaction with other candidates.

So that’s quite obviously the much bigger story here: that an entire election was cancelled on the basis of what could just amount to an effective social media strategy. Heck, they don’t even prove that the social media strategy was effective so in effect it’s simply on the basis of the *existence* of a social media media campaign…

In effect, when we strip away all the veneer, what just happened in Romania is that you had the country’s top court cancel an entire presidential election because of the existence of a coordinated social media campaign on TikTok that the intelligence services claimed – without concrete evidence – resembled Russian tactics.

That’s the precedent being set here, where elections can be invalidated not based on proven fraud or manipulation, but on the mere existence of organized social media campaigning that authorities find suspicious. It’s a dangerous path where largely unsubstantiated fears of foreign interference can be used to override actual voter choices, ironically damaging democracy far more than any social media campaign could.

Vir: Arnaud Bertrand via X