Romanian presidential election: Georgescu used hidden political advertising on Facebook

Meta Corporation allowed a network of Facebook pages to publish more than 4 100 posts with political ads criticizing pro-European Romanian presidential candidate Elena Lasconi and praising far-right politicians, especially presidential candidate Celin Georgescu.

This is stated in the report of research groups of digital threats Reset Tech and Check First, reports Bloomberg.

The political campaign was conducted on 25, at first glance, separate Facebook pages for organizations whose websites share hosting, advertising and e-mail, indicating an organized attempt to influence the Romanian presidential election.

It is not yet known who is behind the political campaign on Facebook and Instagram, but it is known that almost €265,000 was spent on it.

Meta declined to comment on the report, but cited global affairs president Nick Clegg as saying: "We are not seeing any evidence of major incidents on our platforms in Romania."

The ad portrays Georgescu as a "patriotic president" who protects the people from the political establishment. While Lasconi was shown as a "devil" and a puppet of the West, and the current president Klaus Iohannis was called a "dictator".

The profiles of the registered advertisers had Facebook pages with administrators geo-located in Romania and presented themselves as news or entertainment sites. However, the sites lacked legal or editorial information, and many were spotted sharing IP addresses, identical design, shared email, and more. This indicates a centralized management structure.

Presidential elections in Romania

The first round of presidential elections in Romania took place on November 24. Far-right politician Celin Georgescu and liberal pro-European candidate Elena Lasconi made it to the second round. Moreover, Lasconi overtook the current Prime Minister of the country Marcel Čolaka by only 2.7 thousand votes.

Georgescuʼs leadership turned out to be unexpected, he was accused of influencing the election through TikTok and other social networks. Because of this, the European Commission even asked the platform to provide information on how the social network reduced the risk of inauthentic or automated use of its service, as well as to list the risks arising from its system of recommended content.

Romanian intelligence found out that the Tiktok account bogpr, which is used by Romanian citizen Bohdan Pescir, took part in financing Georgescuʼs campaign. He made payments totaling $381 000 between October 24 and November 24 to users of TikTok accounts that were involved in promoting Georgescu.

Therefore, the Constitutional Court of Romania annulled the results of the first round of presidential elections. Now the entire election process will be conducted anew.

• Celin Georgescu said that when he wins, he will ban the export of Ukrainian grain through Romania and block military aid to Kyiv. He also believes that Bucharest should not comply with NATO obligations regarding defense spending.

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