This text was published by FACT, one of fifteen EDMO Hubs. 

Authors: Voinea Mădălina, Sorin Ioniță

Expert Forum (EFOR) has identified a coordinated network of 17 TikTok accounts that have generated over 1 million views in the last seven days to promote parliamentary candidate Vasile Costiuc.

The network shows clear signs of inauthentic behavior, with 993 “soldier” accounts systematically following the same political profiles. This is an example of how electoral systems are vulnerable to manipulation through political advertising disguised as social media content.

In response, we must take systemic action to increase transparency and generate real countermeasures from large platforms.  The broader and unresolved issue of social media platforms Election periods remain a sensitive time and an unresolved issue for social media companies, which theoretically claim to provide citizens with information but in practice become a favorite environment for spreading disinformation.

The obsessive argument of limited responsibility, i.e., the insistence that “we are just information intermediaries,” or the self-proclamation as an entertainment platform, as TikTok has  repeatedly  done, has brought us to the point where people get their information mainly from social media, but democratic states have their hands tied when it comes to imposing transparency requirements, monitoring foreign influence (FIMI), and disguised political advertising. A live experiment will take…