TIKTOK in times of crisis. Episode II

We invite you to open the Pandora’s box now and explore why the TikTok platform has captured widespread attention, particularly in Romania. According to reports by Expert Forum, there has been a growing trend of far-right parties turning to TikTok as their primary communication channel in recent years—a phenomenon also observed across Europe. While the platform’s informal communication style may appeal to parties seeking to appear authentic and relatable, this is only part of the story behind the success of far-right parties on TikTok.

A significant issue lies in TikTok’s lack of initiative to enforce its own standards for monitoring political content, verifying account identities, and regulating political advertisements. Although political ads are theoretically prohibited on the platform, they persist in practice. An audit conducted last year by the German think tank Interface (formerly Stiftung Neue Verantwortung) highlighted this inconsistency, uncovering 100 political advertisements in Germany. This reveals a gap in the platform’s policy enforcement, raising numerous questions about TikTok’s commitment to addressing the dissemination of manipulative information.

One recent example of this problem with viralization emerged during the lead-up to the first round of Romania’s presidential election, where TikTok faced significant challenges in managing the flow of information during a critical moment. This report presents a new set of data and preliminary findings that highlight serious concerns, though the lack of access to relevant platform data makes it difficult to fully document these issues. Additionally, there is a need for transparency in the practices reportedly used by TikTok employees, such as the “heating” mechanism, which involves selectively promoting certain videos to a larger audience.

We also mention investigations that have appeared in recent days that draw attention to similar phenomena on Telegram and Facebook, but whose magnitude we cannot estimate. We invite you to consult the extraordinary work done by Context, Victor Ilie and Luiza Vasiliu, HotNews and G4Media, of course there are many other sources that present valuable information.

Researchers currently have access to TikTok data via its API, but this provides significantly less information than what can be obtained through public methods like data scraping. This limitation is a critical issue that needs to be addressed in accordance with Section 40(12) of the Digital Services Act.

Essentially, across the EU, we are being asked to trust TikTok’s claims that they are taking meaningful action, without any way to independently verify these assertions. In summary:

• Regulations are needed to limit the spread of accounts that impersonate political figures and pretend to be entertainment, sports, fashion, or personal accounts, but have politically engaged people behind them and exclusively amplify political content, possibly for a fee. Expert Forum alone found over 300+ such accounts with limited access to data that only shows the tip of the iceberg.
• If this is the case, it is useless to monitor the official Călin Georgescu account when the real amplification is done with hundreds of other accounts declared apolitical, but in fact 100% political.German think tank Democracy Reporting International reported on the problem of fan accounts as early as July 2024, clearly warning that it is “a systemic risk for civic discourse and electoral processes in the European Union.”

What’s shocking is that TikTok knows about all these reports made long before the Romanian elections, but has not addressed the issue and it is unclear to us what is the official position of the platform.

• The platform’s official policy is that it does not accept political advertisements on TikTok, but we have found advertisements promoting candidate Călin Georgescu even after the first round of the presidential election. Since TikTok AD Library does not make much information available, we cannot make a systemic analysis of this phenomenon, but we can clearly criticize the lack of implementation and transparency related to who is doing political advertising and how political advertising is monitored on TikTok.
• It is unclear what regulations apply to accounts that declare themselves as influencer marketing companies, such as the one we identified (Swapera, 201,000 followers and 4.9 million likes), an account that grows the page using entertainment content, and then posts political content – for a fee. On the one hand, we need to discuss how the platform regulates these accounts and whether they need to declare their identity in order to have real-life traceability. On the other hand, we also need to discuss the obligations of online marketers to declare their identity and to report and flag political advertising.

Important: all the graphs below are purely illustrative and are based on the aggregation of hashtags identified through data scraping. However, other hashtags may be relevant. The true scale of a coordinated campaign is hard to estimate without the cooperation of the network, so we expect access to data and tools for researchers from TikTok.

We also mention investigations that have appeared in the last few days that draw attention to similar phenomena on Telegram and Facebook, but whose magnitude we cannot estimate. We invite you to consult the extraordinary work done by Context, Victor Ilie and Luiza Vasiliu, HotNews, G4Media and of course many other sources presenting valuable information.

 

 

What we’re seeing about which parties are being voted for on Sunday

Monitoring PNL and PSD activity on TikTok is extremely difficult due to the complexity and high volume of content that is difficult to categorize. There are numerous accounts on the platform, predominantly anti-PSD or anti-PNL, which produce political content without a direct link to the respective parties.

This informational “noise” makes drawing conclusions largely limited to the bubble you are analyzing. For example, in the last 30 days, a significant proportion of the content about PNL and PSD comes from accounts that also frequently address the AUR party. This phenomenon suggests a classic campaign strategy, in which parties attack their main opponents, adapted to the online environment.

Statistically, we observe an overlap of 37% between the hashtag #AUR and #PNL, respectively 57% between #PNL and #PSD. Other relevant hashtags used in conjunction with #PNL also include other common political tags, emphasizing the complex nature of the interactions between these parties on the platform.

Partide noi la care am observat o creștere semnificativă a tracțiunii online

The Young People’s Party (POT), led by MP Ana Maria Gavrilă, has been popular for about a year – see our report from early 2024 – and has managed to build a growing follower base in recent days thanks to the increased attention given to candidate Călin Georgescu and the support the POT party has given him. The growth seems organic, fueled by POT candidates and Ana Maria Gavrila’s account. Whether this party will become relevant in Sunday’s elections, we shall see. We illustrate below #partiduloameniamenilortineri with 10.8 million views in the last 14 days, but one should also analyze #schimbare with 16.8 million views, #pot with 58.8 million views.

According to the Expert Forum report, POT spent 15 thousand lei for posters and 13 thousand lei for other print. It spent nothing for online. In contrast to them, the new party SENS declared 90% of its income as online spending, or 22320 lei.

Călin Georgescu’s viralization: before and after the elections

We’ve identified at least 300 accounts that appear to be engaging in inauthentic behavior

Georgescu won the first round of the presidential elections, so an explosion of discussions about him in the public space is normal. We can also observe the emergence of anti-Georgescu accounts, a rarity before the elections. However, the content remains mostly positive, with his account reaching over 400,000 followers, thanks to the national attention he has received.

However, we have identified at least 300 accounts that have overtly entertaining content – individuals, memes – but are pushing 100% promotional content for this candidate. They follow a coordinated promotional recipe, having similar names, such as calingeorgescu7, calingeorgescu4, calingeorgescu8, using the same hashtags and following a common content distribution system.

Evolution of the two candidates’ popularity after the first round

When we discuss Elena Lasconi’s main hashtag #elenalasconi, she got 402 million views with 14 700 videos, while Călin Georgescu’s main hashtag #călingeorgescu needed 47 700 videos to get 639 million views. Strictly quantitatively, we see that it took much more content creation for Călin Georgescu to go viral compared to Elena Lasconi.

In the last 7 days, in the case of #elenalasconi all the top accounts have at least one million views, most of them easily identifiable in real life as supporters, real people creating content against, TV channels supporting or opposing her. In the case of #calingeorgescu, only her official account and the different000 account with 5 videos have over 1 million views, the rest we are talking about small accounts that distribute massively. We mention that we also have his wife’s account in the top, being the only real supporter account that we found in the top of the views with #călingeorgescu in the last days (November 23 – November 30). Is this general phenomenon valid or does it show a small part of the viralization of the two? Hard to estimate, we can only start from this data to get a glimpse of who is creating content about the two.

Paid political ads – against TikTok’s terms on its own platform

Last but not least, we were able to find in TikTok Ad Library paid political ads, placed during the election campaign, promoting Călin Georgescu. As I was saying, this flagrantly contravenes the company’s self-imposed rules, but it doesn’t seem that anyone inside the company has noticed this or has taken steps to eliminate the practice.

We have of course seen how public officials have rushed to make sweeping statements before fully understanding the context of EU regulations and analyzing the balance to be maintained in a democracy between content moderation and freedom of expression.

Our open letter to the European Commission and ANCOM, coordinated by ApTI, explains in detail what we are asking for and what should be done in practical terms, starting with a rapid investigation by TikTok and opening access to specialized analysts.