The surprising and shocking entrance of Călin Georgescu into the presidential final represented the most powerful blow to the Romanian political system since 1990.
„This year’s presidential elections are, in reality and ultimately, a referendum on the 1989 Revolution,” political analyst Sorin Cucerai noted.
It is hard to shake off the feeling that we are facing a major exam, more of a democracy makeup test on which our future depends, weighing on the shoulders of the entire society.
"Ceaușescu wants his country back. For me, this is the most unbearable aspect of today's Romania. And no, the issue is not PSD or PNL or whoever else from the old politics. After all, PSD was born (under the name of FSN) as an anti-Ceaușescu party. The problem is the wave of revisionist conspiracy sweeping society for a few years now and seemingly on the rise," Sorin Cucerai further wrote.
But the wave of conspiracy did not appear out of nowhere; it is the effect of years of false information spread on social networks and the guilty inaction of those who have governed.
Political leaders have used the bombardment of lies to boost their popularity, seeing social networks as a useful and inexpensive vehicle to gain and maintain power.
Campaign Strategy, Social Network Manipulation
Last year, something shocking happened in the electoral campaign in Romania. For the first time, the political hierarchy in elections was determined by manipulating the TikTok social platform, gravely violating electoral legislation.
Through an investment of over 50 million euros, according to a report from a Romanian business organization, a supra-state structure was created that imposed its own candidate using posts, campaigns, and influencer networks on TikTok.
Călin Georgescu's entry into the presidential final was not just a shock for the country's political system but also raised major concerns at the level of the entire European Union.
Suddenly, it became clear to everyone that democratic rules no longer hold any value and that an external entity or a hidden group from within can impose its candidate and its own rules solely through the manipulation of social networks.
Since then, several decisions have been made both at the European and institutional levels in Romania, but the danger has not been averted.
Furthermore, the recipe for success of those behind Călin Georgescu has been adopted by other campaign strategists, and the battle on TikTok remains decisive but also extremely corrupt.
The Network of False Accounts
A report by the non-governmental organization Expert Forum shows that the political promotion phenomenon of the "Georgescu" type has proliferated instead of being eliminated.
"Online electoral campaigns in Romania have entered a new era dominated by a political promotion industry through inauthentic networks," the report released this week states.
The research conducted by Expert Forum shows that on TikTok, political operators have created millions of false accounts that amplify a candidate's visibility through posts generated with the help of artificial intelligence and disseminated infrastructure.
Thus, both the exposure and the perception of a candidate are no longer linked to reality and the legal framework for conducting the electoral campaign.
"We are witnessing a potential normalization of inauthentic behavior as a dominant campaign strategy. In the post-Georgescu era, the probability of virality for honest actors is minuscule compared to those using coordinated account networks to manipulate public perception," as stated in the Expert Forum report.
For example, in the organization's monitoring from January to April 2025, George Simion had exclusively positive posts generating 358.7 million views.
In second place is Nicușor Dan, with 138 million views of TikTok posts, which were both positive and negative.
... in the top 20 accounts creating content with the #georgesimion hashtag, there are accounts that do not directly support him but promote other candidates. These include the accounts @din.cmpulung (Elena Lasconi), @prezentul.i.viito, and @scopul.comun (all associated with Crin Antonescu's campaign)
Expert Forum, TikTok Campaign Monitoring Report
The monitoring authors noted that candidates, especially those presented in positive clips, are strongly distributed by networks formed by false accounts created by political operators.
According to the report, Crin Antonescu is also a candidate whose visibility has been amplified by false account networks on TikTok, similar to Simion, reaching over 118 million views.
"George Simion and Crin Antonescu benefit intentionally or unintentionally from digital networks that generate predominantly positive inauthentic content dominating the space associated with relevant hashtags for their names," as stated in the Expert Forum analysis.
"This dynamic raises serious questions about the transparency of electoral campaigns in the digital environment, about the fairness of chances in political competition, and about the responsibility of platforms that tolerate, implicitly or explicitly, the proliferation of these practices. Moreover, this is just a part of the larger landscape that we cannot fully monitor," explain the authors of the TikTok monitoring.
TikTok Announces It Protects Elections in Romania
Unfortunately, Romanian legislation is not keeping pace with the power of disseminating false information that political operators have through the use of social networks.
At this moment, there is no transparent or standardized verification framework that allows for a clear differentiation between a real supporter and an inauthentic account pretending to be a real person. The mere existence of an email address associated with the account cannot be considered a guarantee of authenticity, especially in the context where those accounts viralize political content during an electoral campaign period...
Expert Forum, TikTok Campaign Monitoring Report
Even though there has been greater involvement from the BEC and AEP, the institutions responsible for the electoral process, the success of the Georgescu conspiracy on TikTok was quickly adopted by the campaign teams of other candidates.
Although Romanian citizens fund parties precisely to ensure somewhat equal opportunities for actors and political parties, black money is still being used, strategies that violate current legislation or are on the edge of the law, attempting to find a winning formula outside the democratic game.
"...to support the community in accessing official information regarding these elections, TikTok launched an Electoral Center (for Romania) last week, available to users through the Search function and banners displayed on relevant election content," as stated in a TikTok press release.
"The Electoral Center provides essential information, important data, and directs users to the Permanent Electoral Authority website. It also includes information about TikTok's policies and media literacy tips for creating, distributing, and interacting with content, developed in partnership with Funky Citizens," the statement further specifies.
The above position of the social network's leadership is also an effect of last year's "Georgescu operation," which caused great international concern.
Democracy is at a crossroads. If elections can be won exclusively through a strategy involving a number of false accounts, artificially generated messages, and automatic dissemination, then states and their political organization are in danger of dissolution.