Daniel Băluță, propelled on Tik-Tok according to the method tested by Călin Georgescu, shows a report / 70 million views, in November. How many did the other candidates have

More than 70% of the viral content about Daniel Băluță (PSD) on TikTok, since November, was generated by a network of potentially inauthentic accounts, according to an analysis by Expert Forum. It is a campaign “with organizational methods tested in the presidential elections in Romania and the Republic of Moldova”, meaning in the 2024 elections won in the first round by Călin Georgescu and then cancelled.

Expert Forum says it analyzed 601 videos in support of Daniel Băluță published in November, of which 354 have more than 10,000 views.

Eight main accounts

Among them, 249 of the most popular videos about Daniel Băluță were created by the discovered inauthentic network. That is, 70.3% of the viral content about Baluță comes from these accounts in the month of November.

The mechanism that amplified Băluță's electoral messages was built around 8 key accounts including: bucuresti.now, ajunul.de.maine, doza.romniei-202, victoria.emma.voi, linkalazar, pelimbatoror.

Of the total followers of these accounts, “(55.4%) were classified as having a high or medium risk of being fake accounts,” according to EFOR.

Thus, through this network, the hashtag with the name of Daniel Băluță attracted the most views – almost 70 million. Almost 3.5 times more than the next candidate in the ranking, namely Anca Alexandrescu, who had 20 million views on TikTok.

“A problem that cannot be masked”

An account with 239 followers, bucuresti.now, constantly has viral videos reaching even 1.2 million views per piece, EFOR draws attention that TikTok can become a platform for “manipulation” of elections.

“We do not suspect this campaign of any hidden complexity, but of the exploitation of systemic vulnerabilities through which social media platforms are so easily infiltrated and manipulated to give a disproportionately greater voice to politicians who benefit from such accounts, a problem that cannot be masked under the pretext of the organic interest of users in these candidates”, notes the author of the report.

None of these posts were marked as electoral or political advertising, because social media platforms prohibited political advertising.

The accounts that support Anca Alexandrescu

The system of accounts that promotes Anca Alexandrescu is from the area of ​​the self-titled sovereignist movement, the realitatea.plus account being the main support account, writes the EFOR report.

Another account that supports Anca Alexandrescu is the TikTok account of the Swapera marketing agency, which in November 2024 promoted Ana Maria Gavrila and the POT party.

EFOR also says that potential signals of inauthentic accounts began to rise in early November, such as the 127,000-follower account ancaalexandrescufp, an alleged fan account that only posted two videos between October and December. The same thing happens with the account alexandrescuanca2025, an account that frequently posts about general topics of interest, but does not directly and consistently promote Anca Alexandrescu.

And the ancaalexandrscuprimar account has grown quite rapidly, to 128,000 followers, with less than 1% of them from Nigeria – “a potential inauthentic boost”.

Anti-campaign for Cătălin Drula and Ciprian Ciucu

Candidates Cătălin Drula and Ciprian Ciucu were analyzed together, because “they have an approximately equal share” of content created by anonymous accounts.

“As for positive accounts, we have identified a few accounts without a clear identity such as ciprianciucupmb, it looks like another official account or littleone.raul, drula.pentru.bucu, but it is uncertain whether they represent campaign accounts or real supporters. At this time we have not identified additional signals of inauthentic coordination”, notes EFOR.

However, Drula and Ciucu dominate the rankings when it comes to content on TikTok against them. There are accounts that exclusively create anti-campaign content against the two.

What are the EFOR recommendations?

Expert Forum denounces the responsibility of social media platforms to stop allowing inauthentic content manipulation practices.

“It is clear that either the platforms' self-reporting and the so-called mechanisms for monitoring inauthentic behavior and possible influence operations have been put on hold, or they were not very good from the very beginning,” warns the organization.

Then, Expert Forum also talks about the responsibility of parties towards citizens. EFOR recommends a code of conduct assumed by political parties.

Last but not least, the author of the report explains the responsibility of state institutions:

“We repeat EFOR's recommendations to start creating the real capacity, in a civil institution, to monitor the online environment during election periods. In this sense, we must abandon the institutional reflex of the 2025 presidential elections manifested through the task force for the regulation of political advertising, an exercise that ended up censoring the legitimate opinions of some citizens and demonstrating the inefficiency of an attempt to police the Internet,” writes Expert Forum.

In the last Friday poll of CURS and Avangarde, PSD candidate Daniel Băluță has 27%, Ciprian Ciucu from PNL has 24%, and Cătălin Drula from USR is rated with 21%. Anca Alexandrescu is three percent behind the USR candidate in the fight for Sunday's elections in Bucharest.

Inauthentic coordinated behavior has most affected past elections

According to Expert Forum, the phenomenon that most affected the integrity of the elections in 2024 and 2025 in the online environment is inauthentic coordinated behavior.

Romania's 2024 presidential election was canceled after tens of thousands of fake TikTok accounts propelled a marginal candidate, considered pro-Russian, to a surprise victory in the first round – Călin Georgescu.

In the run-up to the presidential elections in November 2024, the online campaign coordinated by the former presidential candidate Călin Georgescu, winner of the first round of the elections, canceled by the CCR, simultaneously used two main tactics to reach potential voters:

• generating targeted content;
• inflating metrics that measure user engagement through automated accounts and paid promotions.

This hybrid approach flooded the social network with favorable messages, taking advantage of TikTok's algorithm while avoiding detection by the platform.

“When real discussions in society, real accounts and campaigns carried out legally have a much smaller impact compared to such anonymous accounts, we consider that the integrity of the electoral process is affected, providing a much greater voice and an unequal platform for political actors who benefit from inauthentic promotion”, notes EFOR.