Step by Step Through Călin Georgescu’s TikTok Campaign Playbook

However, neither the court’s decision nor the secret service report address how the entire operation affected the functioning of the TikTok algorithm or the voting itself. Although Georgescu’s presentation was more visible on TikTok than that of the other candidates, there are no strong arguments to suggest that the pro-Russian candidate’s victory in the first round was determined solely by the social media campaign.

The Romanian Constitutional Court did not address the influence on the elections themselves. That there had been a violation of equality in the electoral competition was sufficient reason for it to annul the results, since “the electoral process for the election of the President of Romania was marred throughout and at all stages by numerous irregularities and violations of electoral rules, which distorted the free and fair nature of the citizens’ vote and the equal opportunities of the candidates, while also affecting the transparency and fairness of the campaign and violating the legal provisions governing its financing.”

Step One: An Army of Bots and Fake Accounts on TikTok

The Romanian prosecutor’s office has accused Bogdan Peșchir of participating in the financing of a campaign involving more than 20,000 TikTok accounts created in 2022 and 2023 to generate over 2.1 million comments supporting Călin Georgescu.

According to leaked documents from the investigation, the computers used to control the first network were, based on their IP addresses, located in Turkey. The campaign’s creators used the email service rambler.ru to register the accounts. This allowed them to automatically create more than 20,000 email addresses, all beginning with “ushakov” or “aleksandrov” and followed by a combination of five random characters, such as [email protected] or [email protected].

According to the Romanian prosecutor’s office, the second network consisted of another 25,000 accounts, which became highly active two weeks before the election and intensively supported Georgescu.

The prosecutor’s office also states that the company Social Freak played a role in the campaign paid for by Bogdan Peșchir. On the website socialcrow.co, Social Freak allows users to buy followers or likes.

We tested the site at Investigace’s editorial office. For less than three euros and within 10 minutes, we got a thousand likes under a video of a tabby cat sitting on a blanket.

Video of a tabby cat, which we used to test buying likes. Source: investigace.cz

We ordered 1,000 likes for the cat video on Social Freak’s website socialcrow.co. According to the Romanian prosecutor’s office, this website was also linked to increased reach in the presidential campaign. Source: investigace.cz

Within a few minutes, we received a thousand new likes under the video. It cost less than three euros. Source: investigace.cz

The video with the cat has 1,126 likes after a few minutes. A thousand of them are bought. Source: investigace.cz

Buying 100,000 followers on TikTok costs just over 1,700 euros, while buying 100,000 likes costs 236 euros.

TikTok itself indirectly confirmed the activity of inauthentic accounts in Romania in its news reports in December 2024 and January 2025.

TikTok then reported that, from September to December 2024, it proactively prevented or removed at least 63.8 million fake “likes” in Romania, as well as 31.1 million fake follow requests. It also deleted 13.3 million fake followers; blocked the creation of 549,000 spam accounts; deleted 266,000 fake accounts; and removed 2,059 accounts impersonating candidates or other public figures or officials.

In addition, the TikTok news report states that it has removed coordinated networks of accounts that sought to influence the Romanian elections. This is further clarified in the Covert Influence Operations report, which states that, in December 2024, TikTok deleted three such networks in Romania suspected of inauthentic behavior. However, only one of them was said to be focused on supporting Georgescu. It had a total of 27,217 accounts with a total of 70,800 followers. TikTok said that “this network was operated through a fake interaction provider and was targeted at a Romanian audience. The people behind this network used inauthentic accounts to promote the AUR political party and independent candidate Călin Georgescu in an effort to manipulate the Romanian election debate. This campaign relied more on posting comments than videos.”

Step Two: Coordinating Activists on Telegram

In addition to inauthentic accounts, the campaign also used an army of volunteers coordinated via social media. Journalists from G4 Media wrote that the Telegram channel PROPAGATOR Implică-te și tu, Renașterea României (PROPAGATOR Get involved, Rebirth of Romania) became the center of these activities.

We analyzed the channel’s archive. It was created in June 2024 and served primarily as a repository for videos and images with instructions on how to circumvent algorithm settings and what software to use to support the campaign for Georgescu.

In addition, it directed supporters to the group Hrană – Apă – Energie (Food – Water – Energy) and its branches in individual regions of Romania. These groups were intended to coordinate Georgescu’s supporters and still serve this purpose today.

Georgescu’s supporters gather and coordinate in regional Telegram groups called Hrană – Apă – Energie (Food – Water – Energy). Source: investigace.cz

According to G4 Media’s findings, these groups also discussed possible rewards for volunteers. As evidence, journalists provide a screenshot of conversations in which they highlight the following passages:

“Be humble and you will get money if you stand by us and Mr. Călin Georgescu,” Denis M. replied to a question. The questioner, Mihaela F., then followed up with, “What money? How much will we get?” Denis M. responded: “It depends on your commitment.” However, the Dennis M. account adds a note at the edge of the screen: “No one has ever received any financial contribution from anyone. They are just volunteers who want to implement the Food, Water, Energy project.”

Screenshot of Telegram communication published by G4 Media | Source: investigace.cz

According to journalists from G4 Media, volunteers in these groups were also responsible for managing some of the TikTok accounts that supported Georgescu.

Step Three: Direct Payments to Influencers From Bogdan Peșchir

Another accusation against businessman Bogdan Peșchir concerns direct payments to influencers in exchange for promoting Călin Georgescu in their live broadcasts on TikTok, without this support being declared as a part of the official campaign. In addition, according to the prosecutor’s office, Peșchir directly bought their votes, which is a criminal offense in Romania.

“The investigation so far has revealed that between March 28, 2024, and January 31, 2025, the accused provided USD 879,521.13 in gifts via the TikTok app (payments made in the app during users’ live broadcasts, where points are offered that can then be converted into money) and further amounts of RON 302,547.87 and USD 17,859.31 via transfers through the Revolut app (bank accounts and electronic wallets for cryptocurrencies), to a total of 265 people in order to influence their votes for a specific candidate in the 2024 presidential election,” the Romanian media quoted investigators as saying.

Gifts on TikTok allow people to pay their favorite TikTokers for their content. In practice, users purchase so-called coins in the TikTok app with regular currency. For example, for about 100 CZK, they receive 350 coins.

While watching a live broadcast, they can then use this money to buy various virtual gifts and send them to the content creator. The gifts are converted into so-called diamonds, which the TikToker can then convert into real money using a PayPal account. TikTok earns money on the difference between coins and diamonds. This ranges from 50 to 70% between the two currencies. In other words, a gift purchased for $100 and sent to a content creator earns the creator $30 to $50. However, there is a limit on the redemption of diamonds: a maximum of $1,000 can be withdrawn per day.

Influencers receive virtual gifts from their fans on TikTok, which they convert into “diamonds” and then receive real money for via their PayPal account. The system provides anonymity to donors. TikTok earns money on the difference between coins and diamonds. Graphic designer: Lenka Matoušková

However, gifts also have their advantages. It is very difficult to track financial flows within this system, and they are not considered formal payments for advertising. They essentially provide anonymity to the donor. Politicians and political parties in the EU are not allowed to receive gifts on their accounts, but this was not the case with Georgescu on TikTok.

Bogdan Peșchir used both TikTok gifts and direct payments via Revolut and cryptocurrency transfers to pay TikTok influencers for promoting the Romanian presidential candidate. For example, the following WhatsApp conversation was found on his mobile phone:

TikTok user: “Bogpr, I have a request, I’m back from prison and I’m broke, can you give me some money, I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll hand out flyers with Mr. Georgescu on the street, I’m there from morning to night, I’m from Bucharest, thank you very much.”

Bogdan Peșchir: “Hi, if you’re broadcasting live, I’ll support you there.”

In another conversation, Peșchir talked about buying votes in the Romanian community living in Germany.

Bogdan Peșchir: “You need support, okay, how can I help you? Gifts? Listen, I’ll tell you something, I don’t want it to look like I’m buying you or anything. If you sincerely believe that this person is suitable, then go for it.”

Samuel Pleșa: “We can gather at least 3,000 votes. But I don’t want to make transactions from my account because my name would show up.”

Bogdan Peșchir: “If you can set up a Revolut account, that would be great.”

Samuel Pleșa: “Can you send 6,000?”

Bogdan Peșchir: “Revolut account (…). Make a test transfer. With one euro. Is she your niece?”

Samuel Pleșa: “Yes, she’s my relative.”

According to the Romanian prosecutor’s office, these conversations are proof that Peșchir bribed voters.

The prosecutor’s office subsequently stated that both Peșchir’s election team and Georgescu himself were aware of Peșchir’s intentions. This is allegedly evidenced by records of their communication on social media, which the Romanian prosecutor’s office claims to have at its disposal.

Step Four: Buying Micro-Influencers and Hijacking the Campaign

According to investigators, a group of micro-influencers selling their services through the Romanian marketing platform FameUp was also involved in the campaign in favor of Georgescu. Originally, it was supposed to be a campaign indirectly supporting another candidate, but during the campaign, someone changed the hashtags that the influencers were supposed to add to their posts on the platform. In addition, hundreds of comments promoting Georgescu began to appear under these hijacked posts.

Findings by the Romanian financial authority ANAF and journalists from the website snoop.ro show that the PR agency Kensington Communication commissioned a campaign for the Romanian liberal party PNL and its presidential candidate through FameUp. According to the agency, this was not an election campaign, but rather an effort to raise awareness of the importance of participating in elections. A total of around 130 influencers with a combined total of eight million followers took part in the campaign.

As shown by the original assignment published by Romanian journalists from the Hotnews website, the hashtags originally agreed upon are indeed different from those that ultimately appeared on the influencers’ channels.

Kensington Communication claims that the hashtag for the entire campaign, #echilibrusiseriozitate (#balanceandseriousness), was changed to #echilibrusiverticalitate (#balanceandverticality) on the FameUp platform without their involvement. The PR agency claims it was not aware of this change and has no information that it was requested by representatives of the PNL party. According to an analysis by snoop.ro, other hashtags from the original materials were also changed, such as #unpresedintepentruromania (#presidentforromania) to #unliderpotrivitpentrumine (#suitableleaderforus).

Kensington Communication is convinced that these modifications in favor of Călin Georgescu must have been made directly on the FameUp platform, and has therefore filed a criminal complaint against an unknown perpetrator.

However, FameUp (operated by SC INOVATIVE ALIA SRL) denies that it collaborated with Georgescu or anyone involved in the campaign to support him. The platform insists that it did not directly or indirectly promote any candidate and that the campaigns carried out through it were merely “information campaigns” aimed exclusively at raising awareness among Romanian society about messages promoting democratic and Euro-Atlantic values.

Step Five: Unknown Agency Buying Influencers

According to a declassified report by the Romanian intelligence service (SRI), the South African communications agency FA Agency, which operated in parallel with the aforementioned FameUp platform, also bought influencer support.

Journalists from the French newspaper Le Monde found that Romanian influencers such as Andreea Marin (700,000 followers on Instagram) and singer Florin Ristei (400,000 followers) received offers from this agency with similar wording: “Hello! We have an impressive video about the future of our country and it is important that as many people as possible see it. If you support us and post it (in Reels, a post, or a story), we are ready to pay you for this promotion.” The video promoted Călin Georgescu. FA Agency also offered influencers €1,000 for distributing one video clip.

According to journalists from the daily newspaper Le Monde, the South African FA Agency was a front company managed by the Polish branch of Gambling Media Group (GMG). The latter specializes in marketing services on social networks, including TikTok, for online casinos and is allegedly part of a network of companies linked to the Ukrainian advertising agency Zlodei.

Apart from the fact that Zlodei is run by a certain Dmitry Makarov and that the company was investigated in 2020 in connection with online gambling and money laundering, no other information about it can be found. The company did not respond to journalists’ inquiries.

What was the effect of the TikTok campaign on the candidate’s visibility?

It is not easy to assess the real impact of TikTok on the results of the canceled presidential election. TikTok’s algorithm is sensitive to user behavior and tries to tailor content to the user, making it difficult to replicate what Romanians could see before the election.

However, it is possible to compare how many fans Georgescu had and how many interactions his account received over the course of November 2024. During that month, he experienced rapid growth: at the beginning of November, Georgescu had approximately 20,000 followers on TikTok. By the end of the month, this number had risen to more than 540,000, representing an increase of 2,541%, as shown by DFRLab’s analysis.

In November 2024, his account saw a 1,496% increase in likes, a 1,581% increase in comments, and a 1,146% increase in shares, despite posting 29% fewer videos than in October. In just one week (beginning November 18), the number of views of his videos increased by 52 million. Previously, from September to November 18, 2024, his account had received 98 million views, according to Alliance4Europe.

By the end of November 2024, the main hashtags associated with Georgescu had reached 1.4 billion views. Between December 6, 2024, and January 27, 2025, the number of views of these hashtags increased by another 1.733 billion.

However, success on TikTok does not necessarily mean success in elections. Moreover, both the secret services and TikTok admit that a number of fake accounts were involved in the campaign.

Research by Survation for Global Witness, which focused on TikTok use among Romanians aged 18 to 35 before the election, found that these users saw content related to Georgescu regardless of whether they followed his account or not. A total of 73% of them said they saw such content often or very often.

Given that the researchers only looked at this age group, the results of their study cannot be generalized to the entire Romanian population. “We can say with certainty that our sample saw a disproportionately high amount of content about Georgescu relative to the number of people who follow his account,” Charlie Buckley of Survation told investigace.cz. He also notes that Georgescu ultimately became the most popular candidate among the age group surveyed—at least among those who voted in the first round.

What Was the Effect of the TikTok Campaign on the Candidate’s Electability?

According to a survey conducted by AtlasIntel between November 15 and 20, Georgescu was expected to receive 6.2% of the vote. A week later, polls showed him winning with 22.9% support.

Surveys show that candidate awareness plays a significant role in the decision-making process of less engaged or undecided voters. TikTok was flooded with promotion of Călin Georgescu, which often appeared authentic and increased his visibility among young people. Another study also shows that massive advertising campaigns on social media lead to an increase in the number of votes.

At the same time, there are studies showing that when people are exposed to disinformation, they are more likely to vote for populist parties. Videos supporting Georgescu did indeed contain various conspiracy theories and disinformation.

At the same time, however, the studies agree that other factors, such as overall satisfaction with the situation in the country or trust in the functioning of society, also determine the success of candidates.

And it is precisely the trust of young Romanians in the local political system that is at a very low level: According to a 2024 IRES survey, up to 90% of young people (aged 18 to 35) consider politicians to be dishonest, while 63% do not trust the president, the government, or parliament. In addition, 67% of young people are considering leaving the country, reflecting deep frustration with economic stagnation, corruption, and inadequate political representation.

This mistrust is also reflected in growing support for authoritarian and nationalist movements. For example, 40% of young Romanians believe that dictatorship could be a suitable political system for the country.

It is therefore more than likely that the success of Călin Georgescu’s campaign was mainly due to his ability to unite dissatisfied young Romanians and those who had already left the country.

After all, a good social media campaign combined with a dissatisfied society was decisive in the election victories of Javier Milei in Argentina in 2023, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, and former Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele in 2019. All of them were considered outsiders before the elections.

The Courts Versus Georgescu

As detailed at the beginning of this article, in the case of Romania, the Constitutional Court concluded that Georgescu had violated the rules of political competition with his campaign. His statement that he had not spent a single lei on the campaign contrasted with reports from the secret services. These reports are gradually being confirmed.

Protests broke out in Romania and Călin Georgescu sought to overturn the election through legal channels. At the end of 2024, the appeals court dismissed his lawsuit, emphasizing that the Constitutional Court was beyond its control. In mid-January, the Romanian Supreme Court also definitively rejected his appeal.

Finally, Georgescu appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. However, at the beginning of March this year, the court unanimously ruled that, since the office of president does not fall within the definition of a legislative body—within the meaning of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention on Human Rights,—it is not for it to rule on the cancellation of elections. The court also rejected Georgescu’s other objections, saying he didn’t provide any factual or legal arguments to back up his claims.

Simion Comes Forward

Călin Georgescu wanted to run again, but the Central Election Commission (BEC) refused to register him as a candidate in the May 2025 presidential elections. It referred to two previous decisions by the Constitutional Court, which allow for the exclusion of a person whose conduct is contrary to the constitutional values of the country.

The Romanian Constitutional Court (CCR) subsequently upheld the BEC’s decision. The court emphasized that although Georgescu had not been convicted, his actions were contrary to the principles of democracy and the rule of law. At the same time, the CCR stated that this decision did not mean a permanent ban on standing for election, as each case is assessed individually, taking into account the cyclical nature of elections. The court also rejected objections regarding procedural irregularities and an alleged violation of the right to defense.

The first round of the new elections was thus held last week without Georgescu’s participation, and George Simion of the far-right AUR party, with which Georgescu had broken ties in the past but to which he remains ideologically close, won the most votes. In the original canceled elections, Simion received almost 14% of the vote. In May of this year, he received almost 41%. It seems that Simion has drawn voters away from Georgescu, who had over 22% in the canceled first round and. Although he did not win the election in the end, he managed to convince more than 46% of voters.

Did the Russians Have a Hand in This?

It cannot be said with certainty whether Russia was behind the TikTok campaign. An ongoing investigation by the Romanian prosecutor’s office shows that Bogdan Peșchir was the main financial backer of the campaign.

Although the Romanian secret services have stated that the process of influencing the election campaign resembled Russia’s Brat za brata operation in Ukraine, Romania has not yet officially provided any evidence that this was indeed the case.

According to Mediapart, Romanian secret services managed to trace the origin of one of the cyberattacks on the election infrastructure, namely on a “cartographic server.” The authors of the attack were allegedly members of the Russian hacker group ATP29. The cartographic server in question may be the website gis.registrulelectoral.ro, which, among other things, hosts a map of polling stations around the world. The attack on the election website infrastructure was also confirmed by an original report from the Romanian authorities. However, these attacks have nothing to do with election manipulation via TikTok.

Romania has not yet presented any further direct evidence of Russia’s or any other foreign actor’s involvement in the manipulation of social media campaigns.