Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake TikTok accounts

kyivinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 96 posts

Re: Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake TikTok accounts

#21

Post by spoiler »

bhhaskin wrote: post #15
dylan604 wrote: post #11

10M fake accounts? I mean, that in and of itself is impressive. Apparently, it's easy to create fake accounts on TikTok still? How hard would that be today with FB, Twitt...er, X or any thing else really?

I am sure it's easy when you likely have direct access to APIs.

I'm not giving these governments the benefit of the doubt here, but I'm wondering if these really are state actors at play here, or just tech savvy trolls

Or if this can be considered trolling at all?

The good that will come of this that a lot of these social media platforms will need to become more regulated or just flat out banned.

They're generally not good for us emotiona anyway.

We should all touch grass more often

Re: Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake TikTok accounts

#22

Post by bhhaskin »

onionisafruit wrote: post #16

They didn’t rig an election — at least not based on the description in the article. They campaigned for a candidate using underhanded tactics.

Election rigging isn't the right term. It should be election interference.

Re: Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake TikTok accounts

#23

Post by stufffer »

According to Wikipedia, kyivinsider.com was founded with a grant from European Endowment for Democracy which like its American cousin, National Endowment for Democracy, is an NGO explicitly set up by Western intelligence agencies to push pro NATO narratives.

Re: Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake TikTok accounts

#24

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #20
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #9

Well, regardless of what happens in Romania, I guarantee that this will be a factor in the US treatment of TikTok. That site is fairly biased (but the same can be said for almost every news site). It's not really "rigged," per se ; it's more like throwing half a billion dollars worth of campaign contributions into the mix. We certainly saw similar, in the US, but it looks like Romania had zero safeguards.

It's different than campaign contributions. When I see a campaign ad I acknowledge that it's a campaign ad. What's devious about the bot armies is it gives the false appearance that my neighbors hold certain beliefs when they do not.

This is true.

It's more than uncontrolled campaign spending, but these days, political campaigns are doing a lot of astroturfing, as well.

Re: Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake TikTok accounts

#25

Post by ribosometronome »

onionisafruit wrote: post #16

They didn’t rig an election — at least not based on the description in the article. They campaigned for a candidate using underhanded tactics.

Illegal tactics, it sounds like. Elections have rules. Breaking them to give someone an advantage is rigging it, no?

Re: Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake TikTok accounts

#26

Post by unethical_ban »

BSDobelix wrote: post #18

The Ukraine game all over again, i really have to say the CIA/Pentagon is doing an incredible job, and Europe is playing the perfect socket-puppet.... The US knows how to play games, that's for sure.

When one says seemingly counterfactual or less-held beliefs, one should expect to have to provide more evidence for those beliefs.

Re: Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake TikTok accounts

#28

Post by unethical_ban »

janmarsal wrote: post #4

You can vote in romania with tiktok accounts?!

Put more clearly, I think parent comment is critiquing the use of "rigged", which is associated with actual manipulation of election results, with "unfairly influenced" which is what TikTok propaganda lies would be.

Re: Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake TikTok accounts

#29

Post by leonardovida »

Hate to say it, but Trump got the TikTok threat spot on, while Europe was busy writing cookie policies. Fake accounts powered by (early) LLMs just influenced Romania's presidential election, yet Brussels still thinks GDPR-style regulation is the answer to platform manipulation

Re: Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake TikTok accounts

#30

Post by keyle »

liquidpele wrote: post #3

Rigged? Or just convinced enough idiots with propaganda?

Perhaps, instead of fixing platforms, or banning them when we have no control over them, we should work on the idiot thing... Although I imagine it's a lot harder than just banning platforms. Especially when the local governments benefit from keeping people uneducated.
Post reply on HN