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

kyivinsider.com

31–40 of 96 posts

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

#32
I think there is a reckoning coming for TikTok and X in the EU.

There is widespread criticism coming from the left and the right about how elections are being manipulated either intentionally or through indifference.

Hiding behind the "free speech at all costs" banner may be politically popular in the US but it isn't the same in most other countries.

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

#33
post #5
post #2

Another article https://www.rferl.org/a/romania-russia-election-interference...

Wow, this disclaimer on the side of the page was a bit surprising: "If you are in Russia or the Russia-controlled parts of Ukraine and hold a Russian passport or are a stateless person residing permanently in Russia or the Russia-controlled parts of Ukraine, please note that you could face fines or imprisonment for sharing, liking, commenting on, or saving our content, or for contacting us."

welcome to the free world.

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

#36

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.

While that statement has a grain of truth (NED having being created as a result of Reagan's NSDD-77 directive) I would rather eat democratic / neoliberal propaganda slop rather than what Russia / China (and their allies) are pushing. This comment kind of reeks of a particular kind of odour that is not quite whataboutism but is very similar to FSB demoralization propaganda. Given your account's relatively young age and other comments I somewhat feel you might have an ulterior motive?

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

#37

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?

Meta is not really an issue today because they have been heavily down-ranking political content and external links across their platforms.

X is just the wild west. The algorithm actually treats blue-checks as legitimate and non blue-checks as being spam. And so it's been easy for scammers to get a foothold simply by getting blue-checks using stolen credit cards. Also its ad platform is basically unmonitored so there are many scams and pyramid schemes freely advertising.

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

#38
From what I've come to understand:

- Romania's voting system is in 2 rounds, and he won the first. The second is in ~2 days.

- Most people never heard of him up until 2 weeks before the first round, when an aggressive Tiktok campaign started. Polymarket.com didn't include him in their system. Many were taken by surprise.

- Many videos promoting him on Tiktok weren't marked as being propaganda, and thus allowed to go viral.

- He claims 0 campaign spending and that it's thanks to volunteers.

- Many who voted for him aren't into politics, and liked the way he presented himself.

- His content is a mix of populist, nationalist, anti-establishment, and mostly contain patriotic and emotional narratives to connect to viewers.

- Larger cities voted for the pro-western candidate

- He's made some controversial statements, such as the moon landing being fake, covid denying (am not sure to what extent), 5G conspiracy, denying climate change (those being just a few)

Everyone's talking about him. I'm curious how it will turn out and to see how the quote "there's no such thing as bad publicity" fares in this case.

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

#39

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.

According to Wikipedia, kyivinsider.com ...

Funny, the string "kyivinsider.com" does not appear in Wikipedia at all.

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

#40

Is “propaganda” rigging? As of late, whenever someone doesn’t like the result of an election “rigging” is an adequate term.

Go to China and try use Instagram :)

They know what they're doing by using your love of free speech against you to spread lies.

Social media is a backdoor into our societies which is why authoritarian countries ban it.

Youtube is banned in Russia, all western social media is banned in China, because they know how it can be weaponized against them...because they weaponize it.

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