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

kyivinsider.com

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

#41

Post by threeseed »

spoiler wrote: post #21
bhhaskin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 of…

It's undeniably state actors. We know because every so often Meta will release reports that show just how many bot accounts you need to really move the needle:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/30/meta-...

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

#43

Post by outlace »

I would argue that the main benefit of democracy is not electing "the right people" by a free and fair election, but by having a mechanism to remove bad leaders without violence. So a propaganda machine influencing elections is not ideal, but if it results in bad leaders, then that will become obvious to people at some point and they will vote them out. Elections will always have some random factors. Not everyone is going to vote. There will be fads. So election isn't the important part, UN-election is.

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

#45

Post by amatecha »

The linked article is a bit hyperbolic but the news covered pretty widely. "Rigged" might not be the right term, but pretty coordinated interference seems to have occurred.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-concerned-about-pote...

https://archive.is/0MJ6X

https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-removed-3-influence-c...

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

#46

Post by makeitdouble »

ribosometronome wrote: post #25
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?

Rigging is a direct action on the election itself. Like removing ballots that were valid, submitting and accepting ballots of ineligible voters or straight fake them, blocking groups of people from voting (e g. blocking roads to voting polls), straight changing the numbers etc.

I see a distinction because all of the above are still happening in many countries, and there is a degree of illegality that is way above simple conning.

There's the other situations where people feel under threat of direct violence if they vote the wrong way. Perhaps there would be a different term for that altogether.

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

#47

Post by threeseed »

leonardovida wrote: post #29

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

EU GPDR was released before TikTok even existed.

And EU has been continually critical of TikTok for many years but obviously would prefer that it actually meets its DSA obligations before trying to shut it down.

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

#48

Post by amatecha »

bamboozled wrote: post #40
DevKoala wrote: post #34

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.

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

Sort of. They are perfectly happy for you to use the social media which is subject to the local nation's laws/regulations, and which they have potentially-unlimited degree of influence over.

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

#49

Post by spacephysics »

ratedgene wrote: post #14

TikTok is rife with russian sock puppet accounts run by trolls that try and persuade people. Look at any of the political posts and then check out the accounts posting pro-red and anti-blue sentiments. There is a clear pattern to their accounts.

We have to be careful, it cuts the other way too.

Part of the propaganda is also showing extreme left content AND extreme right. The goal is not pushing left or right, the goal is divisiveness.

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

#50

Post by bamboozled »

amatecha wrote: post #48
bamboozled wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Social media is a backdoor into our societies which is why authoritarian countries ban it. Sort of. They are perfectly happy for you to use the social media which is subject to the local nation's laws/regulations, and which they have potentially-unlimited degree of influence over.

Which isn't the same thing as the USA, we just let millions of bots onto our platforms to spread any stories those bots like.
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