Romania finds coordinated election interference

The European Union’s executive body on Thursday ordered social media platform TikTok to freeze and preserve data related to ongoing elections in Romania. The Romanian Supreme Council of National Defense the day before declassified security reports that found evidence that Russia helped promote presidential candidate Calin Georgescu. Outgoing President Klaus Iohannis ordered the release of the documents. They allege that thousands of social media accounts on multiple platforms generated support for Georgescu ahead of his win in the first round of voting last month.  Georgescu told the Associated Press Wednesday that he is not a pro-Russia candidate. The right-wing candidate is scheduled to face off against centrist Elena Lasconi in a runoff election on Sunday.

What else did the reports find? The declassified documents claim about 25,000 TikTok accounts became very active and promoted Georgescu two weeks before the election. Reportedly, about 800 of those had low activity until mid-November. Russia has denied involvement in the election and TikTok said it is cooperating with the European Commission. The platform earlier this week said it had uncovered several Romanian influence networks and deleted suspicious accounts. 

Dig deeper: Read Josh Schumacher’s report about how Russia created fraudulent voting videos in the United States this year.