(Bloomberg) -- Meta Platforms Inc. allowed a network of Facebook pages to post more than 3,600 political ads attacking Romania’s pro-EU presidential candidate Elena Lasconi and promoting far-right figures, including Calin Georgescu, in the run-up to the country’s elections, a report showed.
The campaign was run across 24 seemingly separate Facebook pages for entities whose websites share hosting, advertising and email infrastructure, indicating an organized effort to influence the election, according to a report by the digital threat research groups Reset Tech and Check First. It’s not clear who was behind the network, which boosted political posts on Facebook and Instagram with advertising spending of as much as €224,083 ($237,200), according to the report.
The shock victory of the pro-Russia, TikTok-loving Georgescu in Romania’s now-abandoned Nov. 24 presidential election has put the role of social media companies under intense scrutiny. Romanian authorities have focused on ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, accusing the platform of providing “massive exposure and preferential treatment” to the previously little-known nationalist candidate. But the report by Reset Tech and Check First indicates a wider effort to influence the outcome of the election.
Romania’s top court on Dec. 6 annulled last month’s first-round vote over allegations of meddling by Russia, the first such ruling in the nation’s history. It followed the release of declassified documents by the country’s intelligence service showing how Georgescu’s TikTok-fueled campaign may have been coordinated by foreign “state actors.” One document said that Romania was a target for “aggressive Russian hybrid attacks.” Moscow has denied any interference.
“While TikTok’s role in amplifying disinformation during the Romanian election campaign has been in the spotlight, new evidence shows that Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram were leveraged to spread aggressive political messaging, unverified claims, and polarizing narratives,” wrote the authors of the report.
Meta declined to comment on the contents of the report but pointed to comments made by Nick Clegg, president of global affairs, last week. “We are not seeing any evidence of major incidents on our platforms in Romania,” he told journalists, adding that the company had been in “almost daily” contact with Romanian authorities, Euronews reported.
The ads described in the report depict Georgescu, who has declared no campaign funding to authorities, as a “president patriot” defending the nation of about 19 million people against the political establishment. Save Romania Union leader Lasconi was characterized as a “devil” and a puppet for the West, while incumbent Klaus Iohannis was described as a “dictator” for his support of Lasconi. Some of the ads also expressed backing for George Simion, leader of the nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians party.
Researchers identified the campaign using Meta’s Ad Library, a transparency initiative that provides details about advertisers using the company’s social media platforms. The ads had been viewed as many as 179 million times since August, the researchers calculated, using numbers disclosed in the Ad Library.
The registered advertisers’ profiles had Facebook pages with administrators located mostly in Romania, and portrayed themselves as news or entertainment sites. But the sites lacked legal or editorial information, and many were linked by shared IP addresses, identical web design, and common email and ad-tech configurations, indicating a centralized management structure, according to the report.
The report echoes earlier findings by Romanian media outlet Context, which reported that the Alliance for the Union of Romanians had developed a network of inauthentic Facebook pages, masquerading as news portals, to amplify propaganda and conspiracy theories.
Social media is a popular vector for political advertising and disinformation as it allows for precise targeting of messaging. Platforms in recent years have taken steps to crack down on covert election interference efforts, and have introduced stricter controls around political ad campaigns.
Meta said it has taken down about 20 covert influence operations around the world this year, and that Russia is the number one source of such activity, according to a blog post last week by Clegg.
It said that most of the operations struggled to build authentic audiences, with some using fake “likes” and followers to appear more popular then they were.
On Monday, Romania’s pro-European parties started talks on forming a new cabinet after the cancelled vote.
“The danger hasn’t passed and we expect Russia to continue to try to influence the elections in Romania and in other European countries,” Siegfried Muresan, interim deputy leader of Romania’s Liberal party, told Bloomberg News.
(Updates with comment from Muresan. An earlier version corrected numbers revised by researchers after publication)
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