Bloomberg Exposes Secret Facebook Network Targeting Romanian Voters

A network of Facebook pages posted over 4,100 political ads attacking Romania’s pro-EU presidential candidate Elena Lasconi and promoting far-right figures, including Călin Georgescu, in the run-up to the country’s elections, a report cited by Bloomberg.

The campaign ran on 25 apparently separate Facebook pages for entities whose websites shared hosting, advertising and email infrastructure, indicating an organized effort to influence the election, according to a report by digital threat research groups Reset Tech and Check First. It is not clear who was behind the network, which boosted political posts on Facebook and Instagram with up to 264,909 euros in ad spending, according to the report.

The shock victory of pro-Russian Georgescu in the now-announced Nov. 24 presidential election has brought the role of social media companies under intense scrutiny, Bloomberg notes. Romanian authorities have focused on ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok app, accusing the platform of providing “massive exposure and preferential treatment” to the previously little-known extremist candidate. But the Reset Tech and Check First report points to a broader effort to influence the election outcome.

“While TikTok’s role in amplifying disinformation during the Romanian election campaign has been in the spotlight, new evidence shows that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms were used to spread aggressive political messages, unverified claims and polarizing narratives,” the report’s authors wrote.

Meta declined to comment on the content of the report, but highlighted comments made by Nick Clegg, its president of global business, last week. “We see no evidence of major incidents on our platforms in Romania,” he told reporters, adding that the company was in “almost daily” contact with Romanian authorities, according to Euronews.

Călin Georgescu, presented as a “patriotic president”

The ads described in the report portray Georgescu, who has not declared any campaign funding to the authorities, as a “patriotic president” defending the nation from the political regime.

The leader of the Save Romania Union, Elena Lasconi, was characterized as a “devil” and a puppet for the West, while current President Klaus Iohannis was described as a “dictator” for his support for Lasconi.

Some of the ads also expressed support for George Simion, the leader of the nationalist party Alliance for the Romanian Union. 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 have been viewed about 199 million times since August, the researchers calculated. The profiles of the registered advertisers had Facebook pages with administrators located mostly in Romania and presented 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 technology configurations, indicating a centralized management structure, the report said.

Meta has recently said it had taken down about 20 undercover influence operations around the world this year and that Russia was the number one source of such activity.

The Kremlin propaganda lashed out for Georgescu’s support

Under the title “KOMANDA KREMLIN: The Russian Machine Behind Călin Georgescu”, publicrecord.ro presents an investigation showing how dozens of coordinated websites from Russia and Telegram channels supported Călin Georgescu’s candidacy in the presidential elections.

“To support Călin Georgescu, presented as a patriot and sovereignist, multiple Telegram accounts were used. The entire Telegram channel was used to coordinate Călin Georgescu’s supporters, for each county and for the diaspora.” “Using Telegram channels, coordinated websites and pro-Kremlin messages, this network creates “echo chambers” where disinformation is amplified,” explains publicrecord.ro.

Pravda network

One of the sites supporting Georgescu is the Romanian-language version of Pravda, which recently spread the message that the elections were canceled by the CCR because Georgescu wanted to stop the war in Ukraine.

Pravda in Romanian is part of a larger group coordinated to spread pro-Russian propaganda in Europe and other regions. The Pravda variants in German, French, English, Spanish and Polish have platforms with identical technical characteristics, and all IPs lead to Russia, believes the state agency Viginium in France, which operates under the General Secretariat for Defense and National Security and discovered the threats earlier this year, writes publicrecord.ro.

Called “Portal Kombat,” the network takes content from Russian state-controlled media, from pro-Russian channels on Telegram and, rarely, from legitimate sources. It publishes machine-translated articles to influence public discourse. Thus, it is not surprising that, in addition to Romania, articles about Călin Georgescu were also found on Pravda websites in Germany, France, Spain, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland, the Republic of Moldova, Hungary, Denmark, Slovakia and Greece.

The website publicrecord.ro states: “According to Whois, all Pravda websites propagating Georgescu’s messages were registered by a natural person with a phone number in Russia. However, the same number is associated with Reg.ru, a Moscow-based registrar company that describes itself on Linkedin as the largest accredited company in Russia. The same phone number has been reported for scams, is connected to porn sites and cryptocurrency scams.”

Telegram Network

The Telegram network is made up of several groups. “Group N3”, for example, has 342,000 followers, “Țarigrad TV” has 316,00, and “Насправдi” another 42,000. Gagauznews adds another 8,000 followers, KP.MD has 42,000, and “Triunghiul bessarabean” 1,600.

In all groups, Georgescu is presented as an authentic political figure, dedicated to the Romanian people and traditional values, opposed to a political system subordinated to external influences and hidden interests. The threads get complicated and go all the way to the Republic of Moldova. Many of these Telegram channels take over messages from the online TV channel moldova-24.online, which often has guest journalists who were previously associated with TV stations run by Ilan Șor.

Ilan Shor is a controversial Moldovan politician, oligarch, and leader of the former Shor Party, which was declared unconstitutional. He is known for his involvement in corruption cases, including the theft of a billion from the Moldovan banking system. Shor has fled the country and lives in Russia, but continues to be active on social media, promoting anti-European and pro-Kremlin rhetoric.

In the Republic of Moldova, there was, until 2022, a website with a similar name to the Telegram group: Gagauznews.md. However, just two days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on February 26, 2022, the website was blocked by the Security and Intelligence Service (SIS) for spreading information that incited hatred and supported war. Although the original website remains inaccessible, the same pro-Kremlin propaganda content is now published on a clone, Gagauznews.com.

On the channel Triunghiul Basarabean, where Călin Georgescu is praised and presented as a sovereignist and supporter of traditional values, an interview with Aleksandr Dugin, called Putin’s ideologue, taken from Radio Sputnik, was recently shown, publicrecord.ro states.

Dugin stated, among other things, that it would be easier for Russia to collaborate with such a president. In fact, Călin Georgescu admitted, in a Realitatea TV show, before the annulment of the elections, that he had met with Dugin. “Democracy is dead“, is one of the slogans often found on these groups.

The same slogans also appear on the channel (not available in Romania) of Marina Tauber. Tauber is a deputy from the Republic of Moldova, targeted by a criminal investigation regarding accusations of illegal financing of the Party of Ilan Șor, a formation that has since been declared unconstitutional.