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Comment by fp64 | Hacker News Reader

> The million euros for the TikTok & social media storm that got him elected

I just read that it was approximately 360000 Euros paid to TikTok influencers, not millions. Doesn’t change the fact that somebody paid them, yes, but apparently not Millions. Or my source was wrong, am I missing something?

EDIT Thanks for downvoting - I did not want to defend anything, I just read in an article about the court ruling that it was this number that appeared quite low to me, that’s all, I was wondering.

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If you can buy presidency with 360k euros or even 1M euros on TinTok likes it reflects how bad the other candidates must be.

I think this is the wrong way to think about it.

I have no idea how much it costs to run a Russian or Chinese disinformation group, but let's suppose its 360k Euros. That's like the annual salary of 20 higher-income Romanians. If this was just a one-month campaign, that's like 240 TikTok users making more than double the median income in Romania. If they just worked full-time to push stuff out, maybe using a bunch of different accounts, yeah, that's conceivably enough to swamp Romanian TikTok. Keep in mind, there's only about 19 million people living in Romania. How many committed TikTokers are necessary to sway a Senate election in California?

Here is some analysis of the court documents:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42348942

"They document a social media campaign supporting Călin Georgescu that involved around 25,000 TikTok accounts coordinated through a Telegram channel, paid influencers, and coordinated messaging. "

or a single Romanian expat who “made it” in Silicon Valley (I think this would be also illegal though)

you're an expat only if you are an English native speaker, else you are an immigrant. Hence, no such thing as Romanian expat.

Is this a jab at (supposed) American racism/xenophobia? Because by definition I'm pretty sure being a native speaker is not a requirement for being an expat

>An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person who resides outside their country of citizenship

"Expat" is mostly an English (British) thing, much less US. I'd have called it by name, e.g. US exceptionalism/centrism, if that was the case. ("Expat" use rose during the British empire)

In the hypothetical case of a Romanian working in the US, "immigrant" would be a correct term (unless they obtain the green card and become a citizen)

Expat and immigrant are effectively the same thing under most jurisdictions... yet expat carries less stigma and people would prefer to call themselves that way.

or perhaps that sum is incorrect, or perhaps it was state actors with power to force algorithm changes on TikTok or to tiktok via other means without payment.

external state actors interfering with elections is a perfect reason to invalidate.

That’s why I was asking. I’ve got this number from a German article on the court ruling. I do not know if this is in fact the number specified in the ruling, or whether this was a “leak”, or “misinformation”. So I was hoping somebody could elaborate a bit more as I don’t speak Romanian and haven’t really followed the whole thing, and the OP I replied to mentioned “millions”

Edit: https://archive.fo/tAcG1 (nzz.ch paywalled) is the original source, I would argue NZZ is very trustworthy. They quote the intelligence report. You would need to translate to English. Maybe you have a different source that puts this all in question, which I would appreciate

Edit2: Here’s ABC as I just ran across it, mentioning the same number https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/romanias-top-...

here's a first part of some good investigative journalism on this: https://snoop.ro/strategia-cu-bani-rusesti-cum-au-ajuns-recl...

the issue with downvoiting is a rather blatant attempt of playing a victim: "i just read... xxx moeny". It can be any number, mostly undisclosed.

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