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Comment by petsfed | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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