Ownership and control of social media platforms is a first-order concern for both domestic politics and international conflict. The most important battleground in the Russia-Ukraine war is elections in NATO member states.
And there, Russia is clearly winning. Trump, obviously, but yesterday saw the stunning success of formerly fringe right-wing candidate C?lin Georgescu. In an unimaginably large polling error, CG won 22% of the first-round vote (and thus made it into the runoff) after polling at 5% just months prior.
A prescient report by Bucharest think tank Export Forum released shortly before the election details the importance of TikTok in Romanian politics — the platform has 9 million users in a nation of roughly 16 million adults — and the impossibly sharp explosion of pro-CG content produced and consumed in the month before the election: “As of November 18, C?lin Georgescu had 92.8 million views, most of which were in last 2 months. By November 22 it had increased by 52 million views.”