Meta's Role in Romania's 2024 Presidential Election
By Luiza Vasiliu and Victor Ilie
With Reset Tech and EU DisinfoLab, examined Meta's advertising and its influence on public opinion during Romania's pivotal 2024 presidential vote.
About this research
This original report draws on network analysis, an ad-library audit and an OSINT investigation, with research spanning one country.
- Publication
- Original report · 35 pages
- Research approach
- network analysis, ad-library audit and OSINT investigation
- Geographic focus
- Romania
Publication details prepared by Social Media Transparency from the original source.
Executive summary
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CheckFirst, Reset Tech, EU DisinfoLab, and independent journalists Luiza Vasiliu and Victor Ilie jointly examined political advertising on Meta during Romania's 2024 presidential election, monitoring a coordinated network of Facebook pages linked to the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) and cross-referencing activity with TikTok and Google Ads.
The investigation identified 3,640 political ads from the network, with a combined reach of 148 million and spending between roughly €140,000 and €224,000. The ads were found to repeatedly violate Meta's advertising policies, including transparency requirements and rules against targeting based on protected characteristics, and some candidate-promoting ads reportedly ran during the legally mandated pre-election silence period. Despite public reporting beginning in April 2024, Meta was slow to act on the flagged campaigns.
The authors conclude the case exposes systemic weaknesses in platform ad-transparency enforcement and call for standardized disclosure formats and closer cooperation between platforms and independent watchdogs to safeguard electoral integrity.
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