Covert Facebook Network Found Targeting Romanian Voters

Meta Platforms Inc. allowed a network of Facebook pages to post more than 3,600 political ads attacking Romania’s pro-EU presidential candidate Elena Lasconi and promoting far-right figures, including Calin Georgescu, in the run-up to the country’s elections, a report showed.

The campaign was run across 24 seemingly separate Facebook pages for entities whose websites share hosting, advertising and email infrastructure, indicating an organized effort to influence the election, according to a report by the digital threat research groups Reset Tech and Check First. It’s not clear who was behind the network, which boosted political posts on Facebook and Instagram with advertising spending of as much as €224,083 ($237,200), according to the report.