Fake politician reaches 1 million TikTok views through algorithm manipulation
Romanian programmer Levi Elekes demonstrated how TikTok's algorithm can be exploited to rapidly amplify false political candidates. Working with journalists, he created a fictional politician named Vasile Ion whose video reached over 1 million views in less than two hours using basic coding techniques.
What happened
Levi Elekes, a Romanian programmer, created a fictional political candidate named Vasile Ion running for the fictional position of prime minister of Romania, and posted a video of an actor portraying the candidate on a new TikTok account.
Using basic code and scripts that exploit TikTok's security vulnerabilities, Elekes generated over 1 million views for the video in less than two hours. The initial organic views numbered only 60 before the script was implemented.
Elekes created approximately 5,000 fake accounts with profiles, photos, and videos appearing as real people, which generated views, comments and traffic on the fictional candidate's video and other accounts in a looping pattern.
Reported impact
The experiment demonstrated that TikTok's algorithm can be manipulated to rapidly amplify false or misleading political content to mass audiences, raising concerns about the platform's vulnerability ahead of elections.
According to Elekes, anyone with basic programming knowledge can exploit TikTok using code and instructions available online to manipulate algorithmic promotion of political figures.
Index analysis
Elekes stated that TikTok has security keys that can be deciphered and forged easily, and that the platform failed to detect or prevent the manipulation demonstrated in the experiment.
The false traffic generated by the fake accounts appeared to the TikTok system as organic traffic despite being artificially created.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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