The Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) cited unnamed researchers in its report and concluded that pro-Russian bots influenced the Croatian presidential election. This claim was denied by TikTok to N1. The allegations were also refuted by Platform X (formerly Twitter), and now Meta has responded to N1.

Meta: No evidence of inauthentic behaviour or foreign origin

“We have not seen evidence of inauthentic or foreign origin behaviour from the accounts indicated in the report. It is not against our rules to promote or support political parties on our apps. While each election has its own challenges, our approach to elections is global and has been built up via involvement in over 200 elections globally.

Since 2016, we’ve invested more than $20 billion into safety and security and quadrupled the size of our global team working in this area. This includes content reviewers who review content across Facebook, Instagram and Threads in more than 80 languages – including Croatian.

Over the last eight years, we’ve rolled out industry-leading transparency tools for ads about social issues, elections or politics, developed comprehensive policies to prevent election interference and voter fraud; more recently and we have committed to taking a responsible approach to new technologies like GenAI.

We have also been drawing on all of these resources in the runup to the Croatian election and have teams solely dedicated to planning for and responding to the Croatian elections, and in preparation for the elections we have also been in regular contact with government authorities in Croatia, including HAKOM, the State Electoral Commission and relevant civil society organisations,” Meta wrote in their answer.

CIR reported that pro-Russian networks operated in two waves

The report analysed the behaviour of user accounts on social media platforms such as X, Facebook, Reddit, TikTok and others over the past month.

The key terms analysed were “Zoran Milanovic” and “Dragan Primorac”,” with the aim of uncovering a network of pro-Russian, anti-EU and anti-NATO bots.

It was reported that the pro-Russian networks operated in two waves – after Milanovic’s victory in the first round and after his statements against Croatia’s possible involvement in the war in Ukraine. The report also showed that Milanovic was portrayed more favourably than Dragan Primorac.