TikTok takes down Bulgaria network promoting party of sanctioned oligarch Peevski

TikTok has removed 34 accounts with more than 66,000 followers that it says were artificially amplifying political narratives in support of the DPS-New Beginning (DPS-NN) party ahead of Bulgaria’s parliamentary elections on 19 April, in what is so far the only publicly disclosed enforcement action against social media manipulation during the current campaign. DPS is led by Delyan Peevski – an oligarch and powerbroker sanctioned for corruption by the U.S. and the UK.

Peevski’s name is frequently associated with reports of vote-buying and political brikmanship.

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The move follows a recent report by the Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI), produced with analytics company Sensika, which warned that Bulgaria’s digital information environment was already being “manipulated at scale” weeks before election day.

In an update issued by TikTok’s Global Elections Integrity Hub on 8 April, the platform said it had disrupted “a network targeting political discourse in Bulgaria” that was assessed to be operating from Bulgaria and aimed at a Bulgarian audience. Apparently there is no suspicion of foreign interference.

“The network… included 34 accounts with 66,763 followers,” TikTok said.

“The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts in order to artificially amplify narratives in support of the DPS-NN political party, within the context of the April 2026 Bulgarian parliamentary elections. The network was found to coordinate across multiple online platforms.”

The platform said the takedown formed part of broader election-integrity measures. Between 1 January and 8 March alone, TikTok removed 3,790 videos in Bulgaria for violating policies on civic and election integrity, misinformation, manipulated media and AI-generated content, adding that more than 99.6% of the material had been removed before users reported it.

TikTok also said it had removed five accounts impersonating Bulgarian election candidates and elected officials.

BFMI’s first election manipulation tracker, covering the period up to 17 March, concluded that Bulgaria’s information space was already facing sophisticated interference that was difficult to distinguish from authentic public sentiment.

Its central finding was stark: “Bulgaria’s information environment is already being manipulated at scale, that the manipulation is sophisticated enough to be difficult to distinguish from genuine public sentiment, and that neither the platforms carrying it nor the authorities responsible for regulating it have yet responded in any meaningful way.”

The report by the Brussels-based BMFI and the form Sensika identified three active tactics shaping the online environment: boosting content through purchased pages, coordinated inauthentic cross-platform activity, and hijacking opponents’ hashtags.

Among its most pointed conclusions was that “the network of accounts operating on behalf of DPS – New Beginning merits particular scrutiny given the volume, uniformity, and evident coordination of their output.”

For now, TikTok’s intervention remains the only publicly confirmed platform response in Bulgaria’s current election cycle.

Two weeks ago, the Bulgarian government announced it had activated the European Union’s Digital Services Act rapid response system, seeking support to counter disinformation risks ahead of the vote. Similar requests for EU assistance have already been made by authorities in Moldova, Romania and Hungary. It also asked investigative journalist Christo Grozev to give a hand to support his native country’s efforts to counter disinformation and hybrid threats ahead of the country’s snap parliamentary elections.

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BFMI argues that the repeated activation of this mechanism across four consecutive election cycles in the region raises deeper concerns.

“The routine use of this mechanism across four consecutive electoral cycles in the region suggests one of two things: either the circumstances are structural rather than exceptional, or the mechanism itself is not functioning effectively enough to prevent their recurrence,” the organisation said.

The challenge, however, is institutional as much as technological.

The EU’s rapid response mechanism is primarily designed to coordinate between authorities and platforms rather than directly enforce action. In Bulgaria, the absence of a formally designated Digital Services Coordinator has raised questions over whether the country can respond quickly enough to coordinated disinformation or covert campaign financing online.

The Central Election Commission has not yet opened an investigation into the purchase and repurposing of social media pages for electoral purposes, despite growing concerns that such tactics may enable anonymous campaign financing.

The issue first gained wider public attention after Bulgarian media documented TikTok accounts styled as news pages spreading content favourable to former President Rumen Radev and his political formation. Some of the accounts appeared formally separate but functionally linked, republishing one another’s videos to maximise reach. The material often consisted either of static images with apparently AI-generated voiceovers or recycled clips from old presidential appearances presented as current content.

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A subsequent BFMI-Sensika report found that, despite having no official TikTok account, Radev had accumulated 90 million views on the platform through networks whose “behaviour is difficult to explain through organic activity alone”.

Radev sharply criticised the allegations, accusing the PP opposition of attempting to delegitimise the election by drawing parallels with what he called the “Romanian model”. Speaking in an interview with journalist Martin Karbovski and later repeating the claim before supporters in Samokov, Radev argued that the real aim was to prolong the mandate of the caretaker government led by Andrey Gyurov, which he described as “effectively illegitimate”. By invoking the Romanian precedent, Radev was referring to the case of far-right presidential candidate Călin Georgescu, after Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the 2024 presidential election following security service findings that his surprise victory had been influenced by external TikTok manipulation.

BFMI warns that TikTok’s action, while significant, addresses only part of the problem.

“While TikTok took action and proactively engaged with civil society, Meta has yet to respond,” the organisation said, noting that the most extensive documented inauthentic networks remain active across Facebook’s infrastructure.

It added that removing accounts from one platform does little to reduce the overall operational capacity of such influence networks, which can migrate quickly while preserving their core infrastructure elsewhere.

The Bulgaria case is increasingly being watched as a test of whether European institutions and major platforms can move fast enough to protect democratic credibility in a persistently high-risk information environment.

Caption: A TikTok logo is seen in front of the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium, 06 February 2026. EU authorities continue to scrutinize TikTok under digital regulation rules concerning transparency, access to platform data, content moderation, advertising practices, and the platform’s impact on public debate and elections. EPA/OLIVIER HOSLET