“A platform with significant influence on elections: the European Commission is asked to open an official investigation into TikTokRomanian CNA is asking the European Commission to investigate the activities of TikTok due to suspicions of manipulation in the presidential election. The platform is accused of promoting the pro-Russian candidate Kelin Georgescu through fake accounts.”, — write on: unn.ua
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Celin Georgescu’s victory in the first round of the Romanian elections caused a lot of concern because of how the TikTok platform managed to “bring an unknown candidate out of obscurity”.
As the vice-president of the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting (CNA) Valentyn Alexandru Dzhukan pointed out, the actions of the Chinese social network caused “suspicions of manipulation of public opinion due to improper use of the platform.”
In one of his posts on Facebook, Valentin Alexandru Djucan indicated that independent candidate Celin Georgescu has a significant increase in preferences from 2% to 22%. The vice president of CNA also claims that this can be explained by a campaign on TikTok, which is based on “the coordination of accounts that actively promoted pre-election content, without proper labeling” and “artificial amplification of messages with the help of algorithms, using special hashtags such as #verticalbalance, which has many views”.
Valentin Dzhukan believes that in this way the TikTok platform is not being used properly to manipulate the public.
So CNA turned to the European Commission, Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technologies (DG CONNECT), and the legal basis is Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 on digital services (DIGITAL SERVICE ACT – DSA).
Valentyn Djukan adds that the CNA observed non-compliance with obligations regarding the assessment of systemic risks (provisions of Article 34 of the DSA). He said that while TikTok says it does not allow paid political ads, the analysis shows that the platform did allow political messages to be indirectly linked through influencers without appropriate tags.
In addition, the vice president of CNA notes that “TikTok’s actions had a significant impact on the 2024 presidential election in Romania, the first round, contributing to: creating an unfair advantage for a single candidate; manipulating public opinion through unlabeled content; exploiting young users, who are the majority TikTok audience.”
The EU is now demanding that TikTok’s chief executive appear before the European Parliament to answer questions about the platform’s role in Romania’s presidential election. As there is suspicion of secret activity on the platform of thousands of fake accounts before the vote.
“We are calling on the CEO of TikTok to come and speak in this house and make sure that his platform does not violate the DSA,” Valerie Hyer, head of the liberal group Renew Europe, told a press conference, referring to the Digital Services Act, a European set of rules for online content
She made this statement two days after the victory of the pro-Russian candidate. It is worth noting that Celin Georgescu did not have any party support, and the results of polls showed that he is not popular. However, researchers have now focused on a major TikTok campaign he led in the days leading up to the election.
The involvement of Russia or other state structures is currently not confirmed by any evidence
While paid political advertising is prohibited under TikTok’s terms and conditions, this time the rule was “largely ineffective,” said Kate Kiley, coordinator of the Bulgarian-Romanian Digital Media Observatory.
He also added that the platform had a “significant influence” on the election.
We remind you
The operations of Chinese-owned Tik-Tok raise national security concerns, FBI Director Chris Wray said, noting the risk that the Chinese government could use the video-sharing app as a means of influencing users or controlling devices.