The EU will investigate TikTok for its role in interference in the Romanian elections

The European Union has opened an investigation into TikTok for the suspicions that it did not do enough to stop fake accounts and people from outside Romania with interests in intervening in the elections that were held last month in the country. The investigation will focus primarily on establishing whether the platform was not successful in preventing malicious actors from manipulating its recommendation system, and whether it properly labeled political content, as required by the Digital Services Law. This has been highlighted by the European Commission in a statement.

The controversy has its origins in a campaign on social networks, specifically on TikTok, which promoted a pro-Russian candidate, C?lin Georgescu, which made him come out practically from nowhere until he achieved victory in the first round of the presidential elections in Romania last month. As a result, the country’s main court declared the results void amid accusations of foreign intervention and ordered the vote to be repeated.

Romanian security agencies, which blame Russia for what they called a hybrid attack, have accused TikTok of failing to label the candidate’s videos as electoral content. Following protests over Georgescu’s initial victory, the commission asked TikTok for information on how the platform “analyzed and mitigated the risk of automated or false exploitation of its service«, in response to the Romanian discoveries.

According to Bloomberg, in the days following the court’s decision to annul the results of the first round of the elections, the police searched the home of some Georgescu supporters, an operation in which they arrested a businessman with $7 million in cryptocurrency. in his power. They also neutralized a group of armed mercenaries and apparently prevented them from causing unrest in Bucharest, while the media reviewed reports that they were related to the candidate.

According to a TikTok representative, the company has provided the European Commission with detailed information about the efforts made to address issues related to the elections. Furthermore, he has assured that he will continue working with both the EU and local authorities. In the statement they have issued in this regard, they assure that they have updated their Election Center in the TikTok app to link to the website of the Romanian Electoral Commission, and that they have discovered and put an end to various influence networks related to the elections.

Among them there are a network of more than 4,200 accounts operated from Türkiye and targeting people in Romania with the aim of promoting the nationalist alliance of the Union Party of Romanians and Georgescu, which was presenting itself as independent in the elections.