TikTok’s Romanian reckoning

 

TikTok’s Romanian reckoning

Regulators suspect foul play in how far-right firebrand Călin Georgescu used the Chinese-owned app to sway voters.

Allegations have been swirling that Călin Georgescu’s rise wasn’t just boosted by catchy, viral content.  |

 

November 29, 2024 4:22 am CET

By Pieter Haeck, Carmen Paun, Laurens Cerulus and Seb Starcevic

https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-romania-reckoning-calin-georgescu-election-bytedance-china-russia/

 

The shock victory of an ultranationalist, pro-Russian candidate in the first round of Romania's presidential election is turning into a defining test of accountability for TikTok.

 

For years, the Chinese-owned social media app has brushed off security concerns in the United States and Europe that it could be used for mass manipulation, but it now faces an intense regulatory storm in Bucharest over whether it played a role in skewing the democratic process in an EU country of 19 million people.

 

Media regulators and election observers are zeroing in on how Călin Georgescu — an unknown, far-right NATO-skeptic fan of Russian President Vladimir Putin — was suddenly catapulted from obscurity, in what some politicians and experts suspect is a covert operation conducted through thousands of fake accounts.

 

For TikTok — owned by ByteDance, a company headquartered in Russia's Communist ally China — it is a moment of reckoning. The backlash in Romania is reminiscent of what Facebook faced in the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum vote and the revelations that big data firm Cambridge Analytica had helped the leave campaign by gaming social media and influencing users in opaque, nefarious ways.

 

The catchy TikTok clips that powered Georgescu's unexpected surge were accompanied by dramatic music and subtitles. He was shown barely breaking a sweat on the running track, flipping opponents in judo — à la Putin — and riding a white horse in a traditional Romanian shirt.

 

The authorities in Bucharest have flagged “various irregularities” over TikTok's general handling of the election, opacity over who paid for Georgescu’s online campaign, and frustration with TikTok over the app’s slow responses to authorities’ requests.

 

Romania's Supreme Council of Defense found cyberattacks had attempted to swing the election, and strongly suggested that Russia could have played a role.

 

Specifically, the council said in a statement that TikTok had failed to mark one unnamed candidate — presumed to be Georgescu — as an electoral candidate, meaning his videos weren’t categorized under an election code, as required by Romanian law. This increased his visibility significantly, the council said, and had an impact on the final result in contravention of the rules.

 

The defense council is asking that law enforcement authorities investigate TikTok further over violations of Romanian electoral law. Romania's top court is also asking for an election recount.

 

TikTok denies that Georgescu was treated differently. "It is categorically false to claim his account was treated differently to any other candidate," spokesperson Paolo Ganino said, adding the far-right winner was treated "in the same way as every other candidate on TikTok, and subject to exactly the same rules and restrictions."

 

The company earlier denied it saw anything resembling foreign interference or misuse of its platform, with Ganino calling reports of potential election interference "highly speculative" and "inaccurate and misleading."

 

Other observers have suggested that Georgescu simply followed the hard right’s conventional playbook that in the past year has seen populists beat governing centrists in countries from France to Austria and the United States, in part by sidestepping mainstream media and targeting voters with direct messaging on social media and other platforms.

 

Test case for Brussels

Taking the battle onto the European stage, the Romanian authorities are calling in European Union social media regulators for backup — and the case is now turning into a test of Brussels’ new regulatory powers over social media.

 

In 2022, the 27-country bloc passed the Digital Services Act (DSA), a powerful legal framework requiring online platforms to fight “systemic risks,” including disinformation and election interference.

 

The largest such platforms, like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, fall under the oversight of the European Commission. The EU executive has the power to fine non-compliant firms up to 6 percent of their global turnover — and even block an app across Europe.

 

Romanian authorities have shared their findings with Brussels about TikTok’s measures during the election, they said this week. The European Commission will now meet TikTok and other social media platforms ahead of the second round of the presidential election on Dec. 8, it told POLITICO.

 

“If the Commission suspects a breach on the basis of the evidence at our disposal, it can open proceedings to look into TikTok’s compliance with the DSA obligations,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier said.

 

At the same time, “the Commission does not interfere in national elections and seeks to ensure within its competences a level playing field for all candidates,” Regnier stressed.

 

Brussels doesn’t want to be blamed for meddling in a national vote either.

 

Georgescu goes viral

For Romanian politicians, TikTok was too large to ignore when running their 2024 presidential campaign. The app has a whopping 8 million users in the country.

 

This is significant because online media are a bigger source of news than TV or print. Most Romanians have generally soured on news coverage: Only 27 percent trust the news, down from 42 percent in 2021, according to the Reuters Institute.

 

Political parties “have tried to leverage the fact that a lot of internet users are no longer reading the traditional media,” said Bogdan Manolea, executive director of the Association of Technology and Internet, a Romania-based NGO.

 

Georgescu harnessed that force best. He was “effective” in using TikTok “to convey simplistic nationalistic messages that resonated with voters in terms of dissatisfaction with mainstream political groups,” said Keith Kiely, coordinator for the Bulgarian Romanian Observatory of Digital Media.

 

On TikTok he touched on that sense of disillusionment, especially among young people.

 

All four main candidates had significant followings on TikTok, but Georgescu’s final sprint sounded alarm bells. In the final two months, especially, he surged in popularity, landing him 120 million views, the EU-funded European Digital Media Observatory said this week.

 

Authorities, observers and TikTok itself are now scouring the data to determine whether that surge was legitimate.

 

“How did he manage to use this algorithm of TikTok in order to rise so high in the trending topics?” asked Elena Calistru, founder of Funky Citizens, an NGO that works on disinformation and teamed up with TikTok for a media literacy campaign before the elections.

 

Bots and influencers

Allegations have been swirling that Georgescu’s rise wasn’t just boosted by catchy, viral content.

 

Researchers and NGOs have pointed to two questionable tactics that Georgescu could have relied on for his account to be picked up by TikTok’s algorithm: Either fake accounts were deployed in a coordinated campaign to push his account, or influencers were paid to directly promote his account.

 

Disinformation expert Felix Kartte, who works at Stiftung Mercator and previously worked at the European External Action Service disinformation unit, said 5,000 “seemingly coordinated accounts” had been spotted, noting they were “claiming to be affiliated with Georgescu and looking kind of fishy.”

 

Manolea added: “There’s a wave of thousands of fake accounts that are just being used … with similar names to the candidate names … that are just being used to put out fake publicity.”

 

TikTok has fiercely rejected these claims.

 

“To date, we have found no evidence of a Covert Influence Operation on our platform within the last several weeks for the ongoing presidential election in Romania, nor evidence of foreign influence,” the platform said in a letter, which was addressed to Romanian authorities and seen by POLITICO.

 

TikTok added it had “removed over 150 impersonation accounts linked to” Georgescu and more than 650 accounts linked to other candidates.

 

A second string of concerns touches on whether influencers played a role in pushing Georgescu’s account, whether they were paid and by whom.

 

The electoral authority has already asked police investigators to scrutinize Georgescu’s campaign funding, flagging the suspicious fact that the far-right candidate reported no expenses at all.

 

“There’s an increased number of allegations, already very credible, from journalists that show that there are at least a few cases of influencers that say that they were paid in order to promote this content,” Calistru said.

 

TikTok has a general ban on political advertising. Paying influencers to promote a political account or hashtag would be a way to circumvent that.

 

Romania's defense council had no doubt TikTok was in the wrong.

 

"The TikTok social network ... for certain did not respect the legal rules that regulate the conduct of the electoral process, with an impact on its final result," it said.

 

Brendan Bordelon and Zoya Sheftalovich contributed reporting.