EU regulators on Tuesday said they are investigating whether TikTok breached the bloc’s digital rulebook by failing to deal with risks to Romania’s presidential election, which has been thrown into turmoil over allegations of electoral violations and Russian meddling.
The European Commission is escalating its scrutiny of the popular video-sharing platform after Romania’s top court canceled results of the first round of voting that resulted in an unknown far-right candidate becoming the front-runner.
The court made its unprecedented decision after authorities in the EU and NATO member country declassified documents alleging Moscow organized a sprawling social media campaign to promote a long-shot candidate, Calin Georgescu.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Following serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential elections by using TikTok, we are now thoroughly investigating whether TikTok has violated the Digital Services Act by failing to tackle such risks,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. “It should be crystal clear that in the EU, all online platforms, including TikTok, must be held accountable.”
The European Commission is the EU’s executive arm and enforces the bloc’s Digital Services Act. It ordered TikTok earlier this month to retain all information related to the election.
In the preliminary round of voting on Nov. 24, Georgescu was an outsider among the 13 candidates, but ended up topping the polls. He was due to face a pro-EU reformist rival in a runoff before the court canceled the results.
The declassified files alleged that there was an “aggressive promotion campaign” to boost Georgescu’s popularity, including payments worth a total of US$381,000 to TikTok influencers to promote him on the platform.
TikTok said it has “protected the integrity” of its platform for more than 150 elections worldwide and is continuing to address these “industry-wide challenges.”
“TikTok has provided the European Commission with extensive information regarding these efforts, and we have transparently and publicly detailed our robust actions,” it said in a statement.
The commission said its investigation would focus on TikTok’s content recommendation systems, especially on risks related to “coordinated inauthentic manipulation or automated exploitation.”
It is also looking at TikTok’s policies on political advertisements and “paid-for political content.”
TikTok said it does not accept paid political ads and “proactively” removes content for contravening policies on misinformation.
The investigation could result in TikTok making changes to fix any problems, or in fines worth up to 6 percent of the company’s total global revenue.
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