Romanian telecom regulators are asking for a temporary ban of TikTok and for a wider EU-wide probe while they investigate a potential disrupting role the social media platform had on last Sunday’s first round of presidential elections.
In what was a shocking and unpredicted result, independent far-right politician Calin Georgescu (Călin Georgescu) led the votes and secured a spot in the run-off election of December 8 against centrist candidate Elena Lasconi.
In the lead out of the election, polls gave Georgescu single-digits percentages but on Sunday he won 22.9%. Post-votes analysis show that Georgescu got many votes from young voters and from the Romanian diaspora. Some analysts and politicians are openly questioning the surprising result, hinting at foreign interference and bias from TikTok, despite reports from Romanian intelligence dismissing foreign interference.
According to the Vice President of National Audiovisual Council Valentin-Alexandru Jucan, TikTok’s algorithms gave Georgescu an advantage by pushing more his material compared to other candidates and that the platform didn’t clarify sponsored political content. The Council urged the EU to investigate the vote and TikTok possible role in it. The European Commission confirmed to Reuters that it received a request for a probe on the issue.
In addition, Romania’s telecoms regulator deputy chief Pavel Popescu told the news website profit.ro that TikTok should be suspended from November 28 while a local investigation is conducted and vowed to start the process.
Outside of regulators, Georgescu’s result was put under scrutiny by other candidates. Two of them challenged the result at the country’s top court because Georgescu failed to declare his campaign’s funding sources. Georgescu said before that challenge that he didn’t have a campaign budget as everything was done by volunteers.
All this uncertainty on the electoral process brought Romanians in the street to protest against Georgescu. In the country’s capital Bucharest and in other major cities hundreds of protestors chanted against Vladimir Putin and in favour of the EU. Georgescu was critical of both NATO and of Romania’s support for Ukraine against Russia.
