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

TikTok’s Romanian reckoning

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2024-11-29 17:00:04

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. 

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