Changes made by Tiktok before the presidential elections of May. Announcement made by an EU official

Tiktok has made internal changes in trying to protect the presidential elections in Romania from May from foreign interference, after the European Commission has opened an investigation against the Chinese platform in December, the European Commissioner for Technology Henna Virkkunen said on Monday in front of the Commission for the Internal Market and Consumer Protection of the European Parliament.

“As for the future elections in Romania in May, we welcome the changes made by Tiktok. These include a better detection and labeling of political accounts and more Romanian experts, as well as 120 additional experts for the working group for Romania who work in particular on hidden influence campaigns and the integrity of publicity,” said Virkkun.

The first round of the Romanian elections in November last year was invalidated on the basis of reports of information services that would have shown the involvement of Russia in influencing voters through social networks to support the nationalist candidate Călin Georgescu, then relatively unknown, notes Euronews.

Due to Georgescu's popularity on Tiktok, the Commission began in December an investigation into the role of the platform during the campaign to verify that it has violated Digital Service Act (the Legislative Act on Digital Services) in terms of risk assessment and electoral integrity.

Euronews recalls that at the beginning of March Călin Georgescu's candidacy for the presidential elections was rejected the cause of non -observance of the rules during last year's elections.

The Tiktok, Meta, Google and X platforms were invited to participate in an electoral stress test in March, organized by the Romanian regulatory authority in ANCOM communications.

The exercise tested the ability of those involved in the electoral process to address the potential online challenges that may occur during the electoral period, the authority for Euronews said.