TikTok management at EP hearing
The European Parliament summoned TikTok officials to a hearing over the platform’s enforcement of EU rules for online content.
Daniela Budu, 04.12.2024, 13:50
The video-sharing app TikTok Tuesday defended before the European Parliament its measures to counter disinformation in the first round of Romania’s presidential election, and denied having favoured the far-right outsider Călin Georgescu.
TikTok officials told the EP’s Committee on internal market and consumer protection that all candidates had been taken into account in the system without discriminating between independent contenders and those who were members of a party. The platform’s global head of product for authenticity and transparency, Brie Pegum, stated that of the networks taken down in recent months for unlawful political content, only one supported Călin Georgescu and it had much fewer followers than others supporting other candidates. She also stressed that the platform had eliminated over 66,000 fake accounts in Romania, around 7,000,000 fake ‘likes’, around 10,000,000 fake followers and 1,000 accounts that replicated candidate profiles.
In turn, TikTok’s head of public policy and government relations, Caroline Greer, explained that the app had applied its own rules for electoral processes during the Romanian elections. She also added that in the months leading up to the elections she had had meetings with various authorities, including several political parties and the Romanian electoral authority. In addition, she mentioned that TikTok had 95 Romanian content moderators.
Our view is strictly limited to what happens on the platform. We do not know what happens outside it, we do not know what the financial capacity of the candidates is or what they do elsewhere, the TikTok executive said. MEPs say, however, that the answers provided by the company do not clarify the question marks related to the transparency of the app operation or the tools used in countering manipulation.
The Romanian MEP Dan Nica, leader of the Social Democratic group in the European Parliament, reiterated the request for the European Commission to get involved in the inquiry. He believes that it is important for European institutions to step in to prevent the misuse of online platforms for political purposes, which could affect the election process and citizens’ confidence in democracy.
In fact, after the first round of the presidential election on November 24, Romania called on the European Commission to launch a formal investigation into the TikTok platform, based on the EU’s social media rules, which require companies to assess and mitigate threats to election integrity. Similar accusations were made against TikTok in connection with the recent parliamentary elections in Ireland. (AMP)
