There is an interesting analysis by the European Media Observatory on the Romanian election – (Archived link).
On ‘TikTok’s role in Romanian politics’ and the ‘Candidate Performance Metrics’, it says, among others:
- Călin Georgescu: Notably surged in popularity, garnering 120 million views, particularly in the final two months. This increase was attributed to coordinated campaigns that used both direct promotion and indirect influence via unpaid influencers, often lacking appropriate labeling. A salient example is the #echilibrușiverticalitate campaign, which reached 2.4 million views through these tactics.
The analysis also says:
The lack of effective moderation allowed for widespread dissemination of unverified information, particularly affecting extreme-right candidates.
Concerns around unlabelled or undeclared political content in the 2024 Romanian presidential elections, particularly on TikTok are significant. They emphasize a lack of transparency in political campaigns, notably involving candidates like Călin Georgescu, who used the platform without disclosing the funding and motivations behind their promotion. The employment of influencers without adequate disclosure raises ethical issues complicates voters’ understanding of the content.
[…]
The notable gap between projected poll figures (around 10%) and actual results (over 22%) raises concerns about potential external influences, including foreign interference.
Where’s all the “Tik Tok is harmless!!!” people? They were everywhere 18 months ago when the US went after TikTok.
My main grip with wanting to ban tik tok was that it was a transparent attempt to keep a monopoly on propaganda. Tik tok is used by China in exactly the same way Twitter and Facebook are used.
We need comprehensive laws against all forms of social media manipulation, since even the homegrown ones are being used to elect fascists.
Tik tok is a scapegoat.
We do have those laws in the EU. Parliament is inviting the TikTok CEO to question him about their adherence to those very laws. TikTok is legally required to actively work against manipulation especially around things like elections so they should have be on top of the botting that apparently went on. They’re supposed to follow these guidelines.
…of course, parliament could have left it to the commission to enforce this stuff, i.e. fine TikTok, but as this is an election it’s absolutely legitimate to make a public scene. Drag that CEO before parliament and make him scramble for excuses before the presidential run-offs and parliament elections. Then post it to TikTok.
TikTok isn’t a scapegoat, here, they’re being made an example of. Important difference.
The EU is doomed if it continues to kick this can down the road. There needs to be a decisive ruling on platforms like TikTok, Xitter and Instagram. I hope the election in Romania will be a wake-up call before other nations face the same fate.
Problem is that social media are not the root of the problem. Stupid liberal political leaders are.
They are walking a line between fascism and liberalism because they’d rather have fascism than socialism. But fascism would rather ally with other fascists, which are enemies of liberals.
Those liberal morons are literally siding with their mortal enemies because they can accept the idea that people can be more than slaves at their service.
We had factual examples of deliberate manipulation, using facebook, by cambridge analytica during the brexit campaign. There were leaked communications by Bannon and one of the senior devs of CA was a whistleblower. Leave won, the UK is in the gutter. If we didn’t just fucking kick those platforms and their CEOs into orbit then, we won’t do it now. We already lost. Our only chance is to remove English as an official language of the EU and go back to German or Spanish or French or something else that would increase the cost of mass manipulation. The american brand of capitalism has condemned the world misery for the next 200 years just so boomers could get two vacation homes.
If we didn’t just fucking kick those platforms and their CEOs into orbit then, we won’t do it now. We already lost. Our only chance is to remove English as an official language of the EU and go back to German or Spanish or French or something else that would increase the cost of mass manipulation.
What a logic. We won’t ban it now because we didn’t it then. But ‘removing English’ as ‘official language of the EU’ would help according to you. This is, of course, complete rubbish.
The protection a unique language gives flew out the windows the moment llms came on the scene.
Our only chance is to remove English as an official language of the EU and go back to German or Spanish or French or something else that would increase the cost of mass manipulation. The american brand of capitalism has condemned the world misery for the next 200 years just so boomers could get two vacation homes.
This is why conservatives regularly complain about Quebec speaking French because having a unique language is the ultimate protection against propaganda. Note the fascist Pierre Poilievre conservatives couldn’t crack the Quebec code while the rest of Canada fell for his tricks.
U.K. is an unfortunate example of how it can really go wrong.
I was just searching for a concise list of elections gone sideways, but unfortunately I haven’t found yet the correct algorithm(/s)
I did find some other results, for elections in USA and Brazil. And, also this worrisome international Ipsos report.
Our only chance is to remove English as an official language of the EU and go back to German or Spanish or French or something else that would increase the cost of mass manipulation
I don’t think it’s our only chance, but it’s definitely a very valid point and something that I’ve been thinking about quite a lot since Brexit. Foreign powers would have a much harder time if people only spoke their native languages, but it’s not something that’s going to change anytime soon. And it would have a lot of downsides too.
Another election possibly gone sideways due to the (abuse of) social media. Reminds me of the same spectacular electoral results in Indonesia, in which Tik-Tok played a mayor role [ see Reuters article )
I don’t understand this election gone wrong sentiment.
Could it not be that the people spoke?
I don’t use tik tok or any social media beyond lemmy so I’m out of the loop. 20 years ago an election was an election unless you were out there with guns forcing votes.
All elections are won on lies spewed by the parties, why is it a bad thing today?
While it’s true that “all elections are won on lies spewed by the parties”, it’s always a matter of context. The media landscape of the past 10 years has both shrunk and inflated at the same time: centralized social media now overwhelmingly represent the main source of information from which people read news and shape their views of the world. The fact that some of those social media have more or less explicitly stated their affiliation to some sort of government which might make their interests offers a worrying scenario: in one case, the state can require the manipulation of information so as to steer the results of election towards governments that might create strategic geopolitical tension or sweetened deals (i.e. China and TikTok). On the other, through the “loaning” of centralized social media to the highest bidder can create enormous echo chambers which corrupt the results only for symbiontic, growing entanglement of social media corporations into forms of government (i.e. Elon Musk in 2024).
Tl;Dr: Social media are a bigger problem than good old politicians’ lies because they can be easily manipulated by external forces and because everyone uses them.
I guess the problem falls to people only getting their news sources from one place and it being biased. That’s why with today’s sponsor ground news… I kid, but have news papers ever been blamed for an election?
It still seems to me that that people need to get their information from other places.
Tik Tok doesn’t want to allow posts by politicians A then maybe don’t rely on them when they talk about politician B.
@Aussiemandeus well, that’s a fair point. We do have a state authority (CNA) who should deal with misinformation and poor reporting, but it was politically infiltrated (and still is) and did not bat an eye at everything that was said on TV at stations that are pretty much affiliated with certain parties. There’s this station called Romania TV which pretty much takes all the most mainstream online conspiracies and gives them air time.
In addition we have some intelligence services who we don’t know what they were doing all this time, but who enjoyed poor state control and being politically affiliated as well (having been given a lot of power in the previous decade). What did they do with this Russian interference that was clear to appear? I don’t know.
So yeah. TikTok played a big role, but it was not the only one. They could see it coming. But they didn’t do anything.
Yeah so a failing of regulation i guess. Either way it’s not great, I just think it’s short sighted to blame a platform when there is a larger problem at play.
Governments need to protect their democratic processes with the same ferver that those who seek to undermine it display.
I guess it’s hard to be the democratic “good” government and still impose harsh punishments and expectations on citizens without being labled some form of “evil”
