The Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitization confirmed that complaints were received from citizens in relation to all candidates for the position of president. After checks, several counters and networks were eliminated and a criminal investigation was started.
After the elimination of some accounts, a criminal investigation should be started. Photo by Shutterstock
Bogdan Ivan, the Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitization, said on Thursday that several complaints were made regarding the activity of all the candidates for the position of president of Romania, and the accounts considered by the platforms as not complying with the rules or as fake were removed together with the entire network of which they were part, informs Agerpres.
“Any complaint from any Romanian citizen was treated with priority and was sent to the big platforms, which analyzed it with priority. And those accounts that you refer to, if they were reported, they were certainly analyzed”, said Ivan regarding the information according to which several accounts constantly promoted PSD candidate Marcel Ciolacu on Facebook.
At the same time, Bogdan Ivan specified that the elimination of trolls is not handled by his ministry, but by the parent platform, in this case Meta, after citizens’ complaints were directed to it.
“What is applied and what is very practical is the result of the investigation carried out by the big platforms, in this case Meta, in this situation, following the complaints from many individuals, which led to the elimination of important networks of such of fake accountswhich, further, led to the initiation of legal procedures to identify those persons or entities that did not respect the law”, explained Bogdan Ivan.
According to the Minister of Digitalization, the results of the investigations carried out by the big platforms reached the Romanian authorities and a criminal investigation was opened.
“Several complaints were made regarding the activity of all the candidates for the position of president of Romania, and all those complaints reached the platforms and those accounts that were considered by the platforms, following the investigation, as ones that were not respect the rules and some fake ones were removed along with the entire network they were part of. And the result of this Meta investigation went further into the hands of the Romanian authorities responsible for this subject, who opened a criminal investigation”. said Bogdan Ivan.
The information from the Meta report cannot be made public at the moment, as the criminal investigation started in these cases is ongoing, the minister also said, stating that almost every day “10, 20, 30 networks are removed and blocked”.
“Any of the candidates who do not respect the law and who use such technologies will bear the rigors of the law and are already bearing them”, the official announced.
Asked if he self-reported in connection with the information that appeared that there were several fake pages and accounts of the PSD candidate Marcel Ciolacu, the minister said that he did not self-report in any situation, but complaints were received from the citizens.
“I received several requests from citizens, which I processed with maximum speed. If I will receive a request from the ministry on this topic as well, to which you referred earlier, it will be processed in a maximum of 60 minutes, just like in the case of any candidate from Romania”, added the minister.
