TikTok representatives do not seem worried about the possible regulations of the platform in Romania. They highlight that any decision must be supported by “on facts, not rumours“. The Minister of Digitization assures that the application will not be banned.
Will Tik Tok be banned in Romania? – Photo Archive
The social media platform TikTok, surrounded by controversies in many countries, is also facing difficulties in our country. Politicians from PSD and PNL, the parties in the governing coalition in Romania, accuse TikTok of the success of the extreme right among young Romanians. Thus, politicians are asking for clearer rules or even banning the platform.
Several countries have completely banned the application, and others no longer allow its use on the work phones of employees in state institutions.
MEP Rareș Bogdan stated that young people fall “prey to aggressive and perverse propaganda and manipulation“, via TikTok. He wants a “serious regulation in the case of TikTok“, but emphasizes that he does not agree with the closing of the platform. For his part, the PSD spokesman, Lucian Romașcanu, said that TikTok will be regulated in the coming period, so that it is not used in electoral campaigns around the world. “The only thing you can do to TikTok if it's not up to the task is to close it. It will be regulated or closed“, Romascanu added, according to HotNews.
On the other hand, Jakub Olek, director of public policy and government relations at TikTok Central and Eastern Europe, says “We are a transparent company, we answer questions, but concerns must be based on facts and data, not rumors and misunderstandings“, according to the quoted source.
TikTok representatives want to convince the Europeans that the data is not transferred to the Chinese authorities. They were present in the Capital to highlight the evolution of the Clover project. This represents an investment of 12 billion euros by the company, in the interest of data security at the European level, over the next ten years, according to TikTok.
7.5 million Romanians on TikTok
More than 7.58 million users over the age of 18 were using Tik Tok in 2023, according to datareporter.com. Thus, the application reached almost 38% of Romania's population and 42% of internet users in our country. Data from recent years show that TikTok is the main source of information for young Romanians.
Specifically, a study places our country in the top of the states in terms of news consumption on TikTok (16%), 10% above the average, according to Mediastandard. The Chinese app is used by 20 percent of 18-24-year-olds for news and 14 percent of 25-34-year-olds, according to the source cited earlier.
Thus, many politicians use the application owned by ByteDance for promotion, among them Diana Sosoacă or George Simion. Young Romanians feel unrepresented by politicians, they have a low level of education, they are not interested in politics, and trust in the institutions and in the politicians who represent the Romanian state is decreasing. Under these conditions, they become easy targets for politicians promoting extremist messages on social networks, according to a report cited by Europa Libera.
Under these conditions, 136 people are in charge of moderating the content on the TikTok platform, company officials say for the first time.
And the application will open an electoral center for the elections, for each of the 27 EU member countries. Here, Romanians will find information on where and how they can vote, how to recognize misinformation and how to report content that does not follow the rules.
“We prefer to rely on facts, instead of rumors and political speculation“, emphasizes Jakub Olek.
“On TikTok there is freedom of expression, we must not forget that. You can post on TikTok, but you can't pay to build a campaign, and election campaigns and political advertising are not allowed on our platform, which is different from other platforms where you can pay and campaign. It is an essential difference”, explained the director of public policy and government relations at TikTok Central Europe, according to the quoted source.
In addition, company representatives point out that “propaganda has no place on TikTok”, but the data shows that there are still problems to be solved. Virtually 96 percent of content that violates the rules is removed immediately, so that no user gets to see it, the company says.
TikTok and the Chinese government
The app's security is questioned in many countries, and some states no longer allow the platform to be used on government devices. Experts fear that user data may end up in the hands of the Chinese. But, TikTok is not present in China.
“TikTok is not available in China, so it does not have to be subject to any legal obligations from the Chinese state. The Chinese government has not asked us for any data and we have not provided them with any data nor would we if they asked us to“, emphasizes Jakub Olek, who says that the Europeans' data does not reach China.
However, the ByteDance group owns companies in China in various fields.
“When you think of ByteDance you should think of any large company that owns smaller companies, and ByteDance also owns companies that have operations in China and are registered there. That is exactly why there is this misconception that TikTok is a Chinese company. But it is NOT like that“, Jakub Olek draws attention.
Moreover, representatives of the platform state that less data is collected than other social networks and highlight the fact that TikTok does not collect information about the user's GPS location. TikTok doesn't even monitor what users type on their computers or phones, they say.
Digitization Minister: We are NOT banning TikTok
The Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitization, Bogdan Ivan, explained that the application will not be banned, but there will only be a clearer regulation, which will eliminate messages that do not respect democratic rules.
“I don't want the world to panic that tomorrow we will ban TikTok or any other application, but we are talking about some very clear rules that will govern when we talk about deepfakes, misinforming people. We have two levels. The technical level, which following an analysis made by our ministry with the state authorities in the matter of cyber security, we came up with a clear recommendation from the Operative Council for Cyber Security, by which everything that means service device from the public administration in Romania is recommended strongly do not install this app.
The second aspect, which is more related to political marketing, is very clearly regulated by the AI Act, which was adopted by the European Parliament, by the Romanian Strategy for artificial intelligence, which we are going to adopt in the Government and which is under public debate by more than six months, and by the Digital Service Act, a directive at European level that is automatically transposed into Romanian legislation and for which since December we have created the enforcement mechanism in a form in which everything that means content that incites hatred and hatred against the state, which comes and violates democratic rules or is created by AI and does not respect the terms of use of the platforms – that we are talking about a standard – this is filtered much more severely and automatically ends up being harder to violate. We have also created a mechanism that will be implemented in a maximum of two to three weeks, whereby all such content that is reported can be removed in a maximum of 60 minutes“, the minister said on B1 TV.
All these rules will be applied on all social media platforms that do not comply with the standards, the minister also said.
