"So, what should we make of all this? I’m always worried to see the rise of far-right candidates, but by now we have plenty of examples of establishment parties pointing to social media manipulation (often with some link to Russian interference) as the reason for their declining support instead of probing how the public has (often rightfully) become disillusioned with the politics they’re offering. I don’t know enough about Romania to know where this case falls, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s somewhere in the middle.

It doesn’t appear that TikTok intentionally manipulated its algorithms to promote Georgescu, but rather that actors took advantage of the way its platform is designed to get the results they were expecting — not unlike how Russian actors didn’t actually “hack” the 2016 US election. For now it’s worth watching to see where the Romanian case goes."

https://disconnect.blog/roundup-whats-going-on-in-romania/

#SocialMedia #Romania #TikTok #Algorithms #FarRight #CyberSecurity #Politics #Elections #Russia