In December 2024, evidence came to light that “foreign actors” had mounted a coordinated TikTok campaign during Romania’s presidential election to garner support for pro-Russian candidate, Calin Georgescu. As a result, the European Commission opened formal proceedings against TikTok and a Romanian court annulled the first round of the election.
Although the investigation postponed Romania’s vote until spring 2025—and moderate candidate, Nicusor Dan, ended up the victor—this development illustrates that Russian backing is allowing populist parties to exploit TikTok algorithms in favour of their own agenda in Europe. But such interference is not confined only to the continent’s east: during Germany’s February 2025 federal election, fact-checking organisations in the country reported at least 200 cases of false political statements being made on the platform. Evidence also shows that, in the recent presidential election in Poland (which returned the right-wing candidate Karol Nawrocki) the TikTok algorithm heavily favoured right-wing content over other political themes.
Indeed, according to a recent German study, Germany’s TikTok users are particularly receptive to Russian and Chinese disinformation, and far more likely to believe anti-Western and pro-authoritarian narratives that overlap with the messages of populist parties. In Germany, TikTok’s most active and dominant political party is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), with the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) gaining ground. Given that TikTok is primarily used by young people in Germany (around 70% of 16 to 29-year-olds), this demographic is most at risk from nefarious actors utilising TikTok’s algorithm to gain political and social advantages, and push populist parties more aligned with their agendas.
But, for the actors behind the campaigns, capturing a young audience is just the beginning. For those propagating disinformation, their aim is to polarise societies, undermine trust in democratic institutions and strengthen political actors sympathetic to their agendas.
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Chinese ownership of the tech giant ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, poses a different but still serious security risk. Private messages on TikTok are not end-to-end encrypted and, even if an app store has checked and approved its installation, future app updates may contain malware. Since Chinese companies such as ByteDance are under the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (and the corporation collects vast amounts of user data, which it must make available to the Chinese authorities on request) the access to user information on ByteDance’s apps like TikTok more easily enables Beijing to actively gather data on the US and European citizens. In this respect, TikTok enabling access to information such as mobile location tracking data could offer China broader strategic geopolitical advantages.
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Europe needs to take proactive steps to safeguard its digital ecosystem. A TikTok ban is a last resort, but the risks posed by disinformation, algorithmic manipulation and foreign surveillance are too great to ignore. Better coordination between EU institutions and national authorities is required, as well as significant increases in the resources of enforcement agencies and regular training for staff handling digital regulation.
The line has been crossed and it is time to regulate the hell out of social media. Zombie Twitter, Meta, TikTok, etc all need to be smacked down.
The problem is everyone wants this control, it is like a atomic age for information manipulation. They can create an AI agent that teaches people everything they want them to know. They could completely recreate society and are likely already doing it.
This is actually a unimaginable crisis no one is talking about.
Although its true that ‘foreign actors’ use tiktok’s reach/influence to spread lies, propaganda, misinformation… i still dont understand why its being singled out, like other social platforms don’t do the same thing
As bad as TikTok is, I think Meta with its nonexistent content moderation is even worse. TikTok is at least decent at ensuring you don’t see random gore in your feed like the one where a man was trampled by an elephant and which got recommended to half of the Instagram userbase.
Plus Meta owns Facebook AND Instagram for maximum control over all age groups: boomers and GenX on Facebook, millenials and zoomers on Instagram. It’s far bigger a threat just by its “reach”.
I also think it’s often harder to give up Instagram (like Facebook!) because it’s a tool for keeping contact with friends/acquaintances, unlike TikTok, which is, in my opinion, just a content consumption farm.
I wouldn’t exactly start a petition against it if they ban Meta, but it is likely no coincidence that far-right political parties like Germany’s AfD are strong on China’s Tiktok while exactly these parties have close ties with the Chinese party-state.
Not to deny your point, but I remember being disgusted by Instagram suggesting me blue hearts as emojis (blue for AfD, unsurprisingly) on a post that was relevant to German politics. Not sure what exactly the post was about, but I think something that had to do with migrants and/or greens.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the international TikTok (as opposed to Douyin, the Chinese version) has, to put it in an oversimplified way, a lot of American control over it, as that was the demand of the USA in exchange for not banning the app. Knowing the US-Russia relations, I’d say this makes a lot more sense than China meddling with elections. AfD is pro-russian first and foremost, we’ve seen Musk openly advocating for them. I strongly believe that it’s the US+Russia combo that presents the most danger to the European democracy at the present moment.
I think it is because regular instagram is less suited for it, Facebook has had it’s share of being in the news (cambridge analytica) and youtube shorts, instagram stories and tiktok are strange exotic places for a lot of journalists. Also all other major platforms are based in the US.
Having seen the absolute chaos and legitimate panic that happened in the US when TikTok was banned (for less than 24h or so, wasn’t it?), I’m convinced a scary amount of people will figuratively explode if their toy is taken away.
