A meeting between social media platforms, European and Romanian authorities, and civil society on preventing disinformation ahead of the country’s re-run elections in May was attacked by X owner Elon Musk as akin to “NGO-led censorship”.
A first roundtable was organised by Romania’s Digital Services Coordinator (DSC), responsible for implementing the Digital Services Act (DSA) ahead of Romania’s re-run election in May.
The aim: to discuss whether risk mitigation measures implemented by VLOPs were sufficient.
Those invited included companies labelled Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) under the DSA, Romanian authorities, the European Commission and civil society.
After the roundtable took place, Musk attacked the routine meeting on his platform and reposted a far-right Romanian influencer who accused Romania and the EU of backing “NGO-led censorship” ahead of the Romanian elections. “NGOs… will work with authorities and social media platforms to flag and remove content they label as ‘disinformation’, the post also said.
Expert Forum, a civil society organisation that participated in the roundtable, responded to Musk’s post that this was an “intimidation campaign”. They also said that Musk’s claim was false and amplified a misleading post from a pro-Georgescu influencer that deliberately “undermined the efforts to protect democracy in Romania”. Activewatch, another civil society that took part, told Euractiv that their presence at these open and democratic consultations with public authorities was to observe that the proposed measures or regulations would not amount to censorship.
The Commission, however, did not directly comment on Musk’s attack on the DSA roundtable.
After the Romanian presidential elections in November were annulled, the Commission opened formal proceedings against TikTok in December over a suspected breach of the DSA. The Commission said that it suspected that TikTok did not properly assess and mitigate risks related to election integrity, notably during the Romanian elections.
Musk’s comments about the Romanian elections were recently echoed by the US Vice President JD Vance, who went as far as to say that Romania annulled its elections due to “continental pressure”, which the Commission dismissed as simply false.
Monday’s roundtable was attended by VLOPs such as Meta, Google, and TikTok. Also present were the Romania’s National Audiovisual Council, the Permanent Electoral Authority and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The European Commission participated alongside representatives from NGOs and academia, including Expert Forum, Active Watch, Funky Citizens, Association for Technology and Internet and the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration.
The roundtable discussed the reporting channels available to national authorities, NGOs and academia to flag illegal content; VLOPs’ compliance teams and their response time to the complaints; access to public data from platforms to researchers; and the Rapid Response Mechanism (RRS) under the Code of Conduct on Disinformation.
According to a Commission spokesperson, the discussions at yesterday’s roundtable did not differ from those at the DSA roundtable for Romania in November.
A “stress test” will take place on 27 March to test VLOP’s capacity to quickly resolve potential violations of the DSA during an election period. The most recent stress test took place before the German election last month.
