Q&A: Romania election a "litmus test" for new EU Big Tech rules

• Romania election "litmus test" for new EU digital rules
• EU should expect U.S. challenges to tech regulations
• AI needs more transparency to break information monopoly

BRUSSELS - The power of Big Tech to shape the democratic process and the expanding influence of social media in the political sphere have become big issues in this bumper election year.

Tech billionaire and X owner Elon Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars helping Donald Trump win November's U.S. presidential election and looks set to have a key role in the incoming administration.

Experts found false or misleading claims by Musk amassed billions of views on X and the platform also played a central role in enabling the spread of false information ahead of the poll.

Weeks later, Romania's top court annulled the first-round of its presidential election due to allegations that Russian interference and manipulation on social media platform TikTok helped far-right candidate Călin Georgescu to a surprise win.

The European Commission is now investigating TikTok's compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA), which imposes new rules on content moderation, user privacy and transparency, and Romania's government must set a date to re-run the election.

Russia denies interference and TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, denies giving Georgescu special treatment.

As experts assess the ramifications of this intertwining of tech and politics Context spoke to Marietje Schaake, a fellow at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center and a former EU lawmaker who worked on trade, foreign policy and tech.

Schaake won a reputation as 'Europe's most wired politician', and is a member of a working group tasked with drawing up the European Union AI (Artificial Intelligence) Act's "code of practice", which will spell out exactly how companies can comply with the wide-ranging set of laws.

In her book, "The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley", published in September, Schaake details how global democracy has taken "hit after hit" as tech companies expand their reach.

What lessons can be learnt from the controversy surrounding the Romanian presidential election?

"The Romanian case is unique because the candidate had no profile, and that is unusual. Someone like Donald Trump had a profile.

"I see it as a litmus test for the DSA. I think it will begin to give an impression of what the actual impact can be of influencing on social media. We have to get to a place where we can actually have proper fact-based reading of what kind of influencing there is and what the impact is.

"We have a law in the EU, so that creates a real opportunity to assess what happened. Once we have a better sense of what the impact is of different algorithmic settings, how people behave depending on what they've been fed in terms of content, then we can take better measures. I'm sure the rest of the world will be watching with great interest what can be learnt from the Romanian case."

How concerned are you about U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's relationship with tech bosses like Elon Musk?

"I'm very worried about the synergy between specific corporate interests and the highest political office in the United States. I think it is undesirable and I would have said the exact same thing had it been about (Democratic candidate) Kamala Harris.

"The Department of Government Efficiency that Elon Musk will now be a key advisor to, this kind of corporate agenda-setting, from a perspective of strengthening democratic resiliency and oversight over the tech sector, these are steps in the wrong direction."

So as the EU tries to regulate Big Tech, what should it expect from the new U.S. government? 

"I'm sure that there will be pressure to be less stringent when applying oversight. So there will be a temptation by individual member states to cut deals with the Trump administration. There will be challenges to make sure that the laws are enforced the way they should be, especially when it comes to the companies that are very close to Donald Trump.

"We've already heard in a scandalous remark by Vice President- elect JD Vance that, for example, the U.S. would be willing to pull out of NATO if the EU were to regulate more of Elon Musk's company. This is a is a extraordinary mixing up of geopolitical responsibilities and interest." 

In Silicon Valley, where conversations about machine intelligence veer between changing humanity for the better, or for the worse, where do you sit on that spectrum?

"Generally, on the corporate side, Silicon Valley tends to look at the world through a lens of opportunity and optimism and not through a lens of what might this mean in the worst case scenario or for vulnerable populations or things like that. When I look at my students, they are much more conscious of the potential harms, the impact on anything from the environment to minority populations.

"So it's hard to say one thing about where I sit. But I think it's important that we are able to better understand AI in the public interest so that we can make better policies. And therefore, I think giving democratic institutions more access to information is really key because we don't want to depend on the information monopoly that companies have."

(Reporting by Joanna Gill; Editing by Jon Hemming.)