TikTok announces its plan to combat disinformation in European elections

TIK Tak This Wednesday, the company introduced a voting center in its app to combat disinformation during this year’s European elections. The initiative will be repeated in local languages ​​of each of the 27 EU countries. In this way, the platform wants to ensure “that people can easily separate reality from fiction.”

In these elections, which will take place next June, 720 MEPs will be elected to the European Parliament. TikTok’s strategy will launch in March in collaboration with each country’s election commissions, aiming to provide “reliable and authoritative information” to its 134 million European users.

The ByteDance-owned social network said that more than 6,000 people moderate content on the platform. “The team will be tasked with eliminating disinformation, covert influence operations, and other content and behavior that may increase during the election period,” the company added in a statement.

Among the organizations that will cooperate in implementing this strategy in the European elections are news agencies. AFP And Reuters. The initiative renews the experience of 2021 and 2023, when TikTok opened voting centers for national elections in Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain. For example, in the last elections in Spain, the social network worked together with Newtral And Damn in the production of educational videos about elections.

TikTok will increase attention to content created using artificial intelligence

TikTok has clarified that it will tag videos about the European elections to redirect its users to the appropriate voting centers. In addition, he promised to present in the coming months specific reports of any covert influence operations he discovered.

The company will closely monitor content created by artificial intelligence. He reiterated that he will not tolerate “manipulated and misleading” content and that creators are required to label realistic content created using the technology. “AI-generated content creates new challenges around disinformation.”said Kevin Morgan, TikTok’s head of security and integrity for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

TikTok reported that about 30% of members of the European Parliament use the social network. Therefore, during the European elections he will take a special approach with a “more detailed control policy” for officials and politicians.

If one of these accounts, for example, distributes content that violates the rules, the company may pause the publication of new videos for up to 30 days. The app does not allow paid political advertising since 2019. Additionally, accounts belonging to politicians or political parties cannot advertise on TikTok.

TikTok’s measures for the European elections are also in response to pressure from European regulators, given the imminent entry into force of the Digital Markets Act. The regulations will come into force on March 7 and will strictly control these types of platforms.

According to the European Commission, TikTok is gatekeeper or “gatekeeper”. It will therefore come under greater scrutiny from a group of companies that also includes Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Meta and Microsoft.