TikTok says it will launch localized election resources in its app to reach users in each of the European Union’s 27 Member States next month and direct them towards “trusted information”, as part of preparations to tackle disinformation risks related to regional elections this year.
TikTok wrote today, “Next month, we will launch a local language Election Centre in-app for each of the 27 individual EU Member States to ensure people can easily separate fact from fiction. Working with local electoral commissions and civil society organisations, these Election Centres will be a place where our community can find trusted and authoritative information.”
“Videos related to the European elections will be labelled to direct people to the relevant Election Centre. As part of our broader election integrity efforts, we will also add reminders to hashtags to encourage people to follow our rules, verify facts, and report content they believe violates our Community Guidelines,” it added in a blog post discussing its preparations for 2024 European elections.
The blog post also discusses what it’s doing in relation to targeted risks that take the form of influence operations seeking to use its tools to covertly deceive and manipulate opinions in a bid to skew elections — i.e. such as by setting up networks of fake accounts and using them to spread and boost inauthentic content. Here it has committed to introduce “dedicated covert influence operations reports” — which it claims will “further increase transparency, accountability, and cross-industry sharing” vis-à-vis covert infops.
The new covert influence ops reports will launch “in the coming months”, per TikTok — presumably being hosted inside into its existing Transparency Center.
TikTok is also announcing the upcoming launch of nine more media literacy campaigns in the region (after launching 18 last year, making a total of 27 — so it looks to be plugging the gaps to ensure it has run campaigns across all EU Member States).
It also says it’s looking to expand its local fact-checking partners network — currently it says it works with nine organizations, which cover 18 languages. (NB: The EU has 24 “official” languages, and a further 16 “recognized” languages — not counting immigrant languages spoken.)
credit: Techcrunch
Philips Babatunde