TikTok to ramp up fight against fake news ahead of EU elections
The video-sharing app is designed to inform Europeans about the electoral process better
The video-sharing app TikTok said it would step up its fight against fake news ahead of EU elections. The app is also said to covert influence operations in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in June with a local language app in all 27 countries.
Tiktok said the local language “election centers” build on work it started in 2021, which accelerated last year when Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain went to the polls.
The app is designed to inform Europeans about the electoral process better.
Governments and politicians worldwide are concerned about spreading misinformation and using AI-generated deep fakes to influence elections, mainly social media platforms’ role.
Some 30% of European Parliament lawmakers use TikTok, the company said.
“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,” TikTok’s head of trust & safety EMEA Kevin Morgan said in a blog post.
“Working with local electoral commissions and civil society organizations, these Election Centres will be a place where our community can find trusted and authoritative information,” he said.
The company worked with news checkers to produce educational videos about the electoral process and misinformation via the election centers during national elections in previous years.
Morgan said TikTok, which currently works with nine fact-checking organizations in Europe, plans to expand its network and launch nine additional media literacy campaigns this year.
It will introduce dedicated covert influence operations reports to increase transparency and accountability in the coming months.
Source: Reuters
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