Tiktok said the individual local language “election centres” build on work it first started in 2021, which accelerated last year when Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain went to the polls
ByteDance-owned social media platform TikTok said on Wednesday it will bolster its fight against fake news and covert influence operations in the run-up to European Parliament elections in June with a local language app in all 27 countries.
Tiktok said the individual local language “election centres” build on work it first started in 2021, which quickened last year when Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain went to the polls.
The app is designed to better inform Europeans about the electoral process.
Governments and politicians around the world are worried about the spread of misinformation and the use of artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes to influence elections and particularly the role of social media platforms.
Around 30% of European Parliament lawmakers use TikTok, the firm said.
Next month, we will launch a local language Election Centre in-app for each of the 27 individual European Union member states to make sure people can easily separate fact from fiction, TikTok’s head of trust & safety EMEA Kevin Morgan said in a blogpost.
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, Morgan added.
The firm worked with news checkers to produce educational videos about the electoral process and misinformation via the election centres during national elections in earlier years.
Morgan said TikTok, which currently works with nine fact-checking organisations in Europe, plans to expand its fact-checking network and launch nine additional media literacy campaigns in 2024.
It will introduce dedicated covert influence operations reports in the coming months to raise transparency and accountability.