TikTok will intensify its fight against false news and negative campaign with a local language app in all 27 countries following the European Parliament elections coming up in June. The social media platform came out to say this on Wednesday.
The individual local language “election centre” app was made to inform and educate Europeans on the electoral process. It first started in 2021 and sped up in 2023 when Greece, Netherland, Poland, Slovakia and Spain did their elections.
The spread of misinformation and the use of fake contents especially on election matters produced from AI on social media platforms is a big concern to the governments and politicians around the world.
The company said some 30% of European Parliament lawmakers use its app.
TikTok’s head of trust and Safety EMEA Kevin Morgan said the company is creating a local language Election Centre in-app for facts checking. He also said the company is working with civil society organisations and local electoral commissions on the app which will be a trusted environment for electoral information;
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,”
Kevin Morgan said
During national elections in previous years, the company worked with news checkers to give out educated electoral content with the help of election centres.
This year, Tiktok plans to expand its fact-checking network and also create many campaigns on media literacy. The platform is already working with 9 fact-checking organizations already.
The ByteDance owned platform plans on introducing negative and false news reports in coming months to facilitate transparency and accountability.
