TikTok, the social media platform owned by ByteDance, announced on Wednesday, the 14th of February, that it will step up its fight against fake news and covert influence operations in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in June by introducing an in-app tool or the so-called Election Centre for each of the 27 European Union (EU) countries, reports Reuters.
Governments around the world are concerned about the impact of disinformation and AI-generated deep fakes on elections, focusing on social media platforms. TikTok reports that 30% of lawmakers in the European Parliament use this platform.
“Next month, we will launch a local language Election Centre for each of the 27 EU Member States in the app to ensure that people can easily distinguish facts from fiction,” Kevin Morgan, TikTok’s head of trust and security, wrote in a blog post.
TikTok will work with local electoral commissions and civil society organisations
to ensure that these in-app Election Centres are places where the public can find reliable information, said Morgan.
He also wrote that TikTok, which currently works with nine fact-checking organisations in Europe, plans to expand its fact-checking network and launch nine more media literacy campaigns this year.
The company added that more than 6 000 people monitor EU content.
In the coming months, it will also start publishing reports on covert influence operations to increase transparency and accountability.
Local Election Centres were first launched in 2021, but work on the project accelerated last year when Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain went to vote.
Also read: Public opinions at risk of manipulation by AI-generated content during pre-election period
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