TikTok, a social network owned by ByteDance, has announced that it is stepping up its fight against fake news and covert influence operations ahead of the European Parliament elections in June, reports Reuters.
In this regard, a new application called “Election Center” will be created, which will support 27 languages.
TikTok said that the individual “Election Centers” in local languages are a continuation of the work the company started in 2021, which accelerated last year when Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain went to the polls. The app aims to better inform Europeans about the electoral process.
Governments and policymakers around the world are concerned about the spread of disinformation and the use of AI-generated dipshits to influence elections, and especially the role of social media platforms.
According to the company, about 30% of of European Parliament lawmakers use TikTok.
“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 blogpost.
Working with local election commissions and civil society organizations, these election centers will become a place where the community can find truthful and authoritative information.
The company has worked with news verification specialists to create educational videos about the electoral process and disinformation through election centers during national elections in previous years.
According to Kevin Morgan, TikTok, which currently works with nine fact-checking organizations in Europe, plans to expand its moderation network and launch nine additional media literacy campaigns this year.
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