In the wake of the US mid-term elections, which are scheduled to take place on November 8, 2022, popular short video platform TikTok is taking the necessary precautions to combat fake news and misinformation spread.
How does TikTok aim to do that?
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TikTok’s Election Center, a hub that will “connect people who engage with election content”, as per TikTok’s Head of US Safety, Eric Han. This will connect TikTok users with official authoritative information about the upcoming elections in more than 45 languages, with English and Spanish among the most popular ones.
Inside the Election Center hub, users will get important information about where and how to vote, depending on the state they reside. Users will be able to register to vote and check the status of their registration straight from TikTok. What’s more, as election results for each state become available, official information will be showcased in TikTok’s Election Center as well.
Conversely, TikTok will be flagging content related to the elections as such, meaning that you will always know if a video you’re watching is coming from a candidate, a government official, political party, and so on. Accounts belonging to such entities will be flagged as well.
TikTok also doubles down on its commitment to never allow paid political advertising on the platform. What’s more, TikTok is partnering with accredited fact-checking organizations to ensure the accuracy of its content in more than 30 different languages. Videos that are currently undergoing the fact-checking process won’t be recommended in the For You page of each user.
TikTok is the latest large online platform to unveil such an initiative ahead of the mid-term elections. Twitter, another behemoth of a social media,
has also unveiled its plans to combat misinformation and fake news ahead of the November 8 vote.
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