TikTok prepares to combat misinfo, AI fakes and influence ops ahead of European Union election
LONDON (AP) — TikTok is taking measures to combat misinformation about the upcoming European Union elections, including setting up fact-checking hubs inside the app, the video-sharing platform said Wednesday in a blog post.
TikTok plans to launch local language in-app “election centers” next month for each of the 27 EU countries so that “people can easily separate fact from fiction.”
Hundreds of millions of Europeans are scheduled to go to the polls in June to elect 720 lawmakers for the bloc’s parliament in a vote that happens once every five years. With more than 50 countries due to hold national elections in 2024, tech companies are stepping up efforts to thwart attempts to disrupt the votes, including through the use of artificial intelligence to supercharge the spread of misleading content or create deepfake images and videos.
TikTok, which has 6,000 people working on moderating EU language content, signaled that it’s bracing for an increase in misinformation, covert influence operations and misleading AI-generated material during the election period.
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TikTok said videos related to the EU elections will be labeled to direct people to their country’s in-app election center. These hubs will, with the help of local electoral commissions and civil society groups, provide “trusted and authoritative information” about the vote, said TikTok’s head of safety and integrity for EMEA, Kevin Morgan.
The EU election centers build on similar work the company did for recent national elections in Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain.
TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, has 134 million European users. Morgan said many European officials are on the platform, including about a third of EU lawmakers.
The company will also set up a a dedicated “mission control” for the elections at its European headquarters in Dublin office staffed by a specialists from its trust and safety department.