LONDON — TikTok is taking steps to fight misinformation concerning the upcoming European elections, together with organising fact-checking facilities inside the app, the video-sharing platform mentioned in a weblog put up on Wednesday.
TikTok plans to launch native language “election facilities” in every of the 27 EU international locations subsequent month in order that “individuals can simply separate reality from fiction.”
Tons of of thousands and thousands of Europeans are because of go to the polls in June to elect 720 members of the bloc’s parliament in a vote that takes place each 5 years. With greater than 50 international locations scheduled to carry nationwide elections in 2024, tech corporations are stepping up efforts to thwart makes an attempt to disrupt votes, together with utilizing synthetic intelligence to speed up the unfold of deceptive content material or create pretend pictures and movies.
TikTok, which has 6,000 individuals engaged on content material moderation in European languages, mentioned it was making ready for a rise in misinformation, covert affect operations and deceptive AI-generated materials in the course of the interval. electoral.
TikTok mentioned movies associated to the European elections might be labeled to direct individuals to their nation’s in-app election heart. These facilities will present, with the assistance of native election commissions and civil society teams, “dependable and authoritative info” about voting, mentioned Kevin Morgan, TikTok’s head of safety and integrity for the EMEA area.
The EU Election Facilities builds on comparable work carried out by the corporate throughout current nationwide elections in Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain.
TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, has 134 million European customers. Morgan mentioned many European officers had been current on the platform, together with a few third of European lawmakers.
The corporate may also arrange a devoted “monitoring mission” for the elections at its European headquarters in Dublin, staffed by a specialist from its belief and safety division.
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