TikTok to launch online election centres to counter misinformation

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TikTok has unveiled plans to launch online election centres on the platform as a part of its efforts to help electoral integrity throughout 2024.

The video-sharing website mentioned greater than two billion individuals in additional than 50 international locations had been anticipated to go to the polls this 12 months, and that its election centres can be used to level individuals to trusted info.

Concerns have been raised in regards to the potential influence of social media on elections this 12 months, with synthetic intelligence fuelling new waves of misinformation and disinformation within the type of manipulated media and deepfakes.

TikTok mentioned it might launch a Local Election Centre within the UK in early April, forward of native elections in May, which had been created in partnership with fact-checking agency Logically Facts.

The online centre would offer customers with verified voting info, together with when, the place and the way individuals might vote, in addition to hyperlinks to sources from the Electoral Commission.

On TikTok, individuals can be directed to the centre by prompts on related election posts or searches.

The firm mentioned it was planning to introduce related centres in different international locations world wide, tailor-made to every election.

In the UK, TikTok mentioned it might additionally produce a spread of instructional movies with Logically Facts, encouraging customers to think about the data they consumed round elections.

These movies can be featured on the election centre.

In a weblog submit discussing the corporate’s strategy to elections in 2024, TikTok mentioned it was additionally already making particular efforts to fight AI-powered misinformation, and this could proceed throughout elections.

“AI-generated content (AIGC) brings new challenges to our industry, which we’ve proactively addressed with firm rules and new technologies,” the corporate mentioned.

“We don’t allow manipulated content that could be misleading, including AIGC of public figures if it depicts them endorsing a political view. We also require creators to label any realistic AIGC and launched a first-of-its-kind tool to help people do this.

“Alongside 20 other leading tech companies, we recently pledged to help prevent deceptive AI content from interfering with this year’s elections through proactive collaboration.

“As technology evolves in 2024, we’ll continue to improve our policies and detection while partnering with experts on media literacy content that helps our community navigate AI responsibly, including working with industry through content provenance partnerships.”