TikTok to educate social media influencers ahead of US elections
The social media giant TikTok has said it is to educate influencers of its rules ahead of US elections in November.
TikTok admitted in February 2020 that it needed to have done more to ensure its influencers followed the rules around elections, including that paid-for political adverts were prohibited.
In a statement on the company’s media platform, Eric Han, head of US safety, said: “At TikTok, we take our responsibility to protect the integrity of our platform – particularly around elections – with the utmost seriousness.
“We’re proud to be a place that brings people together over creative and entertaining content, and we work hard to keep harmful misinformation and other violations of our policies off our platform.
“As the US midterm elections continue, we’re sharing more on the work we’re doing to protect our community during this time.”
He added: “Providing access to authoritative information is an important part of our overall strategy to counter election misinformation. That’s why we’re rolling out an Elections Center to connect people who engage with election content to authoritative information and sources in more than 45 languages, including English and Spanish.”
TikTok is not the first social media giant to make such an announcement. Facebook owner Meta and Twitter have done similar in recent weeks. However, the statements have not been universally welcomed with detractors saying the social media companies should be enforcing their own rules more vigorously, rather than attempting to educate their users.
