TikTok announced Wednesday, August 17, measures to prevent video producers from posting paid political messages on the application, in anticipation of the American midterm elections which will be held on November 8. Details have been released in a blog post by Eric Hanresponsible at TikTok for the security of this social network in the United States.
In theory, the purchase of political advertisements has already been prohibited since 2019 on the Chinese social network. But in the 2020 US presidential election, some campaign teams circumvented the ban by paying influencers. “TikTok does not allow political ads, and this includes content for which influencers are paid”, says Eric Han in his press release. The company therefore intends to fill this gap by strengthening controls and organizing information sessions with creators and talent agencies to remind them of the rules for using the social network.
Eric Han added that internal teams will monitor for signs that creators are being paid to post political content, and that the company will also rely on media and partner reports to find infringing posts and remove them. All other political videos, as long as they are unpaid, do not spread disinformation and comply with the application’s rules of use, are intended to remain in users’ threads.
Partnership with fact-checking organizations
TikTok is also launching a specific area in the application called “Elections center”, which will gather useful information for Internet users concerning polling stations, candidates and the election in general. “TikTok has partnered with leading fact-checking organizations to help assess the veracity of content posted in over 30 languages”, adds Eric Han. During a telephone interview with the press, the latter mentioned PolitiFact, Science Feedback and Lead Stories among these partners, reports the Bloomberg press agency.
TikTok released the new metrics after similar Meta and Twitter updates. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said on Tuesday put in place a procedure based on the same principles as the one adopted in 2020, and will prevent political advertisers from carrying new publications a week before the election. At the time, these procedures had not made it possible to completely stem the flood of false information which had spread at the time of the announcement of the results, nor to prevent the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Last week, Twitter also shared of its policy of moderation ahead of the mid-term elections. The social network plans to once again place labels in front of some misleading tweets as well as insert reliable information into users’ feeds.