On Wednesday, Aug. 17, TikTok announced that its midterms Elections Center would go live on the social media platform in the US, where it will be available to users in more than 40 languages, including Spanish and English.
TikTok's Elections Center
According to TechCrunch, the new feature will allow users to access state-by-state election information, including details on registering to vote, voting via mail, finding your polling station, and more.
The feature is provided by TikTok partner, the National Association of Secretaries of State, the NASS.
TikTok also recently partnered with Ballotpedia to allow users to see who's on their ballot and is working with various voting assistance programs, including the Center for Democracy in Deaf America, the Federal Voting Assistance Program, the Campus Vote Project, and Restore Your Vote, to provide content for specific groups.
According to The New York Times, the AP will continue to provide the latest election results in the Elections Center.
The Elections Center can be viewed through different places inside the app, including clicking a banner in the Friends tab, clicking the labels on the video, and via hashtags.
TikTok also detailed its broader plan to combat election misinformation on the platform, building on lessons it learned from the 2020 election cycle.
For starters, the platform launched an in-app Election Center in 2020. It is also ramping up its efforts to educate the community about the rules related to election content.
This will include launching an educational series on the Creator Portal and TikTok and briefings with agencies and creators to clarify the rules.
Much of how the platform will address election misinformation has not changed.
Monitoring Violations
As for the policy side, TikTok will monitor for content violating the company guidelines. This includes misinformation about how to vote, harassment of election workers, deep fakes that can harm the candidates, and incitement to violence.
Depending on the violation, the platform may remove the content or the user's account or ban them from the platform,
In addition, TikTok may redirect search terms or hashtags to its guidelines, as it did during the previous election cycle for the hashtags associated with words like "sharpiegate."
The company reiterated its decision to ban political ads on TikTok, which extends to ads paid for through its platform and to branded content posted by creators.
That means a political action committee could not work around TikTok policies to pay a creator to make a video advocating for their political position. Of course, just important as the policies themselves are the platform's ability to enforce them.
Also, TikTok said that it would use a combination of automated technology and Trust and Safety team people to help drive moderation decisions, according to 9to5Mac.
The Trust and Safety teams can only go so far. Technology can be trained to identify keywords linked with conspiracy theories, but only a human would be able to understand if a video is promoting that conspiracy theory or working to debunk it.
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Written by Sophie Webster
