Tiktok launched the electoral center
Tiktok strengthens its activity to protect the platform by launching the electoral center dedicated to the Romanian elections, through a new media campaign and through continuous collaboration with over 20 fact-return partners, according to a statement issued on Friday.
‘As the next round of elections in Romania approaches, Tiktok announces today a series of updates that strengthen the continuous activity to protect the platform and connect the community to information about trust choices. Tiktok gives people the opportunity to discover and connect with the content and creators who inspire them. During electoral periods, Tiktok works continuously to protect the platform and maintain a civilized space, in which users can express themselves freely and build communities. Thousands of Specialists in Trust & Safety and Security have protected Tiktok in over 200 elections around the world over the past five years, including those in Germany and Croatia, as well as other elections already in Europe this year. Today, Tiktok strengthens this activity by launching the Electoral Center dedicated to the Romanian elections, through a new media education campaign and through continuous collaboration with over 20 fact-return partners’, states in the statement.
Thus, to support the community in accessing official information on these elections, Tiktok launched an electoral center last week, available to users through the search function and banners displayed at the relevant content content. The electoral center provides essential information, important data and directs users to the website of the Permanent Electoral Authority. It also includes information on Tiktok policies and media education tips for creating, distracting and interacting with content, developed in partnership with Funky Citizens.
At the same time, the platform continues to invest in media education initiatives to give the community members the necessary skills to critically analyze the online content, identify misinformation and access trust sources.
‘Before the presidential elections in Romania, Tiktok launches a media education campaign in collaboration with a number of important media partners in Romania to encourage critical thinking and help the community distinguish between facts and fiction when visualizing content online. During the campaign, media partners have made a series of educational videos that explain how users can recognize and avoid misinformation, offer them the tools needed to critically evaluate the online content and guide them to official sources. These videos are available to the community in Romania through the Electoral Center and will be actively promoted to ensure visibility during the electoral period ‘, the statement points out.
According to the quoted source, the development of the electoral center is only part of the wider activity to protect the integrity of Tiktok. This activity is led by the working group dedicated to the elections, made up of cyber security experts, misleading activities, misinformation and electoral integrity. The working group coordinates the activity to protect the platform, using both advanced moderation and human moderation technologies. They continue to rigorously protect the Tiktok community, so that people safely express themselves on topics that matter to them, applying a number of measures meant to ensure the compliance with detailed policies in the global hub for the integrity of the elections.
The platform actively collaborates with all the relevant authorities in the context of the elections, providing them with dedicated channels through which they can report the content that they consider can violate either the rules of the Tiktok community or the regulations in force. In the preparation for the following elections, it has further expanded access to these instruments by adding government institutions and additional local specialized institutions.
‘This initiative increases transparency and, at the same time, strengthens the firm commitment of Tiktok to collaborate closely with the local regulatory authorities. It is also based on the activity that Tiktok is already carrying out, to collaborate with local institutions such as fact-checkers and NGOs, which he added to the Tiktok community partners channel. Moreover, Tiktok works within the quick response system based on the Code of conduct on misinformation of the European Union, which helps to address the urgent challenges that could endanger the integrity of the electoral process. Tiktok works continuously to maintain the integrity of the platform, especially during the elections. In Romania, Tiktok will continue to invest to prevent potential threats and to facilitate access to safe information sources for those who interact with the electoral content in the application, also collaborating with the national and regional authorities, ‘the source said.
