TikTok to ramp up fight against fake news, covert influence ahead of EU elections

ByteDance-owned social media platform TikTok said on Wednesday it will ramp up its fight against fake news and covert influence operations in the run-up to European Parliament elections in June with a local language app in all 27 countries. Tiktok said the individual local language “election centres” build on work it first started in 2021, which accelerated last year when Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain went to the polls.

The app is designed to better inform Europeans about the electoral process. Governments and politicians around the world are concerned about the spread of misinformation and the use of AI-generated deepfakes to influence elections and especially the role of social media platforms.