TIKTOK said on Wednesday (Feb 14) that 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.

The ByteDance-owned social media platform said the individual local language “election centres” build on work that it first started in 2021, which accelerated last year when Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain went to the polls.

These election centres are 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 artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes to influence elections, as well as the role of social media platforms.

Some 30 per cent of European parliament lawmakers use TikTok, the company said.

“Next month, we will launch a local language election centre in-app for each of the 27 individual European Union member states to ensure people can easily separate fact from fiction,” said Kevin Morgan, TikTok’s head of trust and safety for Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

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“Working with local electoral commissions and civil society organisations, these election centres will be a place where our community can find trusted and authoritative information.”

The company worked with news checkers to produce educational videos about the electoral process and misinformation via the election centres during national elections in previous years.

Morgan said TikTok, which currently works with nine fact-checking organisations in Europe, plans to expand its fact-checking network and launch nine additional media literacy campaigns this year. It will also introduce dedicated covert influence operations reports in the coming months to increase transparency and accountability. REUTERS