US Government Partners With CCP-Linked Tik Tok To Combat Election Misinformation

TikTok, a social media giant with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), announced Wednesday it is partnering with a U.S. government organization and ramping up efforts to combat “harmful misinformation” on the app in preparation for the November midterm elections.

TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has faced scrutiny and ban threats from regulators and U.S. politicians for its potential ties to the CCP; Chinese employees at ByteDance reportedly enjoy full access to data from U.S. devices, according to a June BuzzFeed investigation, and many ex-Chinese state media employees work or have worked at the company.

The platform said that it may ban users who post content that spreads “misinformation” about how to vote or threatens election officials; it will also partner with Federal Voting Assistance Program, a U.S. government organization that assists overseas voters, according to a company press release.

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The short-form video app will also prevent content creators from posting political advertisements, expanding upon the company’s original 2019 ban on paid political messaging and preventing political action committees from circumventing TikTok standards by paying an individual, according to a company press release.

TikTok is also launching an in-app election center to inform its users of voting information; users will be able to access state-by-state election information, provided by TikTok’s partner the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), according to the press release. NASS will provide information on how to register to vote, how to vote by mail and where to find polling sites.

TikTok is also working alongside non-governmental voter assistance organizations that target specific demographics and the Restore Your Vote program, which will assist voters with prior convictions, as well as the Campus Vote Project, which will help college students vote.

In order to bolster its efforts to monitor content in time for the midterms elections, TikTok will collaborate with independent intelligence firms and authorized fact-checking groups to evaluate videos and respond to misinformation. The firm said that these measures were spurred on by the lessons it learned from the 2020 election.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Free Press.

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