Tik Tok will launch a local language election center in the app for each of the 27 EU member states. Here Romanians will find information about where and how they can vote, how to recognize misinformation and how to report content that does not follow the rules.
How Tik Tok will be used in the election campaign – Photo Archive
Each country in the EU will have an Election Center on TikTok that will provide information about the elections. The ByteDance-owned app will work alongside local election commissions and civil society organizations. More than 6,000 people will moderate content in the languages of European countries, the company announced.
Specifically, moderators will detect and remove disinformation, covert propaganda campaigns, and other content or behavior that may be amplified during the election period. More than two billion dollars will be invested by the company globally in this regard, according to Agerpres.
“We are proud to co-chair the Choices Working Group of the Disinformation Code of Practice and will continue to engage with experts in the region, including our European Security Advisory Board, to ensure our approach evolves to address challenges or threats emergent”, Tik Tok representatives said last week.
Almost a third of the parliamentarians in the European Parliament use Tik Tok, reports Reuters. In fact, the European Parliament will use the application in the upcoming election campaign, even though the EU institutions banned employees from using the application on work phones or computers last year, due to cyber security issues, writes Euractiv.
The election campaign on Tik Tok, in Romania
And Romanians prefer the news presented on TikTok, shows a study that places our country in the top of the states in terms of news consumption on TikTok (16%), 10% above the average, according to Mediastandard. The ranking is completed by countries such as Bulgaria (12%), Poland (11%) and Hungary (9%). The Chinese app is used by 20 percent of 18-24-year-olds for news and 14 percent of 25-34-year-olds, according to the source cited earlier.
In our country, more than 7.58 million users over the age of 18 were using Tik Tok in 2023, according to datareportal.com. Thus, the application reached almost 38% of Romania's population and 42% of internet users in our country. More than 60 percent of Tik Tok users are over 25, according to the company that owns the app. Tik Tok is also preferred by many politicians for promotion. Among them, Diana Sosoacă or George Simion. A report cited by Europa Liberă shows that young Romanians feel unrepresented by politicians, have a low level of education, are not interested in politics, and trust in the institutions and politicians representing the Romanian state is decreasing. Under these conditions, they become easy targets for politicians promoting extremist messages on social networks.
How will the electoral center be accessed?
Under these conditions, 167 people will moderate the content in Romanian, but they “they are not only responsible for election-related topics, but cover a wide range of topics“, according to a Tik Tok representative.
“The Electoral Center will connect our community with official information about European and Romanian parliamentary elections from reliable sources and will include details on, for example, how and where people can vote, how to spot disinformation and how to report content that breaks the rules. We collaborate with electoral commissions and fact-checking organizations,” said a TikTok representative.
Our country's local election hub will be accessible when people search for election information or click on election-related video tags.
