Back in July, TikTok made some big promises about how the platform would safeguard its users from mis- and disinformation during the German elections - from a fact-checking partnership with a big news organisation to correctly labeling political content. We wanted to make sure they were keeping true to their word. So we checked.
What we found is concerning.
TikTok is falling behind on its promises to keep its platform free of political misinformation during the German election. It started fact-checking too late, it’s not correctly labeling political content, and we even uncovered fake TikTok accounts pretending to be German political institutions.
In just a few weeks, millions of people will vote for a new German government. With 11 million Germans on TikTok, it’s absolutely crucial that the platform gets its house in order. There's still time.
You can help make this happen:
Sign the petition to call on TikTok to follow through on its election promises.
How badly is TikTok failing? Mislabelling election content, failing to shutdown fake political accounts, and dragging its heels on fact-checking. Read more in our report: TikTok isn’t taking its role in maintaining election integrity seriously enough.
It’s not too late to turn things around, so, we’ve made these recommendations to TikTok:
- Invest more resources to ensure that election-related videos are labelled accurately;
- Enforce the Community Guidelines more effectively to prevent fake accounts proliferating.
- Release more information about which content and accounts are removed during election season. Invest in better data access tools for researchers to enable oversight by external researchers and institutions.
Read more about our findings and recommendations to TikTok in this report, and add your name to our call to TikTok to immediately follow through on its election pledges.