As South Africa gets set for its democratic elections on May 29, TikTok has taken steps to protect the fairness of the elections, recognising that social media greatly influences public opinion and political discussions.
TikTok recently showed off its new ways to monitor content at the Trust & Transparency summit in Singapore, aiming to keep elections fair and build trust in democratic processes. They discussed the need for tech companies and lawmakers to work against online misinformation.
The company confirmed that the platform also operates around-the-clock moderation, using sensitive word lists to detect potentially harmful content in captions, hashtags, comments, and profile bios.
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TikTok Detects Harmful Content
TikTok takes off about 2 million pieces of content daily, with 77% detected by AI and 23% by human moderators. AI quickly finds harmful or inappropriate content by looking for dangerous objects, alcohol, extremist symbols, and smoking in videos. However, AI can miss complex or unclear harmful content. Human moderators can also make mistakes or miss details, so harmful content might stay on TikTok despite the two-tiered approach.
To better protect users, TikTok needs to keep improving AI systems and train human moderators well to spot and remove harmful content quickly. Combining AI and human efforts helps shield users from harmful or inappropriate content, and ongoing updates are essential in this fight.
TikTok’s Election Center
TikTok has introduced an election centre within its app to help South Africans get accurate information about elections from the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC). They work with many fact-checking groups and government agencies to ensure reliable information.
TikTok removes many misleading videos quickly, with over 96% taken down proactively and 86% within 24 hours. They also work closely with local law enforcement and regulatory bodies. Only the government and verified agencies can request content removal on the platform.
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The team at TikTok said that their law enforcement teams handle illegal activities found on the app. However, they often need court orders to access user information to protect privacy.
For election transparency, TikTok uses the Safety Enforcement Tool. This is a secure, central system for submitting and reviewing requests to take down content. According to the company, only verified agencies and the government can request content removal.
Protecting our platform’s integrity, especially during elections, is a serious responsibility,” TikTok spokesperson Fortune Mgwili-Sibanda said. “We’re proud to be a place that brings people together, and we work hard to keep harmful misinformation off our platform.