QRE 18.1.3
Relevant Signatories will outline how they design their products, policies, or processes, to reduce the impressions and engagement with Disinformation whether through recommender systems or through other systemic approaches, and/or to increase the visibility of authoritative information.
We take action to prevent and mitigate the spread of inaccurate, misleading, or false misinformation that may cause significant harm to individuals or the public at large. We do this by removing content and accounts that violate our rules, investing in media literacy and connecting our community to authoritative information, and partnering with external experts. Our I&A policies make clear that we do not allow activities that may undermine the integrity of our platform or the authenticity of our users. We remove content or accounts that involve misleading information that causes significant harm or, in certain circumstances, reduce the prominence of content. The types of misinformation we may make
ineligible For You feed are
set out in our Community Guidelines.
- Misinformation
- Conspiracy theories that are unfounded and claim that certain events or situations are carried out by covert or powerful groups, such as "the government" or a "secret society".
- Moderate harm health misinformation, such as an unproven recommendation for how to treat a minor illness.
- Repurposed media, such as showing a crowd at a music concert and suggesting it is a political protest.
- Misrepresenting authoritative sources, such as selectively referencing certain scientific data to support a conclusion that is counter to the findings of the study.
- Unverified claims related to an emergency or unfolding event.
- Potential high-harm misinformation while it is undergoing a fact-checking review.
- Civic and Election Integrity
- Unverified claims about an election, such as a premature claim that all ballots have been counted or tallied.
- Statements that significantly misrepresent authoritative civic information, such as a false claim about the text of a parliamentary bill.
- Fake Engagement
- Content that tricks or manipulates others as a way to increase gifts, or engagement metrics, such as "like-for-like" promises or other false incentives for engaging with content.
To enforce our CGs at scale, we use a combination of automated review and human moderation. While some misinformation can be enforced through technology alone—for example, repetitions of previously debunked content—misinformation evolves quickly and is highly nuanced. Assessing harmful misinformation requires additional context and assessment by our misinformation moderators who have enhanced training, expertise and tools to identify such content, including our global repository of previously fact-checked claims from the IFCN-accredited fact-checking partners and direct access to our fact-checking partners where appropriate.
Our network of independent fact-checking partners do not moderate content directly on TikTok, but assess whether a claim is true, false, or unsubstantiated so that our moderators can take action based on our Community Guidelines. We incorporate fact-checker input into our broader content moderation efforts through:
- Proactive insight reports that flag new and evolving claims they’re seeing across the internet. This helps us detect harmful misinformation and anticipate misinformation trends on our platform.
- A repository of previously fact-checked claims to help misinformation moderators make swift and accurate decisions.
Working with our network of independent fact-checking organisations enables TikTok to identify and take action on misinformation and connect our community to authoritative information around important events. This is an important part of our overall strategy to counter misinformation. There are a number of ways in which we do this, including launching information centers with resources from authoritative third-parties in response to global or local events, adding public service announcements (PSAs) on hashtags or search pages, or labelling content related to a certain topic to prompt our community to seek out authoritative information.
We are also committed to civic and election integrity and mitigating the spread of false or misleading content about an electoral or civic process. We work with national electoral commissions, media literacy bodies and civil society organisations to ensure we are providing our community with accurate up-to-date information about an election through our in-app election information centers, election guides, search interventions and content labels.
