TikTok will hold talks with influencers and publish educational content on the platform to make sure rules on paid content around elections are “abundantly clear” during the US mid-terms.

The video-sharing app has a longstanding policy which bans paid political advertising.
Its community guideline prohibit content including election misinformation, harassment - including that directed towards election workers - hateful behaviour, and violent extremism.

The company said that during elections in 2020 it identified educating online creators about the rules around paid influencer content to be a challenge.

TikTok said that if it discovers political content has been paid for without being properly disclosed, it will be “promptly removed” from the platform.

It is also introducing a new Elections Center designed to connect people who engage with election content with what it describes as “authoritative information and sources” in more than 45 languages, including English and Spanish. Through the centre, TikTok users can learn how and where to vote through information provided by the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and who and what is on their ballot from Ballotpedia.

"We saw historic youth and student voter turnout in the 2018 and 2020 elections,” said Mike Burns, national director of Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project. “We have also seen the astounding growth of TikTok over that same time. Fair Elections Center's Campus Vote Project is excited to work with TikTok again this year to provide young people and students the information they need to navigate registering and voting, perhaps for the first time. Particularly on a platform they are already using to connect about the things that are important to them and their peers."

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