February 4, 2025
Photos from the event:
As part of its ongoing responsibility to foster a safe and informed digital space, TikTok has rolled out comprehensive programs to support election integrity, digital literacy, and community safety. In partnership with Philippine institutions such as COMELEC, NAMFREL, and LENTE, TikTok has taken a strong stand to protect the democratic process—removing harmful misinformation, preventing political manipulation, and equipping the public with tools for media literacy. Below is a full summary of TikTok’s initiatives and guiding principles in ensuring the safety of its platform, especially as the 2025 Philippine Midterm Elections approach:
• We protect the integrity of elections by removing misinformation about civic and electoral processes, banning political ads, and taking action against content and accounts that spread hate or incite violence.
◦ Misinformation: We do not allow misinformation about civic and electoral processes, regardless of intent. Our 21 global fact-checking partners help review and assess the accuracy of content across more than 50 languages.
▪ Learn more about how we combat misinformation here.
▪ Learn more about our fact-checking program here.
◦ Covert Influence Operations: We are highly vigilant against actors who seek to use deceptive behaviors to try to affect civic processes and work diligently to identify and remove covert influence operations, which we report quarterly.
▪ Learn more about how we do that here.
◦ AI: We don’t allow manipulated content that could be misleading, including AI-generated content (AIGC) of public figures if it depicts them endorsing a political view. We require creators to label any realistic AIGC and launched a first-of-its-kind tool to help people do this. We continue to improve our policies and detection as the technology evolves while partnering with experts on media literacy content for our community.
▪ Learn more about how we do that at the bottom section here.
◦ Hate: We do not allow violent and hateful organizations or individuals on our platform, and prohibit incitement to violence, hateful behavior, hate speech, and hateful ideologies.
• We empower our community by working with COMELEC, NAMFREL, and LENTE to provide access to authoritative information through our in-app Philippine Election Center, by conducting sessions with experts from civil society organizations and election watchdogs, and by launching #ThinkTwice, our digital literacy campaign.
• As we learn more, we do more, which is why we continually look for ways in which we can help maintain the integrity of elections through stronger policies and enforcement strategies. • Learn more about our Election Integrity Work: Protecting the Integrity of the 2025 Philippine Midterm Elections
• Learn more about our partnership with the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC): TikTok Launches In-app Center to protect platform during elections and keep its Philippine community safe
• We launched our #ThinkTwice Digital Literacy Campaign to encourage our Filipino community to think critically about the content they’re creating and sharing, to educate on our Community Guidelines, and to remind them that they can play their part in keeping the community safe and positive by reporting content to us through our easy-to-use in-app reporting feature.
• Join the cause by posting your own videos encouraging your followers to #ThinkTwice. Tag us at @tiktokphilippines and use the hashtag #ThinkTwicePH.
• At TikTok, we encourage our users to have the freedom and the opportunity to express themselves authentically and creatively in a safe and positive environment • We welcome the respectful expression of different viewpoints, and want to ensure that anyone can share their voice without the fear of being degraded or bullied. • More than 40,000 people globally work alongside innovative technology to keep our platform safe and welcoming.
• While we are a global company, we take a localized approach to content moderation and regulatory compliance, gaining a greater understanding of local dialects, contents and concerns through partnerships with local stakeholders.
• Content creator Mona Magno Veluz sits as the Philippine member of our Safety Advisory Council. She brings a unique perspective as a Creator member of the Safety Advisory Council because of her rich experience in the social impact field, coupled with her passion and candidness when it comes to online safety.
• In the Philippines, from July to September 2024, we removed over 4.5 million videos for violating our Community Guidelines, 99.7% of which were proactively removed and 98% of which were removed within 24 hours.