TikTok Wants to Restrict Political Influence

The Chinese-based social network tries to cut the influence that the political branch has over it. They want to decrease the number of political ads. Moreover, they are ready to refuse the donations made by politicians to the social network in order to stay unbiased.

TikTok is trying to limit the political influence inside the app. They implement specific restrictions on the accounts of politicians or related to political campaigns. Moreover, TikTok plans to remove the donations that political parties provide to them. There will be no specific ad tools for each political group. The company wants to go even further and put a sign on each political party, government representative, and politician. Their profiles will be verified in a specific way so other users will not get confused.

Several days ago TikTok confirmed this information. They released an official statement about this decision. Now users who are watching content released by any political party or politician will know that they are watching. According to TikTok's statement, this verification will help politicians too, since users will know that the account is authentic and it belongs to the person who says it is. This way politicians may gain the trust and spread information from their direct networks.

The new option will be available in the US in the first place. There are upcoming midterm elections and TikTok believes that the community deserves total honesty from political parties. Apart from that, the biggest social network in the world wants to provide ad restrictions on accounts related to the political field. The number of political ads will be decreased.

What do you think about the measure TikTok provides? Do you believe it will help to avoid misinformation about political parties? Express your thoughts in the comments.