TikTok Collaborates With Bawaslu And KPU To Strengthen Efforts To Maintain Integrity In The 2024 Pilkada

Photo: Special

JAKARTA - The leading short video distribution platform, TikTok is again working with the Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) and the General Election Commission (KPU) of the Republic of Indonesia to continue its commitment to maintaining the integrity of general elections.

This time, TikTok held the "Jaga #SalingJaga TikTok Indonesia with Bawaslu and KPU" which invited members of the two Election Organizing agencies to understand various TikTok policies, including how members can use TikTok to protect the running of the 2024 Pilkada. Members are also invited to understand various reporting schemes contained on the platform, including the way TikTok enforces policies against content that violate the 2024 Regional Head Election (Pilkada 2024) rules.

The workshop, which was held offline and online, was attended by more than 300 participants from the Bawaslu and KPU offices in 37 provinces and 508 regencies/cities in Indonesia. On the same occasion, TikTok also showed the 2024 Pilkada Guideline Center, a special website in the application that provides credible and official information related to the 2024 Pilkada implementation process, the results of collaboration with Bawaslu and KPU.

This initiative further strengthens TikTok's commitment to maintaining platform integrity while protecting users from malicious misinformation and disinformation, as well as preventing misuse of platforms during the 2024 Pilkada period which will be held simultaneously throughout Indonesia on November 27, 2024.

"We really appreciate the cooperation and support that has been provided by Bawaslu and KPU since last year until now. Even though TikTok is an entertainment platform, we are committed to protecting election integrity and maintaining user security through various proactive efforts that have a real impact. One of them is the 20242 Election Guideline Center which we launched in collaboration with Bawaslu and KPU and has been accessed by more than 55 million users, "said Firry Wahid, Head of Public Policy and Government Relations, TikTok Indonesia, in his statement, Monday, October 14.

"We are very excited to be able to collaborate again with Bawaslu and the KPU to fight the spread of misinformation and disinformation in the digital space to maintain the integrity of the 2024 Pilkada," he added.

At the same workshop, participants were invited to understand policies for Government Accounts, Politicians, and Political Parties (GPPPA) which prohibit GPPPA accounts from providing or receiving any money through the TikTok monetization feature, raising funds for campaigns, as well as accessing advertising features on the platform.

Participants were also given an explanation of TikTok's policy of banning political advertising, including paid advertising and creators paid to create content with political brand elements.

In addition to studying the limits applied to government accounts, politicians, and political parties, workshop participants are also given an understanding of the process of moderating layered content involving technology and humans on TikTok.

TikTok representatives also explained about Community Guidelines, including how moderation teams enforce policies related to misinformation content, as well as various rules set for editing media and artificial intelligence (AI)-based content, misleading behavior, unoriginal content, fraudulent and spam actions, to covert influence operations.

TikTok also provides special reporting channels for Bawaslu and civil organizations such as the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) to help mark content suspected of violating Election regulations and TikTok Community Guidelines for review by the TikTok moderation team.

In the 2024 February election, this channel has supported TikTok in removing 17,195 videos that violated misinformation policies, 38,002 videos that violated civil policy and election integrity, and 3,359 videos that violated synthetic media policies and manipulated media during the period 28 November 2023 to 15 February 2024.

Representatives of Bawaslu and KPU who were also present at the workshop gave appreciation to TikTok for the various proactive efforts that had been made during the 2024 General Election.

"We appreciate TikTok Indonesia for holding this workshop and sharing its policies together to maintain the Pilkada. Let's use this opportunity to share as much accurate information about the Pilkada as possible so that it can be distributed to the wider community and prevent the spread of hoaxes and misinformation," said Lolly Suhenty, Commissioner of Bawaslu RI.

"The success of holding elections and regional elections is not only the responsibility of the KPU or other government institutions, but also requires the role of the community and digital platforms as one of the sources of information that is present quickly for the community. We welcome various initiatives carried out by TikTok, especially in maintaining the integrity of elections and regional elections and fighting the dangers of misinformation and disinformation in the digital realm," said Betty Epsilon Idroos, Commissioner of the Indonesian KPU.

Apart from collaboration with governments and civil organizations, TikTok also continues to echo the #SalingJaga campaign which invites all parties to jointly create a safe and healthy digital space. This campaign also reminds the importance of netizens to fully control the information they make, consume, or spread in the online realm.

"Collaboration is the key to countering the spread of misinformation in the digital space. Therefore, we encourage all parties to #Keep the security of users and the correctness of information in the digital space, to jointly provide experiences of creating and sharing content that is safe and positive," Firry concluded.