TikTok Refreshes US Election Center as Ban Looms (2024)

TikTok has updated its go-to area for the US Election, promising tools to ensure users can access “reliable information”.

The TikTok US Election Center is now offering a wider range of resources to help users thanks to a partnership with nonprofitDemocracy Works.

The update comes as TikTok continues to fight its US ban, which will come into effect on January 19th, 2025 if it doesn’t sell its US operations.

TikTok Trusted Information

In a statement, the social media platform revealed that it will invest “more than $2 billion in trust and safety this year” with a focus on election integrity.

The Election Center launched in January and has been viewed more than seven million times since then. It includes voting FAQs and, from November, will offer real time election results from global newswire, The Associated Press.

TikTok also announced partnership with MediaWise to lay out the common approaches used to spread misinformation including foreign influence attempts; hate speech and misleading AI-generated content. To support users, there will be videos on how to use TikTok’s safety tools. Videos in Spanish are set to follow.

The company has created an internal US Elections Integrity Advisory Group to oversee operations. This team of “experts in elections and civic integrity, hate, violent extremism, and voter protection issues” will be “consulted regularly to provide insights and recommendations to optimize our elections integrity approach”, it shares.

The fight for TikTok’s future in the US continues

As Social Media Today reports though, this “seems like a lot for an app that’s looking increasingly likely to beforced out of the US either way”.

After all, just as the US Election is approaching so is the deadline for TikTok’s parent company to hand over its US operations.

ByteDance is fighting a decision by the US Government that it must sell its US operations to a US company or the app will be shut down for its 170 million US users.

That said, the January deadline could be pushed back by legal challenges or delayed by 90-days if a sale is looking likely or in progress.

A prospective change in leadership in the US could also change the outcome although the former president had previously not been a fan of TikTok. Trumps currently claims he is “for TikTok” so who knows.

Why is TikTok Facing a Ban?

The ban comes after allegations that ByteDance employees in China have shared “significant amounts of restricted US user data”.

The US Justice Department argued in its heavily redacted filing that this data, which could include “views on gun control, abortion, and religion”, is not fenced off from the Chinese Government.

The US Government says that this is a national security concern and is not going to accept a solution unless it feels this flow of information has been dammed once and for all.

A proposed team up with Oracle has been thrown out for just this reason as the Justice Department said it was unworkable that Oracle would be able to oversee TikTok’s source code. It also stated that ByteDance wouldn’t be transparent with any US partner so the risk would still be there.

ByteDance is fighting its impending doom and is calling on the US Constitution to do so. In a post on X, it says: “Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side. The TikTok ban would silence 170 million Americans’ voices, violating the First Amendment.”

TikTok has already been banned in several other countries including India and Nepal. Other nations like Australia, Canada, UK, France and Denmark have banned its use on government devices but haven’t gone for an all-out ban…yet.