As a global discovery platform, our priority is to protect our community as they discover, create, and connect with what matters to them on TikTok. Today we are sharing information about how we are preparing for the general election in Ethiopia, which is scheduled for June 1, 2026. This is part of our ongoing, year-round efforts to protect the integrity of our platform so that we can continue to provide a safe, authentic, and creative TikTok experience in Ethiopia.Our elections taskforce is already leading these efforts. It's made up of experts in platform integrity, cybersecurity, deceptive behaviours, misinformation, and election integrity. They work alongside advanced moderation technologies and local language moderators to enforce our rules and protect our community. Their work draws on our experience of safeguarding TikTok through more than 250 elections globally.Connecting people to reliable sources of informationWe believe that a better informed community is a safer community. We're launching an in-app Election Centre available in Amharic in collaboration with the National Election Board of Ethiopia. This will make it easy to find reliable information about voting, key dates and other useful information about the elections, as well as tips about how to recognise misinformation. We will direct people to the Election Centre through notice tags on the search banner.We also aim to provide more context about the content and accounts that our community is interacting with - including 'verified' badges to signal that an account is authentic and labels for AI-generated content.Combating harmful misinformationWe welcome informed civic conversations, but draw the line at content that could mislead voters or cause significant real-world harm to individuals or society, no matter the intent of the person posting it. This includes misinformation that could prevent people from voting, interfere with elections, or encourage the unlawful disruption of results.To enforce these rules - in addition to removing violative content and accounts - we use a combination of advanced moderation technologies supported by thousands of safety professionals who work together to protect our community.In addition, when we find content that cannot be verified, we may label it, make it ineligible for recommendation, or prompt users to reconsider before sharing it. We work with more than 20 fact-checking organisations globally to assess the accuracy of content so that our teams can apply those policies accurately. This includes Code for Africa in Ethiopia.Countering deceptive behaviourTikTok is built on the joy of authentic experiences, and we strictly prohibit attempts to undermine our platform's integrity, mislead people, or manipulate our systems. We vigourously counter attempts to undermine authentic interactions on TikTok, and have teams who work full-time to disrupt deceptive behaviours. This includes covert influence operations, where networks of accounts misleadingly work together in an attempt to influence public discussion on important social issues. We report these network disruptions regularly in our Transparency Centre. We also prohibit impersonation or attempts to artificially boost content through fake engagement such as bot networks.Promoting responsible and transparent AI-generated contentTo protect our community from being misled, we require creators to label realistic AI-generated content (AIGC). This includes a labelling toggle for creators and C2PA Content Credentials that enables us to identify AIGC made on other platforms. We also recently announced that we'll begin testing invisible watermarks that help us label AI-generated content even more reliably - even if it has been downloaded or altered on other platforms.Harmful AIGC is not allowed, even if labelled. That includes AIGC that falsely depicts public figures making an endorsement, being endorsed, or being bullied or harassed.Prohibiting political advertisingWe've long prohibited paid political advertising on TikTok because we don't believe it's conducive to authentic and creative experiences. Accounts belonging to governments, politicians or political parties are not allowed to use advertising or monetisation features, and are subject to additional dedicated rules given the public interest role they play in civic processes.While candidates, political parties, and any other advertisers remain prohibited from promoting election-related content through ads, we do make an exception for official entities overseeing elections. For example, we allow electoral management bodies to run ads with essential voter information such as how to vote, where to register, and other participation details.We are constantly working to maintain the integrity of our platform, especially during elections. In Ethiopia we'll continue to invest to stay ahead of potential threats while continuing to make it easy to find reliable sources of information for those engaging with election content on our app. We also plan to publish updates about our work in this space in our Global Election Integrity Hub in the lead up to the election.
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