TikTok Reinforces Commitment to a Safe South Africa Election

As a global discovery platform, millions of people in South Africa come to TikTok to discover what they love, connect with communities that share their interests and express themselves. During important civic moments like elections, this might include learning about political candidates, policy debates and the results of an election. As they do so, our focus is on securing their experience with additional safety and cybersecurity measures that build on our everyday efforts to keep our platform safe.Today we are sharing more information about how we are preparing for the South Africa local government elections on 4 November 2026. With experience of securing our platform through more than 250 elections worldwide, our work starts well before voting begins. Our dedicated South African local elections taskforce, made up of cybersecurity, misinformation and integrity teams, is already working alongside advanced moderation technology and external partners, such as fact-checking organisations and electoral commissions.Connecting people to reliable informationWe help our community find reliable information about elections. Our in-app Election Centre, created with Electoral Commission (IEC), has information about when and how to vote, and tips for spotting misinformation. The Election Centre also connects users to our new AI media literacy hub, providing the South African community with guidance on how to identify AI-generated content, use AI responsibly when creating content, and understand how TikTok supports safe and transparent AI experiences on the platform. People can find the Election Centre when they search for or view election-related content.We also use labels and badges to help people better understand what they are viewing, for example whether an account is verified or a video was created with AI. Since introducing our AI content label, more than 3 billion videos on TikTok have been tagged through a mix of creators using the AIGC toggle and technologies like C2PA and invisible watermarking. All realistic AIGC on TikTok must be labelled.Countering misinformation and misleading AI-generated contentAlongside this, we take action against misinformation and misleading AI-generated content, even if labelled. We remove content that shares false information about how and when to vote, and we ban accounts that try to deceive people by pretending to be a politician or a news publication.Sometimes a claim can't be immediately verified, for example while votes are still being counted after an election. In those cases, we add an 'unverified information' label so viewers are aware, ask people to reconsider before they share the video with others, and stop the content from being recommended to the For You feed.To help us ensure information about elections on TikTok is reliable, we partner with more than 20 IFCN-accredited fact-checking organisations globally. They assess the accuracy of content so that we can accurately apply our rules. In South Africa we're partnering with Code for Africa. Between January and March 2026, we removed approximately 90,000 videos for violating policies on civic and election integrity, misinformation, and harmfully misleading AI-generated content in South Africa. More than 99% of that content was removed before it was reported to us.Defending our platform against deceptive behaviourWe don’t allow deceptive behaviours on our platform whether that’s fake accounts or covert networks trying to manipulate public debate. Our cybersecurity and threat disruption teams use advanced technology and third-party intelligence to find and remove these attempts to mislead our community. We share regular updates in our Transparency Centre, including our work against fake accounts and engagement and details of covert influence operations we have disrupted.Our approach to political contentGovernments and politicians are joining TikTok to connect with our community. Our rules apply to everything on TikTok, and we have some extra guardrails for these accounts because of their role in public debate. These include:Dedicated rules for how we treat their accounts if they break our rulesMandatory two-step verification when they login to TikTok so that others can't get into their account without permissionNo access to advertising or monetisation featuresWe've also long prohibited paid political advertising by anyone on TikTok, including creators being paid to promote a politician or a political party. We do, however, allow official entities overseeing elections, for example if they want to raise awareness about how and when to vote. We regularly engage with with candidates, elected officials, political parties, creators and agencies about our rules so they can confidently follow them through the election cycle and beyond.As we head toward this election, our focus is to keep our platform and our community secure. We'll continue to use advanced technology, experts in safety and security, and intelligence from local partners to help stay ahead of new threats and ensure our community can continue to create, discover and connect on TikTok.