Author: Kevin Morgan, Head of Trust and Safety at TikTok Europe, Middle East & Africa


At TikTok, we want to equip our community with context and tools to assess content on our platform. For instance, labels are added to videos with unsubstantiated content. Blue check marks on accounts help viewers understand an account holder is who they say they are. Last year, we began to pilot adding labels on content from state-affiliated media, starting in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. In January 2023, we expanded this project to 40 additional markets globally. Today we're expanding our global state-affiliated media label to markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. This will help viewers better understand the sources behind content.

Our approach to state-affiliated media

Our state-affiliated media policy is to label accounts run by entities whose editorial output or decision-making process is subject to control or influence by a government. Our goal in labelling state-affiliated media is to ensure people have accurate, transparent, and actionable context when they engage with content from media accounts that may present the viewpoint of a government. We began our state-affiliated media pilot last year and have met with more than 60 media experts, political scientists, academics, and representatives from international organizations and civil society across North and South America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. We also consulted our content and Safety Advisory Councils and worked closely with a leading global media monitor to develop an independently validated methodology to guide our state-affiliated media labelling decisions.

The input we received from these stakeholders emphasized the importance of considering diverse political, legal, and cultural contexts related to news media. In addition, we received feedback that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to state-affiliated media, and supporting user education about the different ways that states seek to influence news and reporting is increasingly important. Based on this input, our policy considers state-controlled media, which we define as an entity where there is evidence of clear editorial control and decision-making by members of the state.


How we assess editorial independence from states

In evaluating editorial independence, we consider an organization's mission statement, editorial practices and safeguards, leadership and editorial governance, and its actual editorial decisions. We also apply additional scrutiny to entities that may be heavily reliant on state funding, either directly or through advertisements, loans, and subsidies. Some of the questions that we ask in categorizing include:

  • Is editorial independence part of the organization's mission statement?
  • Does the organization have a set of guidelines related to standards of journalistic conduct?
  • Are there any state affiliations within management or editorial leadership positions?
  • Has the organization transparently disclosed any state affiliations?
  • Is there evidence of the media outlet not upholding its editorial guidelines?
  • How has the entity handled issues of significant public interest regarding the government?

Based on our evaluation, we will then categorize an entity and apply a label to the account's profile and to its content.


Providing a path to appeal

Our team has spent a considerable amount of time from 2022 developing an objective methodology that can be consistently applied by our trust and safety team, which oversees state-affiliated media labelling decisions. At the same time, knowing there’s always an element of context required that can lead to occasional errors, we have an appeals process for entities who believe they've been incorrectly labelled as state-affiliated media. To appeal, an entity can submit additional information to indicate safeguards that ensure editorial independence. We'll evaluate the provided evidence, seek input from independent, authoritative experts, and remove the label if we find the entity does not meet our state-affiliated media criteria.


We'll continue to consider additional ways we can bring context to viewers on TikTok.