Why fact-checking political posts on TikTok is an uphill task

TikTok is one of the top five social media platforms in the world this year.

In Southeast Asia last year, 198 million people, about 29% of the region’s population, used TikTok. It is not an exaggeration to say the platform has become one of, if not the souk of ideas and opinions for the people in the region.

Like other interested scholars, my research team was also intrigued to look into TikTok. Specifically, we wanted to look at how information, including political misinformation and disinformation, flows on the platform. The distinction between the two forms of false information is that disinformation is intentionally, maliciously misleading.

During our eight months’ research, we found tracking political misinformation and disinformation on TikTok quite challenging. This was despite the fact the platform launched a fact-checking program in 2020 in partnership with independent fact-checking organisations that would “help review and assess the accuracy of content” on the platform.

Under this program, TikTok surfaces potential misinformation to its partners. It may include videos flagged by TikTok users for misinformation, or those related to Covid-19 or other topics “about which the spread of misleading information is common”.

However, we still find difficulties tracking misinformation and disinformation on the platform, such as fact-checking audiovisual content and identifying foreign languages and terms.

Fact-checking content

It is difficult to fact-check audiovisual content on TikTok.

To effectively track mis/disinformation, all content…

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