The popular video hosting platform TikTok, which has some 125 million users in Indonesia, is working with the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) and civil groups to combat rampant fake news and hoaxes ahead of next year’s elections.

Election watchdogs have previously voiced concerns over the proliferation of election misinformation on social media, fearing that it may hurt the integrity of the 2024 polls, undermine trust in the electoral process and deepen polarization among the public.

Anbar Jayadi, outreach and partnerships manager on TikTok Indonesia’s Trust & Safety team, said the platform was working with independent fact-checkers at the Jakarta office of Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency to help flag videos containing hoaxes.

"AFP helps our some 3,000 Indonesian content moderators when they face difficulties in identifying whether a video contains misinformation or fake news, since political contents are very nuanced and have a lot of contexts," Anbar told The Jakarta Post at a recent outreach event in Singapore.

“We want to strike a balance between preventing the spread of misinformation and providing a space where freedom of expression can thrive," she added.

According to Anbar, TikTok has also teamed up with Bawaslu, the election watchdog Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) and the nonprofit Indonesian Anti-Slander Society (Mafindo) to build a database of political narratives used in fake news, so the platform's content moderators can more easily identify hoaxes.

The platform is also prioritizing reports on fake news from Bawaslu, Perludem and Mafindo, each of which has an internal content moderating team.

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