TikTok joins EU's fight against fake news

TikTok is to become the latest platform to join the EU's fight against fake news after CEO Kevin Mayer pledged to do more in a call with Thierry Breton.

Breton, the EU's digital chief, tweeted that he had a "good conversation" with Mayer stating:

Good conversation with Kevin Mayer, CEO of #TikTok

Entertaining millions, TikTok has a role to play against #disinformation, especially in the fight (COVID-19)

I invite major platforms to subscribe to the EU #CodeOfPractice to address the spread of fake news & improve transparency.

As Reuters reports:

Breton in the last two months has held video conferences with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to promote his campaign against fake news and other issues.

In a news conference today, the EU's VP for values and transparency, Vera Jourova, revealed that TikTok would be joining the EU's voluntary code of conduct to help combat fake news. It joins Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Mozilla.

The news follows calls from the EU for companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to report monthly to the EU on its fight against fake news. Concern has been raised over the impact of fake news and misinformation on the economy, as well as the health of democracy and indeed, public health. It emerged that German citizens' support for vaccination had fallen by 20% over the course of two months.