Ref. Ares(2021)5542493 - 09/09/2021
Ref. Ares(2022)4368529 - 14/06/2022
20.4.2021 – VPJ Meeting with
TikTok
The meeting between the Vice-President Věra Jourová and
TikTok
revolved
around three topics, namely measures against disinformation, strengthening the responsibility of
platforms and political advertising.
The responsibility of platforms was discussed in the light of Code of conduct on countering illegal hate
speech online, the proposed Digital Services Act and the European Democracy Action Plan, including the
revision of the Code of Practice on Disinformation. Vice-President Jourova welcomed TikTok’s efforts on
illegal hate speech online and on fighting COVID-19 related disinformation.
presented
TikTok’s Content Advisory Council as a way to increase transparency of the content moderation efforts
while remaining at top of new challenges such as deepfakes, cyberbullying or teen health issues.
also mentioned opening a European Public Transparency Centre in Dublin that should open up
the details of content moderation process to public. Vice-President Jourova showed interest in these
efforts and further emphasised the need to protect the freedom of expression.
The responsibility of the platforms was also discussed from the perspective of media literacy and
mitigation of adverse effects consumption of these new media can have especially on teenagers.
noted that TikTok is using its community to bring attention to media literacy, tech addiction and
cyberbullying.
As regards political advertising, TikTok disallowed it before US elections in November 2020. On the
question of the Vice-President whether it would be possible to run political advertising without profiling
and targeting
referred to TikTok’s advertising team.
Lastly, the Commission stressed the importance of going beyond the content moderation and address
algorithms, as well as open up for for research and oversight purposes.