Happy Earth Day! TikTok is making moves to ban all climate change denial content on its platform.
Starting April 21, TikTok will “begin to ramp up enforcement” of its new climate change misinformation policy. All climate-related content searches will be directed to “authoritative information” sourced in partnership with the United Nations, the Daily Beast reported(opens in a new tab). According to a blog post from TikTok(opens in a new tab), the policy means that any content that “undermines well-established scientific consensus” about climate change will be removed from the platform.
“Trust and authenticity fuel the creativity of TikTok—and we believe we have an important role to play in empowering informed climate discussions on our platform,” the blog post reads.
This effort comes about a month after TikTok announced it was updating its community guidelines(opens in a new tab) in order to add new policies regarding artificial intelligence, climate misinformation, civil and election integrity, and age restrictions. It also comes about a year after a report revealed that TikTok is a hub for climate change misinformation(opens in a new tab) — simply by searching “climate change,” users would be fed a whole host of results related to climate change denial.
All the while, TikTok is under scrutiny. Lawmakers in more than a dozen countries have implemented various bans of the app due to fears that TikTok is giving user data to the Chinese government, and one U.S. state passed a ban on downloading of the app.
