Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
TikTok is establishing new moderation policies today to better protect its platform against misinformation, election interference, and other forms of manipulative content ahead of the 2020 election. The company, which is currently embroiled in an unprecedented acquisition negotiation with Microsoft following threats of a US ban, says it now explicitly bans deepfakes. Deepfakes are artificial intelligence-powered manipulations of audio and video designed to mislead people about something someone may have done or said.
“We’re adding a policy which prohibits synthetic or manipulated content that misleads users by distorting the truth of events in a way that could cause harm,” Vanessa Pappas, the general manager of TikTok’s US operation,…