The Commission on Elections (Comelec) and TikTok Philippines have signed a memorandum of agreement to promote transparency and digital integrity in the upcoming 2025 national and local elections.
The partnership focuses on countering misinformation and disinformation, aligning with Comelec’s broader initiatives to regulate social media platforms during the electoral period.
Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia emphasized that TikTok will play a key role in election-related information dissemination, including educating candidates on the platform’s community guidelines and safety enforcement tools.
“They will have to brief the candidates on what TikTok is expecting them to do whenever they are going to use the platform, although political advertisements are not allowed” (“They will have to brief the candidates on what TikTok is expecting them to do whenever they are going to use the platform, although wala nga yung political advertisement”), Garcia said.
“Hopefully, these activities will result in only one benefit, and that is fighting misinformation and disinformation using TikTok as a platform” (“Hopefully, yung mga activities na yan will redound to only one benefit and that is fighting misinformation and disinformation using TikTok as a platform”).
As part of the agreement, Comelec and TikTok will also release a podcast episode on what voters need to do on election day.
TikTok Philippines Public Policy Manager Peachy Paderna reiterated the platform’s commitment to election integrity. She stated that TikTok has more than 21 partner fact-checkers globally and employs machine systems, human reviewers, and community reports to ensure that election-related content remains reliable.
“We don’t allow harmful misinformation on the platform that may disrupt our electoral processes in the country. That’s part of our elections integrity initiative,” Paderna said.
She explained that TikTok labels unverified information on its platform and will continue enforcing this throughout the election cycle. Users are also encouraged to report content creators violating the platform’s community guidelines.
Paderna also clarified that political advertising is banned on TikTok and that the platform does not allow politicians to monetize political content. However, she stressed that TikTok does not ban political statements.
“Community guidelines are what we want everybody to understand and follow, and so any violation of our community guidelines would result in content being taken down or an account being taken down, depending on the severity of the violation,” Paderna said.
“We don’t ban political expression on our platform. People are free to express themselves politically on TikTok. But we don’t allow politicians, government, and political parties to make money on the platform. We also don’t allow the monetization of political content,” she added.
The Comelec-TikTok agreement builds on a previous initiative in October 2024, when Meta (Facebook), Google, and TikTok pledged to combat misinformation and disinformation related to the 2025 national and local elections and the BARMM parliamentary elections.
Commissioner Nelson Celis, who heads Task Force Katotohanan, Katapatan, at Katarungan sa Halalan (TFK3H), worked with representatives from these companies to outline their election integrity strategies.
During that event, Meta’s Public Policy Manager Nixon David stated that Facebook would “identify and stop emerging threats and limit the spread of misinformation.” Google’s Yves Gonzalez also pledged that YouTube would prevent the spread of election-related misinformation and foreign interference.
TikTok’s Peachy Paderna reaffirmed the platform’s commitment to removing misinformation and banning paid political advertising to ensure an election environment free from undue influence.
She emphasized that while users are free to discuss candidates and political issues, TikTok prohibits political advertising, paid political promotion, and fundraising by politicians and political parties.
While platforms like TikTok are strengthening their fact-checking initiatives ahead of the elections, Meta has taken a drastically different approach.
In January 2025, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would discontinue its third-party fact-checking program, replacing it with a “Community Notes” system. He stated, “We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
This move was intended to reduce perceived censorship and bias associated with traditional fact-checking methods, placing more responsibility on users rather than independent fact-checkers.
The decision follows reports that the U.S. government pressured Meta to limit certain content during the COVID-19 pandemic, including humor and satire critical of government policies.
This has led to wider concerns that fact-checking systems, rather than serving as neutral tools for combating misinformation, have been influenced by political and ideological forces.
Comelec’s renewed focus on social media regulation comes as the poll body enforces Comelec Resolution 11064, which introduces stricter guidelines on social media use, artificial intelligence, and digital election campaigns.
The resolution also requires candidates, as well as their influencers and supporters, to register their social media accounts with Comelec to ensure campaign spending transparency.
“Influencers must also register their accounts, even on Meta, because we will also consider that as part of a politician or candidate’s expenditures” (“Yung mga influencers, paparehistro din nila ang mga account nila, pati sa Meta because we will also consider that as expenditure ng politician or kandidato”), Celis previously stated.
As part of its October 2024 initiative, Comelec and major social media platforms agreed on 11 key commitments to safeguard election integrity:
- Determine priority resources across many global elections by taking into account a holistic set of considerations.
- Consult with global civil society as necessary and appropriate.
- Establish and disseminate clear policies and processes regarding election-related content, activities, civil unrest, and violence.
- Centralize information about the resources that are available and relevant to election authorities and other stakeholders.
- Establish planning processes that take into account election authorities’ timelines and capacity.
- Enable access to authoritative election and voter information when appropriate.
- Establish a strategy to take action on misinformation and disinformation about electoral participation.
- Establish and make available communication channels for election authorities.
- Publicly provide information on paid political and/or paid election content.
- Maintain appropriate coordination mechanisms and operations beyond the immediate election period.
- Support engagement with election stakeholders.
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