TikTok now requires U.S. political accounts to be verified, bans fundraising

Popular short video app TikTok announced on Wednesday that it will now require government, politician and political party accounts in the United States to be verified, in an effort to prevent misinformation on the platform ahead of the midterm elections that will take place in November.

‘’If our community is watching content from an account belonging to a government, politician, or political party, we want them to know the account is genuine,’’ the company said in a blog post.

While many political accounts on the platform have already got their accounts verified, it wasn’t mandatory to do so. However, starting today, all political accounts in the US will be asked to apply for verification so that users can differentiate whether an account is genuine.

TikTok has banned political accounts from running advertisements on the platform since 2019. In order to help enforce this policy, the company said that advertising features will now be automatically turned off for political accounts. However, government accounts will still be able to carry out advertising campaigns about important issues such as COVID-19 booster vaccines, but with a TikTok representative. 

Political accounts will also be banned from using the platform’s monetization features such as gifting, tipping and shopping features, and won’t be able to join TikTok’s Creator Fund program. 

Furthermore, the company announced that it’ll change its policies in the upcoming weeks to ban these accounts from running fundraising campaigns on the platform.