Kathmandu. The Election Commission has started a formal collaboration with the social media platform 'Tiktak' to make the upcoming House of Representatives elections on February 21 clean, fair and free of misleading information. The commission signed a memorandum of understanding with TikTok on Wednesday to prevent false information and hate speech spread through social media during the election.

Joint Secretary Narayan Prasad Bhattarai and Tiktok representative Ferdows Al Mattakin signed the MoU at an event held at the commission's secretariat.

Tiktok made a presentation to the Commission on how hate speech, disinformation videos will be stopped during elections. Cuttack gave a presentation to the Commission on how hate speech, disinformation videos will be stopped during elections. The agreement signed in the presence of Acting Chief Election Commissioner Ram Prasad Bhandari aims to control the unwanted activities on Tiktok during the silent period and campaigning of the elections.

A strict olicy to prevent misleading propaganda has added to the challenge of character assassinations and videos with false claims going viral on platforms like Tiktok in recent elections. According to the agreement, Tiktok will now prioritize removing content that violates the election code of conduct. The commission has also put forward a plan to provide training to its employees on 'content moderation' of Tiktok and to create a separate mechanism for election-specific information flow.