Over 1.1 million TikTok accounts blocked during polls
Credit to Author: Janvic Mateo| Date: Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0800
MANILA, Philippines — Short form video platform TikTok confirmed yesterday the existence of influence operations to support or attack candidates during the recently concluded midterm elections in the Philippines.
An update on its Global Integrity Hub confirmed that over 573,000 fake accounts were removed from the platform from March 24 to May 12, the day of the elections.
Another 550,000 spam accounts created in the Philippines were also blocked by the platform during the same period.
In addition to the fake accounts, TikTok said it also discovered three “covert influence networks” that targeted Filipino audience.
The three networks, removed from the platform in April, all operated from the Philippines and were found to have “created inauthentic accounts in order to amplify narratives favoring certain politicians and criticizing others, within the context of the 2025 Philippine midterm election.”
The first network – which had 124 accounts with 10,311 followers – was discovered to have repeatedly posted duplicative content, while the second network – with 36 accounts with 18,855 followers – created fictitious personas “for the sole purpose of posting political content.”
The third network had 29 accounts with 3,021 followers and used the Philippine flag within their user profile images.
Aside from the covert influence networks, TikTok said it also removed more than 4,100 contents that violated its policies on civic and election integrity, misinformation and AI-generated images.
Details of the removed content have yet to be released, but the video sharing platform said they removed 97 percent of the contents before any report was filed.
In terms of inauthentic behavior, TikTok said it has removed over 23.4 million fake likes and more than 954,000 fake followers.
It also prevented more than 15.7 million fake likes and over 40.4 million fake follow requests during the election period in the Philippines.
TikTok earlier partnered with the Commission on Elections and other civil society organizations for its in-app election center, which provided users with details related to the elections.
It also had an educational initiative to help the public spot misinformation, as well as labels on relevant election content and searches.
Ahead of the elections, the social media platform launched the #ThinkTwice Digital Literacy Campaign to encourage Filipino users to think critically about the content they were creating and sharing.