Mr Hafizin reportedly said that for the upcoming six state elections, the awareness content it plans to create includes tutorials on how to verify sources of information.
The six states set to hold elections later this year are Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah, Negeri Sembilan, Penang and Selangor.
He also said that TikTok Malaysia is cooperating with various government bodies to curb trends and practices that are harmful, adding that the company maintains a good relationship with agencies like the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and the police.
On Mar 1, TikTok Malaysia clarified that political advertisements are banned on the app following a claim that a Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) member was part of the TikTok moderation team.
Commenting on the scrutiny that TikTok has faced overseas, Mr Hafzin said that TikTok has nothing to hide regarding how it uses user data as its privacy policy is made public. He added that TikTok has a rigid and robust system to safeguard user data.
“Of course what’s happening globally is upsetting, but in Malaysia, we are quite happy with our relationship with the current government.
“Meaning, we do have some discussions about the global developments, and the authorities have been receiving our response rather well that we do not pose any national security threats, (and that) data, user data, including Malaysians’ data are not transferred to any foreign governments,” he said, according to the Malay Mail.
Several countries, including Australia, France and Canada, have banned the app on government devices due to fears that user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government. TikTok is owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance.
During the recent 15th General Election (GE15), the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition’s strong showing when they won 74 seats has been partly attributed to its astute TikTok campaign strategy.
The PN Best campaign generated great interest, particularly in the Malay heartland. Hashtags such as #pnbest, #perikatannasional and #bersihdanstabil (clean and stable), garnered hundreds of millions of views on TikTok throughout the campaigning period.