Marcos partners with TikTok to help small-scale sellers, entrepreneurs

SAN FRANCISCO, USA - President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. partnered with social media platform TikTok as regards "edutainment," which aims to help small-scale sellers and entrepreneurs.

Marcos said he wants TikTok to help in training local sellers to promote their products.

TikTok chief executive officer Shou Zi Chew said they want to give more resources and train local sellers in the rural parts of the country.

"What we want to do is highlight local products, especially from smaller [sellers],” Chew told Marcos during their meeting in San Francisco on the sidelines of the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit. 

“We have a lot of this in Vietnam, a lot of this in Indonesia, a lot of this in Malaysia, a lot of this... and highlight that, give it a platform to sell around the country and export around the world. That’s the plan,” Chew added. 

Chew ensured that there are community guidelines to ensure that there would be no violence and no sexual abuse materials in their content. 

Marcos then agreed with Chew, saying it is quite difficult to differentiate strong opinion from misinformation. 

“But just the differences in opinion and how they’re expressed, that sometimes is very hard to determine whether you… where is it excessive and where is it acceptable but I suppose you have all the rules and… that you need to do that,” Marcos said.

“Because TikTok, I mean from the beginning was quite really just a very lighthearted platform. But then just because of its popularity like for example, for someone like me who’s in politics, if you’re talking to 50 million people, then I need to be part of that conversation ... So, it’s inevitable ... the many sides, multi-faceted side will come in," he added.

TikTok sees Southeast Asia as its biggest emerging market outside the USA, with its 325 million monthly active users covering nearly half the region’s population. — BAP/KG, GMA Integrated News