Wildly popular social network TikTok approved adverts containing political disinformation ahead of European polls, a report showed Tuesday, flouting its own guidelines and raising questions about its ability to detect election falsehoods, International campaign group Global Witness created 16 ads targeting Irish audiences with false information about this week’s EU elections and tried to get them approved by three platforms — TikTok, Google-owned YouTube and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter)..
TikTok, which is particularly popular with young voters, approved all 16 for publication, YouTube caught 14 while X filtered all the ads and suspended the group’s fake accounts, Global Witness said in its report, TikTok has failed miserably in this test,” Henry Peck, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, told AFP. The fake ads, submitted by the group last month, all contained content that could pose a risk to electoral processes — including warnings to voters to stay home over a danger of poll violence and a spike in contagious diseases.
TikTok has emerged as a major election battleground as politicians across Europe and the United States –- including presidential contender Donald Trump –- seek to harness the platform’s virality. This trend has emerged even as TikTok is under pressure in the United States, where President Joe Biden recently signed into law a bill that would ban the platform if its owner fails to find a buyer for the app within a year.
