A research published on Friday claimed that social media giants TikTok and Facebook accepted advertisements containing “blatant” misinformation regarding the impending US midterm elections.
A recent analysis conducted by the non-profit Global Witness and the Cyber Security for Democracy team at New York University examined Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube’s abilities to “identify and remove electoral disinformation” before to the midterm elections in November.
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese business ByteDance, performed the poorest of the three platforms when it came to failing to block “misleading” test advertisements supplied by the researchers.
According to the research, 90 percent of TikTok advertisements featuring “misleading and fraudulent electoral disinformation” were allowed.
As part of the experiment, the researchers filed 20 advertisements targeting battleground states like as Arizona, Colorado, and Georgia in both English and Spanish to TikTok, Meta’s Facebook, and Google’s YouTube. According to the analysis, all of the advertisements filed by the researchers breached the election advertising policies of the social media sites.
According to the researchers, despite TikTok’s ban on political advertising, the site authorized virtually all of the ads containing incorrect information, including that voting days would be extended and that social media accounts might be utilized for voter verification.
“TikTok also accepted advertisements that undermine the election’s legitimacy, imply that outcomes can be hacked or are predetermined, and discourage voter participation,” according to the researchers.
One advertisement rejected by TikTok stated that voters needed be inoculated against COVID-19 in order to participate in the election.
However, Facebook accepted this advertisement, the groups reported.
While Facebook performed better than TikTok, “a considerable percentage of equally erroneous and misleading advertisements” were allowed, according to researchers.
YouTube performed the best, according to the researchers, because it “detected and rejected every single test advertisement submitted and suspended the channel used to publish the test advertisements.
After social media networks alerted the researchers that their advertisements were acceptable, the advertisements were reportedly erased and never published.
“Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok are now the primary platforms for political discourse. Laura Edelson, co-director of the Cyber Security for Democracy team, said in a statement that disinformation has a significant impact on our elections, the cornerstone of our democratic system.
Edelsen continued, “YouTube’s success in our experiment illustrates that it is not impossible to detect damaging election disinformation. However, all of the platforms we analyzed should have received an A for this assignment.”
Edelsen stated, “We call on Facebook and TikTok to do better: prevent false information about elections from reaching voters.”
A representative for TikTok told Insider that the service “is a place for authentic and engaging content, which is why we restrict and remove election misinformation and paid political advertising.”
The representative stated, “We encourage feedback from NGOs, academics, and other specialists because it helps us continuously improve our processes and policies.”
A spokesperson for Meta pushed back against the report, telling Insider, “These reports were based on a very tiny sample of advertisements and are not reflective of the number of political advertisements we assess every day throughout the world.”
Before and after an ad goes live, there are multiple layers of analysis and detection, according to the representative. “We will continue to devote enormous resources in protecting elections, from our industry-leading transparency initiatives to our enforcement of rigorous regulations on advertisements about social problems, elections, and politics.”
Google has established comprehensive mechanisms to combat misinformation on its services, including misleading claims about elections and voting procedures, a Google spokeswoman told Insider on Friday.
Google prohibited or removed more than 3,4 billion advertisements in 2021 for breaching its regulations, including 38 million for representation policy violations, according to a Google spokeswoman.