According to the watchdog, TikTok approved election misinformation, violating its own political advertising ban

The technology and environmental watchdog group filed ads to test how well systems at social media companies work at detecting different types of election misinformation.

The group, which conducted a similar investigation two years ago, found that the companies – particularly Facebook – have since improved their content moderation systems.

However, TikTok was accused of approving four of the eight ads submitted for review that contained falsehoods about the election. This is despite the fact that the platform has banned all political advertising since 2019.

The ads never appeared on TikTok because Global Witness removed them before they went live.

“Four ads were incorrectly approved during the initial moderation phase but did not run on our platform,” said TikTok spokesman Ben Rathe. “We do not allow political advertising and will continue to continually enforce this policy.”

According to the report, Facebook, owned by Meta Platforms Inc., “performed much better,” approving only one of the eight ads submitted.

In a statement, Meta said that “while this report is extremely limited in scope and therefore does not reflect how we enforce our policies at scale, we are continually evaluating and improving our enforcement efforts.”

Google’s YouTube performed best, according to Global Witness, approving four ads but not allowing publication. It required Global Witness testers to provide further identification before publishing them and “paused” their accounts if they failed to do so. However, the report said it was not clear whether the ads would have been shown if Global Witness had provided the required identification.

Google did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Companies almost always have stricter policies for paid ads than for regular user posts. The ads filed by Global Witness included outright false claims about the election – such as saying Americans can vote online – as well as false information aimed at suppressing voting, such as claims that voters must pass an English test before voting can cast a vote. Other fake ads encouraged violence or threatened election workers and processes.

The ads submitted by Global Witness were text-based, but the group said it translated them into what it called “Algospeak.” This is a common trick that attempts to bypass Internet companies’ text-oriented content moderation systems by using numbers and symbols to replace letters, making it more difficult for automated systems to “read” the text. .