By Estelle Nguyen Published on 10/18/2024 at 3:01 p.m.
A Global Witness investigation reveals that TikTok and Facebook approved ads containing misinformation, raising concerns about the integrity of the US presidential elections…
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(Boursier.com) — Less than three weeks before the American presidential election, an investigation conducted by Global Witness and published Thursday highlights the inability of major platforms to detect advertisements containing false information. A finding that raises concerns about the integrity of elections, while American voters rely more and more on information available online, mainly on social networks, estimates the NGO.
To conduct this investigation, eight ads containing false claims about voting and intimidating messages were submitted to test the commitments of platforms, including TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, to protecting election integrity. The ads were adapted into “algospeak” – digital jargon using numbers and symbols to bypass moderation filters. Each ad was designed to blatantly violate current posting policies.
The findings reveal that Chinese giant ByteDance’s video app, TikTok, approved 50% of submitted ads, violating its own rules that prohibit political content in ads. If Facebook, a social network owned by Meta, improved its performance by accepting a single ad containing disinformation – an improvement compared to its previous test during the 2022 mid-term elections – the NGO judges that the results underline worrying gaps in the fight against disinformation.
?? Ahead of the US election, we found that @TikTok is failing to identify clear election #disinformation. Despite ads, messages. This risk! Read more: — Global Witness (@Global_Witness), via Twitter
“Everyone knows the danger of electoral disinformation”
Despite an improvement compared to 2022, when TikTok approved 90% of misinformation ads, its results remain worrying. Ava Lee emphasizes that “everyone knows the danger of election misinformation and the importance of quality content moderation.” This investigation also comes as TikTok already faces scrutiny from U.S. authorities for potential foreign interference operations.
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For its part, YouTube, a subsidiary of the giant Alphabet, initially approved 50% of the ads, but ultimately blocked their publication until formal identification was submitted. This verification process is seen as a more robust barrier for disinformation spreaders compared to TikTok and Facebook, which still appear to be lagging behind in implementing effective measures.
Ads mistakenly approved according to TikTok
“With a hotly contested U.S. presidential race just days away, it is shocking that social media companies continue to endorse blatant and completely debunked misinformation on their platforms,” said Ava Lee, campaign manager on social media. digital threats at Global Witness.
The NGO, which calls on Facebook and TikTok to redouble their efforts to protect political debates in the United States against this threat, indicated that it had asked the platforms to comment on these results. TikTok acknowledged that all ads submitted by Global Witness violated its advertising policies and explained that their automatic moderation system approved these ads in error, although they were never published. The platform assured that it would use the results of this survey to better train its moderation system. TikTok and Google said their ad review processes are multi-layered and that they are constantly improving their policy enforcement systems. Meta, for its part, did not respond to request for comment.
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