A new report finds Facebook and TikTok failed to block advertisements with “blatant” election misinformation.
According to CNN, watchdog Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy Team (C4D) at New York University said researchers targeted battleground states such as Arizona and Georgia with fake ads.
The ads stated that voting days would be extended and that social media accounts could double as a means of voter verification.
TikTok approved 90% of ads, while Facebook, approved a “significant number,” according to the report, though noticeably less than TikTok.
“But all the platforms we studied should have gotten an ‘A’ on this assignment,” said Laura Edelson, co-director of NYU’s C4D team. “We call on Facebook and TikTok to do better: stop bad information about elections before it gets to voters.”
Facebook parent company Meta claims the study was based on small sample size.
“Our ads review process has several layers of analysis and detection, both before and after an ad goes live,” a spokesperson said.
TikTok said its platform is a place for authentic and entertaining content.
“Which is why we prohibit and remove election misinformation and paid political advertising from our platform,” Tik Tok said. “We value feedback from NGOs, academics, and other experts which helps us continually strengthen our processes and policies.”
Meta has said they will remove false claims as to who can vote and how, as well as calls for violence linked to an election.
Google has reportedly taken steps to protect against election misinformation, elevating trustworthy information and displaying it more prominently across services including search and YouTube.
