Social network TikTok approved adverts containing disinformation about the Irish elections – that’s according to Global Witness.
The human rights NGO says it submitted 28 fake adverts for approval.
The ads were all related to Ireland’s general election, 14 in English and 14 in Irish. All the adverts intentionally contained disinformation.
According to Global Witness, out of the 28 adverts, TikTok went ahead and approved three of them in English, and five in Irish. Global Witness says the adverts contained false claims such as needing to have had covid vaccines in order to be entitled to vote.
Global Witness says it took the fake adverts down before they went live.
Under the EU’s Digital Services Act, TikTok is designated as a so-called “very large online platform” (TikTok says it has an average of 150 million ‘monthly active recipients’ in the EU).
That means the platform has additional responsibilities to “identify and analyse the risks stemming from their services, such as the dissemination of illegal content, disinformation or the protection of minors.”
Ava Lee from Global Witness said “social media platforms have a responsibility to keep elections safe.”
“As more and more people get their news from their social media feeds, the least platforms should do is ensure that this content is free from the most obvious forms of disinformation.”
TikTok told Global Witness that the social network is conducting an investigation as to why all the ads had not been rejected.
A spokesperson for TikTok told them that the network has “robust policies to prevent the spread of harmful misinformation.”
In a statement to NewsIreland.eu, a spokesperson for TikTok said “none of these ads ever appeared on TikTok and the majority were correctly rejected at the first stage of moderation.
We will continue to enforce our longstanding position that we do not allow political advertising on TikTok and have launched a dedicated, in-app election centre to provide our users with authoritative information about the elections.”