TikTok's Research API: Problems without Explanations
Missing metadata for official TikTok videos, ads, and prominent accounts makes the research API unreliable for data-donation studies and algorithmic auditing.
Executive summary
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AI Forensics tested the reliability of TikTok's Research API using two methods: cross-checking metadata retrieval for 260,000 previously donated TikTok URLs against the platform's 1,000-call daily limit over a 64-day period, and separately collecting 100 videos per day from German For You feeds over one week to test whether creator content already public could also be retrieved through the API, verifying results with independent web scraping.
The tests found that roughly one in eight videos from the donated dataset could not be retrieved through the API, including official TikTok company videos with more than 30 million views and content from high-profile creators such as Taylor Swift and Brook Monk. Thousands of publicly viewable advertisements were also inaccessible via the API, and about 1% of creators appeared to be randomly excluded without explanation.
The report concludes that these gaps fundamentally compromise the API's usefulness for data-donation studies and algorithmic audits, undermining independent researchers' ability to hold the platform accountable.
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