TikTok and Facebook fail to detect harmful disinformation ads (US election)
Weeks before the US presidential election, TikTok approved 50% of disinformation ads and Facebook accepted one; YouTube approved 50% initially but blocked publication pending ID verification.
Executive summary
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Weeks before the 2024 US presidential election, Global Witness submitted a batch of advertisements containing outright election falsehoods (such as claims that people could vote online) plus content promoting voter suppression, inciting violence against a candidate, and threatening election workers, to test TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube's ad-review systems. The ads were removed before any could go live publicly.
TikTok approved 50% of the submitted ads, a result Global Witness highlighted as especially notable given TikTok's own publisher policy that bans all political advertising outright; this was nonetheless an improvement from a 90% approval rate found in 2022 testing. Facebook accepted one disinformation ad, also an improvement on its 2022 midterms performance. YouTube approved 50% of ads initially but blocked any from actually publishing pending stronger identity verification, such as a passport or driver's license.
Global Witness concluded that despite some improvement since 2022, TikTok's and Facebook's ad-moderation systems remained unreliable at catching harmful election disinformation just weeks before a major US vote.
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