Social media platforms tested on election misinformation ads

Global Witness a non-profit group recently checked how well social media platforms catch election misinformation in ads. They did this by sending fake ads with wrong info about voting to TikTok Facebook‚ and YouTube

The results showed that TikTok didnt do so well. It okayed four out of eight ads with false election info even though it doesnt allow political ads since 2019. Ben Rathe from TikTok said‚ “Four ads were incorrectly approved during the first stage of moderation but did not run on our platform“

Facebook (owned by Meta) did better‚ only approving one out of eight ads. YouTube was the best – it asked for more ID and stopped the account when they didnt get it. However its not clear if the ads would have gone through if they had given the ID

The fake ads had different types of wrong info:
- Saying people can vote online
- Claiming voters must pass an English test
- Encouraging violence
- Threatening election workers

Global Witness did a similar test about 2 years ago. They found that companies – especially Facebook – have gotten better at catching these problems. But they still think TikTok needs to do more

Companies usually have stricter rules for ads than for regular posts. Meta said the report was “extremely limited in scope“ and not showing how they enforce rules on a big scale. Google (who owns YouTube) didnʼt say anything right away

This test comes just weeks before the US presidential election (happening in 11/2024). Its important to see how well social media can stop false info from spreading during this time