A diner checks her TikTok account at a restaurant in Washington, Sept. 9, 2022.
The test, run by the watchdog group Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy team at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, used dummy accounts to submit 10 ads in English and 10 in Spanish to the social media services. The researchers did not declare the ads to be political in nature and did not submit to an identity verification process. They deleted the accepted ads before they were published.
The company said in a statement that it was “a place for authentic and entertaining content.” “We value feedback from NGOs, academics and other experts which helps us continually strengthen our processes and policies,” TikTok said. YouTube caught half the ads that the researchers tried to post from a British dummy account within a day, then rejected the rest and banned the account within the next few days. Google said in a statement that it would “continue to invest in and improve our enforcement system” to protect users from abuse, particularly before major elections.