{"id":89755,"date":"2022-10-25T19:48:04","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T19:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rockcontent.com\/?p=89755"},"modified":"2025-09-18T10:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T13:08:09","slug":"election-fake-news-tiktok-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pingback.com\/en\/resources\/election-fake-news-tiktok-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: TikTok And Facebook Are Approving Ads With Fake News About Elections And Voting. How Can We Help Stop It?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The proliferation of content brings all types of information. But sometimes those pieces aren’t 100% true. In October and November, we will be facing important political events worldwide. We have the midterms in the United States and the second round of presidential elections in Brazil. These are perfect times to analyze if our attempts to battle fake news are enough. <\/p>\n

But it seems they are not. According to a new report<\/a> from the Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy Team (C4D), TikTok and Facebook are still failing at detecting blatant misinformation regarding elections and voting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why do we care so much about the legitimacy of information? Because we have forgotten that social media has become a tool for shaping reality. People make decisions based on what they see in their feeds. <\/p>\n

So the discussion about accountability for what we post on social media is still there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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How did Youtube, TikTok and Facebook perform in the report?<\/h2>\n

In the experiment, the researchers from Global Witness submitted 20 ads with false claims on Facebook, TikTok and Youtube. Somehow, Youtube was successful in detecting every submission, but this outcome didn’t apply to Facebook and TikTok. <\/p>\n

According to the report, TikTok approved 90% of ads that contained blatantly false or misleading information. Meanwhile, Facebook approved a \u201csignificant number,\u201d according to the report, though noticeably less than TikTok. <\/p>\n

It’s wild how, in 2025, we’re still seeing these huge platforms get tripped up by fairly obvious fakes. Tech companies tout the AI and filters they’re building, but when someone runs a simple experiment with fake ads, a lot of the stuff still slips right through. It makes you wonder how much energy is really being spent on protecting public discourse, and how much is just about surface-level PR.<\/p>\n

In real elections, of course, things get messier. There’s that extra pressure, huge volumes of content, way more money sloshing around. If a handful of test ads can make it past the safeguards, imagine what’s happening when thousands of passionate\u2014or cynical\u2014players are in the ring all at once. And, honestly, we barely hear about most of it unless an NGO decides to poke the system.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Meta, in its official information about midterm elections<\/a>, has reinforced its commitments to prevent voting interference and sharing reliable information.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also, a spokesperson from Facebook declared<\/a> the test was \u201cbased on a very small sample of ads, and is not representative given the number of political ads we review daily across the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Something similar is happening in Brazil. The same NGO, Global Witness, has discovered how YouTube and Facebook are allowing false information during the second round of the presidential election of 2022. <\/p>\n

What has been done to stop fake news?<\/h2>\n

The leaders from the big social media didn\u2019t stay quiet. The spokesperson from Facebook also adds: \u201cour ads review process has several layers of analysis and detection, both before and after an ad goes live\u201d to answer against the claim of Witness Global.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, we can see how they have made statements and guidelines for both the midterms in the United States and the presidential elections in Brazil<\/a>. They all share some front points, such as:\u00a0<\/p>\n