TikTok and Facebook have allowed fake news ads about the US elections to run, while YouTube has banned all paid content containing disinformation. The experiment was part of new research led by the NGO Global Witness in partnership with New York University.
Despite YouTube’s good performance, the researchers note that the platform’s action against fake election news in the US contrasted with its actions in Brazil: Ads similar to those used in the study were approved and distributed on the network to Brazilians.
100% in a similar survey conducted by the NGO in Brazil in August. Number of ads with election disinformation approved on Facebook and now YouTube in October.
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Platforms can’t stop ads with fake news about elections
The Global Witness poll, published days before the midterm elections scheduled for November 8 in the USA and the second round of the Brazilian presidential election, draws attention to the impact of advertisements on voter decisions.
To investigate how social media platforms deal with disinformation that can destabilize democracies, the study published 20 ads (10 in English and 10 in Spanish) on YouTube and Facebook, the three most used social networks in the US. and TikTok.
The ads targeted states that were expected to have fierce election competition: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
“The 2020 US election has been dominated by electoral disinformation, particularly content aimed at illegitimate the electoral process and outcome, and there are widespread fears that this content may again shadow the US vote this year.”
All advertisements used by the researchers contained completely false election information, such as the wrong election date or fake news that discredited the election process.
“We don’t make ads political and we don’t go through the identity verification process. Researchers noted that every ad we post deliberately violates Meta, TikTok, and Google’s election advertising policies.
TikTok, which doesn’t allow ads related to politics, was the worst performer among the platforms and approved 90% of ads that are misleading and contain false election misinformation.
The Chinese social network rejected only one ad in English and one in Spanish, both about the Covid-19 vaccine requirement for the vote (and accepted on Facebook).
But postings containing the wrong election day, encouraging people to vote twice or not to vote, were approved.
“The account we used to post voter disinformation ads was still active until we told TikTok,” the scientists said.
In response to the experiment, a TikTok spokesperson said the social network “is a place for real and entertaining content, which is why we’re banning and removing misinformation about elections and paid political ads from our platform.”
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Facebook also failed to reject paid posts containing fake news about the US election: 20% of ads in English and 50% of ads in Spanish were approved on the platform.
The researchers stressed that there was inconsistency in approving or rejecting the ads. Paid posts with the wrong selection date were approved in English but rejected, for example, in Spanish.
A spokesperson for Meta questioned the study’s data, claiming it was “based on a very small sample of ads and not representative given the number of political ads we review daily around the world.”
YouTube bans all ads containing disinformation about US elections
In addition to deleting the fictitious channel used to run the ads, YouTube was the only platform among the survey respondents who rejected all ads containing fake news about the US elections.
For researchers, this is a positive sign that YouTube’s policy on electoral disinformation in ads in the US is working – not the case elsewhere in the world, including Brazil:
“While this is good news for the United States, YouTube’s failure to detect similar electoral disinformation in Brazil – having approved 100% of the ads tested there – indicates that there are still major gaps in the international implementation of its policies.”
In a similar experiment conducted before the first round of elections in Brazil, Facebook and YouTube accepted all ads containing disinformation, suggesting that the platform’s enforcement of political fake news outside the US is “weak”, according to researchers.
Searched by the NGO conducting the research, Google did not comment on the search results.
“For years, we’ve undermined important democratic processes that have been undermined by misinformation, lies, and hate spread across social media platforms – companies themselves claim to recognize the problem,” says Jon Lloyd, Senior Advisor at Global Witness. “But this research shows that they are not doing enough to stop threats to democracy from emerging on their platforms.”
“Inventing technology and then recovering from influence is not responsible behavior for these large companies with millions of dollars.
It is high time that they begin to organize and provide adequate resources to detect and prevent disinformation before it is too late.”
After being notified by the platforms that the ads were accepted or rejected, they were all excluded by the researchers to avoid publication.
“Detection of election disinformation by YouTube shows that while the failure of Facebook and TikTok is worrisome, it is possible to detect and stop election disinformation,” they emphasize.
That’s why the NGO recommends that platforms increase their content moderation capabilities and ensure that they are equal across the globe.
For YouTube in particular, the study recommends “increasing content moderation capabilities worldwide to ensure that the US experience is the norm everywhere rather than the exception.”
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source: Noticias
