TikTok let through disinformation in political ads despite its own ban, Global Witness finds

AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Just weeks before the U.S. presidential election, TikTok still approved advertisements that contained election disinformation even though it has a ban on political ads. That’s according to a report by the nonprofit Global Witness. The technology and environmental watchdog group submitted ads that it designed to test how well systems at social media companies worked in detecting different types of election misinformation. The group did find that the companies — especially Facebook — have improved their content-moderation systems, though it said they could still do better. It said Google’s YouTube did the best, approving four ads but not letting any publish.