REPORT: TIKTOK BAD AT CULLING US ELECTION MISINFORMATION ADS

TikTok's algorithms are very good at finding videos to keep people glued to their phone screens for hours on end. What they are not so good at, a new report has found, is detecting ads that contain blatant misinformation about U.S. elections.

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That's despite TikTok having banned all political advertisements from its platform in 20 The report raises fresh concerns about the wildly popular video-sharing app's ability to catch election falsehoods at a time when a growing number of young people use it not just for entertainment, but also for finding information. The nonprofit Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy team at New York University published the report.

Global Witness and NYU tested whether some of the most popular social platforms Facebook, YouTube and TikTok - can detect and take down false political ads targeted at U.S. voters ahead of next month's midterm elections. The watchdog group has done similar tests in Myanmar, Ethiopia, Kenya and Brazil with ads containing hate speech and disinformation, but this is the first time it has done so in the United States.

The U.S. ads included misinformation about the voting process, such as when or how people can vote, as well as about how election results are counted. They were also designed to sow distrust about the democratic process by spreading baseless claims about the vote being "rigged" or decided before Election Day. All were submitted for approval to the social media platforms, but none were actually published.