  Since banning political ads in late 2019, TikTok has presented itself as an entertainment-only space to “inspire creativity and build joy.” But the viral video-sharing app is still home to content that’s quietly funded by partisan groups, according to a new report.
Influencers are exploiting loopholes in TikTok’s advertising policies to promote political organizations’ agendas without disclosing their paid partnerships with those entities, an investigation from the global nonprofit Mozilla Foundation reveals. The report, titled “Th€se Are Not Po£itical Ad$,” identifies a number of active and partisan videos from creators who are sponsored by groups across the political spectrum, including Turning Point USA, Prager University and Today Is America on the right, as well as The 99 Problems on the left.
The 700-million-user platform’s vulnerability to shadowy political influence operations could ultimately have a malignant effect on its users, advocates warn.
“Advertising transparency allows people to see who is paying for influence online — a crucial safeguard against manipulation and disinformation,” said Brandi Geurkink, Mozilla’s senior manager of advocacy. “But TikTok’s inconsistent disclosure practices and lax enforcement ... make the platform vulnerable to abuse by political groups and other malicious actors.”
Launched in 2016 by Chinese tech behemoth ByteDance, TikTok has exploded in popularity in the U.S. As with other social media platforms, it hosts two main types of ads: those placed through the app itself, in which brands pay TikTok to feature their content, and those brokered off-platform between brands and influencers, for which TikTok receives no payment. The app’s ban on political ads applies to both, though the off-platform deals are far more difficult to police.
Michael T. van der Veen, a lawyer who represented then-President Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial, should soon be returning to Washington to defend a man accused of storming the U.S. Capitol with members of the extremist Oath Keepers militia. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that huge gaps in a report released earlier in the day on January’s Capitol riot has “strengthened the argument” for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the events, which Senate Republicans have blocked. Included in the report is more complete information about what law enforcement knew about the potential for violence that day from social media posts and maps of the Capitol complex’s tunnel systems posted online.
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