TikTok Failed to Prevent 90 Percent of Election Misinformation: Report

A visitor makes a photo at the TikTok exhibition stands at the Gamescom computer gaming fair in Cologne, Germany, on Aug. 25, 2022. The Canadian Press/AP, Martin Meissner

Social media giant TikTok approved most political advertisements containing false and misleading information about U.S. elections despite assurances from the company that it had a robust mechanism for detecting such content, a new report has found.

TikTok approved 90 percent of advertisements that featured misleading and outright false information about the upcoming 2022 U.S. midterm elections, according to a joint report by nonprofit Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy (C4D) team at New York University.