The Chinese Company TikTok has removed many numbers of videos after an investigation showed. Some creators were posting anti-Trump material without disclosing that they were paid for by a marketing company. The company, Bigtent Creative, funds skits and memes to persuade people to register, such as mixing rapper Cardi B’s WAP song with a message from her telling people to vote for President Trump.
Some paid videos were non-partisan, but others call for President Trump to be voted out of office, and in none of the videos do the creators disclose that they have been paid.
The Chinese company TikTok bans political ads and also requires people to declare paid-for content. When we showed TikTok what we found, the company took several TikToks down. These had already got hundreds of thousands of views. Guidelines from the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stipulate content creators should always disclose paid partnerships, usually by using ‘#ad‘ in the caption.
The Company TikTok spokesperson said that “These guidelines also apply to paid content by influencers, and we rely on influencers and marketers to follow Federal Trade Commission guidelines.”We remove paid influencer content that’s not disclosed as such as we become aware of it and are now taking action on this.
With two weeks until the US election, the competition for the youth vote is fierce and the drive to get first-time voters to register has intensified. Potentially millions of young TikTok users will not understand that some of the fun, quirky skits they are seeing are being paid for or supported by political interests.
TikTok says that it gets funding from a variety of Democrat organizations and non-partisan sources including Vote Simple, Pushback, and Progress Pop. It does not have to declare the sources of its funding, although its clients with political affiliations do.
Under Federal Election Commission rules, paid-for material to get out the vote is not classified as political and does not need to be disclosed, but this relies on content being non-partisan.
Bigtent Creative’s CEO Ysiad Ferreiras said that “Our work is not consistent with the platform’s definition of an advertisement. Our creators make their own content as digital organizers, they’re advocating for non-partisan action the same way paid canvassers and organizers working for non-profits do, but the line between partisan and non-partisan in these videos are often blurred and the company told it discourages partners to use #ad because they want the videos to appear authentic.
From watching the videos you would have no idea they were paid for or linked to any company. The videos are made by popular creators and show trending dances or a skit or monologue, and are similar to the videos they usually post.
In one series of videos Bigtent Creative supported, a number of prominent TikTok accounts duetted with each other to promote a non-partisan voter registration link. But some of the users in this so-called “vote chain” included anti-Trump messages such as United States President Mr. Trump is trying to ban TikTok again. can we please vote him out?”
This particular vote chain is still up, but others which call President Trump an angry Cheeto, orange Brussels sprout, or point to a domain called wear-screwed 2020 have been taken down for violating community guidelines after the highlighted them to TikTok.
When we showed some of these TikToks to Bigtent Creative, members of their team said that the videos had non-partisan funding and as such should not have included anti-Trump statements.
At least one of the creators funded by Bigtent told them that they had no clue they should have been disclosing that they had been paid for the video.
Bigtent says that it has helped register 25,000 voters so far, with about half of those from TikTok, more than from any other social media platform. Despite the political ad ban, political content on TikTok is prolific.
Anna Massoglia from the Center of Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks the impact of money on politics, says this highlights the issues around leaving regulation of digital advertising on social media platforms.
She also says that “We don’t know how much happens on a covert level“.
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