TikTok has banned all political advertising on the app since 2019, but that hasn’t stopped advertisers from running what appear to be paid political messages on the platform.
NBC News found 52 videos on the platform tagged with either a “Paid Partnership” label, #ad or #sponsored that have received up to hundreds of thousands views per video while spreading political messages that appear to violate TikTok’s rules.
According to TikTok, the company does “not allow ads featuring political content across any of our monetization features, including paid ads, creators being paid to make branded political content, and other promotional tools on the platform.”
TikTok stands apart among its big tech peers in banning political ads — Facebook, Instagram, X and Google all allow political advertisements. But TikTok, owned by Chinese-based parent company ByteDance, has also faced a unique level of scrutiny from lawmakers over national security concerns, facing down a law that the company is currently challenging in court that would ban the platform if it’s not sold to a U.S.-approved company.
The continued presence of political ads on TikTok illustrates the difficulties in patrolling its own platform just weeks ahead of the 2024 presidential election and amid the court proceedings over its potential ban.
A spokesperson for TikTok said that during the last quarter of 2023, the platform removed 99% of violations against its “Civic and Election Integrity” policy before they were reported by others.
TikTok said that it employs over 40,000 trust and safety experts globally.
“We are committed to protecting the integrity of our platform through elections and have long prohibited political advertising, including politically branded content. We will continue to remove content that violates our guidelines on an ongoing basis,” the TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News.
After NBC sent some examples of apparent violations to TikTok, two videos were removed.
For almost five years, U.S. lawmakers have been concerned about how Chinese-owned TikTok could be used to influence Americans.
U.S. intelligence officials said in a July press call that they believe Russia, China and Iran will continue to use social media propaganda to influence U.S. elections. TikTok’s ad network offers one potential tool for anyone seeking quick influence on social media, and banned political influence campaigns appear to be slipping through the cracks.
“TikTok is dealing with a specific political environment in the United States,” said Emerson College associate professor Vincent Raynauld, who studies the effects of social media on politics. “There’s an effort on the part of many U.S. elected officials to get rid of TikTok. There’s a PR component of it and a governmental relation part of it where they’re trying to make sure that they are aligned with some of the expectations that the U.S. government is putting out there.”
Despite TikTok’s interest in removing political advertisements, NBC News found dozens of apparently paid videos promoting political issues and topics, including six sponsored by ActBlue, a left-leaning PAC and political fundraising platform. The videos promoted issues like efforts to combat climate change and gun violence.
While ActBlue didn’t respond to a request for comment, both of the videos NBC News linked in an email to the organization have since been removed.
Fifteen of the ads encouraged people to register to vote, with posts paid for by organizations like TogetherSF Action and NextGen America, which was created by billionaire Tom Steyer, who ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. The TogetherSF Action slideshow has now been removed.
Some of the videos were nonpartisan. A 2022 video marked as a “paid partnership” from Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles simply encouraged people to make sure their voter registration is up to date, referring people to Headcount.org, run by a voter registration nonprofit. The video is still on TikTok.
Other videos referred to specific issues or policies.
In one video from NextGen America, a left-leaning nonprofit, a TikTok creator applies makeup while discussing specific ballot measures pertaining to abortion and encouraging young people to vote. “Wanna know what’s literally crazy? The fact that our reproductive health is literally on the ballot,” the creator says in the video.
According to TikTok’s policies, “references to an election, including voter registration, voter turnout, and appeals for votes, such as ads that encourage people to vote,” are not allowed as ads on the platform.
Shelby Purdum, NextGen America’s national press secretary, said in a statement to NBC News that NextGen’s programs are designed to comply with the law and the terms for using each platform. “Our campaigns in partnership with TikTok content creators are nonpartisan and for educational purposes,” she said.
Other videos tagged with a “Paid Partnership” label or #ad were more even more specific, with @_patrickkelly criticizing House Republicans’ proposed budget for trying to cut Social Security benefits, among other measures, in a now-removed video and @hotsundayhome encouraging support for the Inflation Reduction Act.
The findings come as recent research shows that political ads on social media platforms are often filled with misinformation. There were no obvious signs of misinformation among the TikTok videos NBC reviewed.
Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University, said TikTok likely bans political ads outright because it is expensive for platforms to distinguish between “good” and “bad” political content.
Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s president of global solutions, wrote in a 2022 blog post that the company’s aim with its policy on political advertising was to prevent divisive content and “promote a positive environment.”
However, even with the tight restrictions in place, violations can still slip past its moderation technology and staff.
In 2020, the BBC reported that some TikTok influencers were being paid to post political content. TikTok later took down individual videos after the BBC pointed them out.
In 2022, Edelson and her team found that TikTok failed to stop most misleading political ads from being posted on the platform in a test run researchers set up.
The Federal Election Commission told NBC News that “there are currently no FEC regulations that specifically address activities like social media influencers.” In 2023, the FEC approved a set of amendments related to technological modernization such as removing references to outdated technologies but didn’t include influencers.
