Tiktok has now become one of the biggest social media over the globe, offering a distinct platform to share your videos. Soon after it introduced the Tiktok ads, businesses started using the Ads to boost their each. However, recently, TikTok clearly disallows political ads on its platform.
Restricting Political ads in Tiktok, the vice president of Global Business Solutions for TikTok, Blake Chandlee stated that the motto of the video-sharing app is to stay true in whatsoever condition. Allowing political ads in the application will increase its chances to promote wrong and light-hearted information that we never love to promote on our platform.
In the recent post, Chandlee wrote “We will not allow paid ads that promote or oppose a candidate, current leader, political party or group, or issue at the federal, state, or local level — including election-related ads, advocacy ads, or issue ads,“
Tiktok further added to the above statement that the platform wants to be famous for a clean and entertainment content, without sharing any unauthentic information. Tiktok started its Ads two years back, but since then, it has offered a broad platform for the advertisers to promote their services/products. The Tiktok ads include in-feed video ads, launching screen ads, and other native ads that include sponsored hashtag challenges. In the recent past, they have also released their Tiktok Creator Marketplace beta version.
Chandlee said, “Throughout all of this, however, our primary focus is on creating an entertaining, genuine experience for our community. While we explore ways to provide value to brands, we’re intent on always staying true to why users uniquely love the TikTok platform itself: for the app’s light-hearted and irreverent feeling that makes it such a fun place to spend time,“
Political ads don’t fit into the eligibility criteria for running Tiktok advertisements that make them out of bound for the advertisers. Also, running these types of ads may cause harm to the video-sharing platform; as faced by Facebook in the recent past.
To allow political advertisements, Tiktok will require verifying complete political details along with the news authenticity. Alongside various other sensitive information will be required, e.g. street address, phone number, business email, and website matching the email, tax ID number, and more. Such information may be prone to data-stealing, as seen on Facebook.
Also, being a Chinese-run company, TikTok finds it tough to execute such practices and undergo complete authentic checkups to omit fake news as well as hate speech. The company is reportedly valued at $75 billion last year. It was also branded as the world’s most valuable startup. Tiktok also has a domestic version in China, which is named “Douyin.” In China, Tiktok is not available; instead, Douyin is there to entertain the people.
Political Ad restriction is not the first time Tiktok has made in its app. The company said that with time, many more changes would be made in the policy to make the platform transparent and authentic, sharing entertaining and clear information to the users.
