EDITORIAL | TikTok is to be commended for running down the clock on political advertising

The Beijing-based TikTok phenomenon that has left Mark Zuckerberg and co scrambling to catch up, has introduced welcome new policies for political party advertising. A breath of fresh air, this social media app which is four years young, reached one billion users in September. It’s a feat Facebook, YouTube and Instagram took eight years to achieve, according to a recent report by The Economist. Now its owner Zhang Yiming, the Chinese entrepreneur behind the software company ByteDance, has tightened up TikTok’s policies around political advertising, a significant move that places it another step ahead of its competitors.

In a statement last week, TikTok said it wanted to “develop policies that foster and promote a positive environment that brings people together, not divide them”. It already prohibits political advertising but will now also apply restrictions on accounts belonging to politicians and political parties. Their access to advertising and monetisation features will be switched off. This means gifting, tipping and e-commerce are not allowed for politicians and political parties. This is in stark contrast to social media giants Facebook and Instagram whose owners still happily allow political advertising, opening themselves and their users up to manipulation that can come at a great cost.

SA has its own dark secrets when it comes to audience manipulation on social media. That is all the more reason for us to embrace any initiative aimed at preventing the abuse of an online platform.

The announcement came in the run-up to US midterm elections, but TikTok in SA confirmed to TimesLIVE Premium the new policy will also apply to politicians on local soil. With a mainly young audience, this is a market many political parties will be keen to reach, also in SA. It is partly what makes the platform so attractive to campaigners.

SA has its own dark secrets when it comes to audience manipulation on social media. That is all the more reason for us to embrace any initiative aimed at preventing the abuse of an online platform.

In 2017, UK firm Bell Pottinger’s role in the manufacture of the Gupta family’s propaganda machine was exposed by the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting. SA’s first large-scale fake news propaganda war spanned across Gupta-owned media channels and social media networks Facebook and Twitter. The fake news network produced at least 220,000 tweets and hundreds of Facebook posts between July 2016 and July 2017. It was social media manipulation at its worst. Today SA is still paying the price of the Gupta family’s tentacles unfurling into the halls of our now burnt-out parliament.

More recently, in 2020, and equally concerning, a report released by the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change at the University of Cape Town found there was a co-ordinated attempt to manipulate SA conversations with a xenophobic tone on social media platforms. It found key narratives around xenophobia were being curated and amplified by a dedicated network of connected users on local social media platforms. This remains deeply disturbing, exposing an underworld of evil linked to the brutal killings of foreign nationals eking out a living in SA.

TikTok’s move to tighten up rules around political advertising should serve as a reminder to remain vigilant. Its decision not to take money from politicians deserves applause again brings to the fore how social media can be manipulated to serve destructive motives. It is a caution that should remain in the back of our minds as we navigate the social media realities of our time.