In a new scoop by Forbes, six insiders at TikTok told the outlet that the business was considering changing how it deals with political posts and political ads.
As revealed by the insiders, TikTok has a working group of senior employees called Project Core. The group, which has reportedly met for several years, got its name from the idea that TikTok’s “core” is accessible, light-hearted videos as opposed to more serious discourse.
What is Project Core?
Project Core, Forbes reports, has in the past focused on issues like what causes toxicity on the platform and how to handle “hard news” and political discourse on the app.
Earlier this year, Project Core considered a proposal that involved having TikTok partner with a select number of “authoritative” news outlets in order to boost these outlets’ distribution on the app.
However, this proposal wasn’t plain sailing. Some employees expressed concern over how these news outlets would be selected, while others proposed that TikTok conduct a case study on Facebook’s difficult relationship with political publishers.
What about political ads on TikTok?
These employees also told Forbes that TikTok’s “monetization integrity team,” aka staff members who enforce TikTok’s advertising rules, report both to the Global Business Solutions and Trust & Safety departments.
Allegedly, according to Forbes, some staff members see this arrangement as a conflict of interest. The Global Business Solutions department runs TikTok’s ad sales, which may at times be in opposition to the Trust & Safety team’s goal to take down problematic ads at any cost.
As TikTok spokesperson Ben Rathe told Forbes, the platform still prohibits the posting of paid political ads on the platform. However, advocacy groups, candidates, and parties have found a loophole. They can still post videos that are ads on other platforms as non-ad videos on TikTok.
And as Forbes points out, users can still run ads on political topics like abortion, inflation and crime provided these TikTok’s don’t violate the platform’s terms of service. The outlet also reports that TikTok doesn’t have a public ad library of who the company chooses to advertise with and how much money this costs.
