Mozilla report found more than a dozen TikTok influencers who had undisclosed paid relationships to post political messages; TikTok banned political ads in 2019 (Mozilla Tiktokzakrzewski Washingtonpost)

Mozilla Tiktokzakrzewski Washingtonpost: A recent report conducted by Mozilla found that more than a dozen TikTok influencers had undisclosed paid relationships to post political messages on their videos, the company banned political ads in 2019. This decision has been applauded by various activist groups and has been seen as a “victory for free speech”.

Not everyone is happy about this. As of now, it’s not known whether the TikTok app will still be able to use third-party content from content creators with undisclosed paid relationships. It’s also not clear what the ban on political ads means for the app.

The report was released by Mozilla, a major free web browser provider and anti-privacy organization. The report argued that political messages were being spread through the video platform without users knowing that they were paid promotion of propaganda. Specifically, 7 Indian political parties allegedly used TikTok to influence voters ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. TikTok has been widely used in India because it is unable to detect political content and is mostly used by young people in India. TikTok is an app that allows users to post and share videos with one another.

The CEO of Mozilla, Mark Surman, claimed that the platform had been used for “political propaganda” for a long time. He claimed this was not only a problem in India, but globally as well. He also claimed that such incidents are not unique to India and are happening all over the world. The report also stated that many of these political influencers have more than 100,000 followers on the app. Allegedly, these users were able to get their political messages across without anyone knowing that they were paid promotions.

At the same time as the report was released, Mozilla CEO Mark Surman said that TikTok has removed all of these videos from its platform and banned political advertising on its app. He said, “It shows a clear desire from TikTok to address this problem, so we’ve decided to temporarily suspend our work with them. We will resume engagement with TikTok when we know they’ve solved this problem.”

Mozilla has decided to stop working with TikTok for an undisclosed amount of time. Mozilla also announced that it would work with other companies to make sure that political messages would not be able to be spread on their platforms for the next 4 months. The company also announced that it would work with Google, a major search engine, YouTube, a popular video streaming platform, and Facebook in order to address the issue.