At the end of February, TikTok expanded access to its research API to a larger number of European researchers. With the increasing possibility of the app being banned in the US, TikTok made this decision to demonstrate greater transparency and make every effort to avoid a ban. Now, the company has decided to do the same in Europe.
TikTok has expanded access to its research API to Europe and has launched new transparency tools for commercial content, according to a company blog post. “The tools are designed to enhance the transparency of content within the platform and are based on information received from researchers and civil society,” TikTok states.
As confirmed by a TikTok spokesperson to TechCrunch, the research API will be made available to researchers across Europe, not just those working in EU-affiliated institutions. This means that the API will also be open to requests from scholars working in the European Economic Area (EEA), the UK, and Switzerland.
In addition to the API expansion, TikTok has also introduced a library of advertising transparency known as the “commercial content library.” This library will allow anyone to view TikTok ads and other commercial content by date, country, and keywords, providing greater transparency regarding their advertising practices.
“This library is a database where information about paid ads and ad metadata can be searched, such as ad creatives, dates when an ad was active, key parameters used for targeting (e.g., age, gender), the number of people it reached, and more,” explains TikTok in its blog post.
Furthermore, the company has provided access to a commercial content API so that any interested researcher can query the database.
“Researchers will need to create a TikTok Developers account and submit a request to access the commercial content API,” TikTok states. “These requests will be reviewed by the platform to help prevent malicious actors from misusing this data.”
With these announcements, TikTok aims to comply with European legislation, which requires “very large online platforms” (VLOPs) to be transparent and provide a commercial database where information can be searched, as well as granting access to data to researchers.
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