The vast majority of TikTok accounts identified as connecting their users to people selling drugs in the UK were still accessible two weeks after being reported, says a study led by researchers at the University of Bath.
The social media platform returned a finding of ‘no violation’ on 95 per cent of accounts reported for suspected breaches of rules on advertising illegal drugs, says A prospective audit of TikTok’s response to UK drug-selling accounts. The research team carried out what they believe to be the first independent real-time audit of how a major social media platform responds when users report accounts they believe to advertising drugs for sale. Between February and July this year researchers identified more than 450 UK-facing TikTok accounts that offered to supply drugs, with references to substances including spice, cocaine and controlled medicines – all displayed UK targeting, a ‘drug-related cue’, and an ‘offer or route to supply’.
The researchers then used the in-app reporting function to notify TikTok – the same process available to ‘any member of the public who encounters suspected illegal content on the platform’ – before recording the response and checking whether the account was still accessible. TikTok returned an ‘explicit “no violation” decision’ for 95 per cent of reports, with 83 per cent of the accounts remaining publicly accessible after 14 days. The results were consistent regardless of category of drug or the form of promotion, the researchers say.
The results raised serious questions about ‘how effectively social media platforms respond to reports of illegal activity, and whether the safeguards envisaged under the Online Safety Act are working in practice’, the researchers state. While not designed to assess how common drug-selling content is on the platform, the study nonetheless found that ‘hundreds of eligible accounts were easily identified through ordinary searches, using widely known drug-related terms and sales-related language’.
The report stresses that the findings ‘should not be interpreted as evidence that all drug selling content escapes detection by TikTok’, with the platform reporting the removal of large amounts of content through its own monitoring systems. The study, however, was examining ‘a different question – what happens when a user directly reports an account that appears to be involved in illegal drug supply’. ‘Platforms often publish impressive statistics showing how much content they proactively remove, but these tell us very little about whether a platform acts when a user directly reports apparent criminal activity,’ said study lead, Professor Chris Pudney. ‘That gap should be tested, not assumed away.’
‘This is a straightforward test of a reporting system,’ he continued. ‘These were accounts we identified because they displayed drug-related cues, targeted UK users and contained an explicit offer or route to supply. Yet 95 per cent of our reports came back “no violation”. It’s one thing for a platform to report very high proactive removal rates. It’s another for an ordinary user to point directly to apparent drug-selling accounts and be told, repeatedly, that there is no violation.’
The findings point to a ‘serious weakness’ in the reactive reporting pathway, he continued. ‘The Online Safety Act treats offering illegal drugs for sale as a priority offence. These findings do not by themselves establish legal non-compliance, but they do raise an obvious question for Ofcom: are the systems and processes platforms have in place actually effective when users report this kind of content?’ The researchers were also unable to determine whether decisions had been made by human moderators or automated systems, he pointed out, although the ‘no violation’ decisions were all returned in 30 minutes.
Up to one in four vapes confiscated in English secondary schools contained spice, a 2025 study found, with spice-laced vape liquids ‘easy to buy online and actively promoted on social media’.
A prospective audit of TikTok’s response to UK drug-selling accounts is published in the International Journal of Drug Policy and available here