TikTok
Last month, an absurd and fake Amazon ad was circulated through TikTok. The ad included Roblox gameplay, text-to-speech dialogue and a clip of a man dancing to a Flo Rida and T-Pain song.
This peculiar TikTok featured a video from the online game Roblox in which the player jumped from one platform to another. Overlayed over this was a conversation between a male and female text-to-speech bot. These two voices exchanged jabs about grandmothers, girlfriends and other elementary subjects. Every so often, a video of a man dancing to a snippet of “Low” by T-Pain and Flo Rida flashed into the video.
YouTuber Eddy Burback managed to grab a recording of the strange Tik Tok.
this was an amazon ad I got on tik tok???
this is 100% real I just recorded it pic.twitter.com/cST0JoKb33
— Eddy Burback (@eddyburback) August 4, 2021
The video appeared to be a sponsored TikTok from a user called “@Amazon.” Amazon later said that this was not a sanctioned advertisement from the company. They are currently working with TikTok to resolve the matter.
Clicking on the ad also revealed an expected result. Users were taken to the search results of “revealhome1” on Amazon. This search term mainly leads to home furnishings, supplies and other related items. The sellers of these items were listed under multiples names such as Sivya US, Creative Co-op and Mii Home. These appear to be real companies, but their Amazon listings were not always consistent with offerings posted on the company’s websites. In the case of Sivya US, none of the items sold on Amazon appeared on the company’s website.
“This situation was the result of a technical issue, which temporarily swapped the Amazon ad with a different video,” a TikTok employee told The Verge.
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