The vast majority of TikTok accounts identified by researchers as connecting drug sellers with potential buyers in the UK remained publicly accessible 14 days after being reported for suspected breaches of the platform’s rules on illegal drugs, according to a new study led by the University of Bath.
The findings raise 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 study team, led by Professor Chris Pudney from the Department of Life Sciences at Bath, carried out what they believe to be the first independent real-time audit of how a major social media platform responds when ordinary users report accounts suspected of facilitating the sale of illegal drugs.
The new study is published in the International Journal of Drug Policy. Also involved in this work are researchers from University College London and the University of Manchester.
Over a five-month period from February to July 2026, the team identified 455 UK-facing TikTok accounts that offered to supply drugs. These accounts made references to cocaine, synthetic cannabinoids (commonly known as spice) and controlled medicines. To qualify for the study, all accounts had to show a drug-related cue, UK targeting and an offer or route to supply.
Testing the system available to ordinary users
The researchers used TikTok's standard in-app reporting function – the same process available to any member of the public who encounters suspected illegal content on the platform.
They then recorded TikTok's response and checked whether the accounts remained accessible.
The results were stark. TikTok returned an explicit ‘no violation’ decision for 95.2% of reports. After 14 days, 83.5% of accounts remained publicly accessible. This was true for different categories of drugs and different forms of promotion.
Under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, supplying or offering to supply a controlled drug is a criminal offence.
In addition, the Online Safety Act 2023 classifies drug supply offences as priority offences. Since 17 March 2025, regulated user-to-user services have been required to take proportionate measures to prevent users encountering priority illegal content, and to operate proportionate systems and processes designed to minimise how long such content remains available and swiftly remove illegal content once they become aware of it.
TikTok's own Community Guidelines also prohibit the trade, marketing and promotion of illegal drugs. The study examined content that the researchers argue should represent a relatively straightforward test of the platform reporting system: accounts openly displaying drug-related imagery or terminology, targeting UK users and signposting an offer or route through which purchases could be supplied.
Professor Pudney said: “This is a straightforward test of a reporting system. 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% 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. Our findings show a serious weakness in the reactive reporting pathway we tested.
“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?”
Easy to find, hard to remove
The study was not designed to estimate how common drug-selling content is on TikTok. However, the researchers note that hundreds of eligible accounts were easily identified through ordinary searches using widely known drug-related terms and sales-related language.
The study found that most change in account accessibility occurred within the first two days, after which removal was limited. Every report classed by TikTok as ‘no violation’ was returned exactly 30.5 minutes after reporting. Accounts that survived the initial period were unlikely to be removed later.
Professor Pudney said: "We could not determine whether decisions were made by automated systems, human moderators or a combination of both. However, the fact that every ‘no violation’ decision was returned at precisely 30.5 minutes suggests that at least some automation is likely to be involved in the process."
He added that timeliness matters because harmful content can accumulate much of its exposure early in its life cycle.
Are online safety regulations fit for purpose?
The researchers stress that their findings should not be interpreted as evidence that all drug-selling content escapes detection by TikTok.
The platform reports removing large quantities of violating content through its own proactive moderation systems.
However, the Bath-led study examined a different question: what happens when a user directly reports an account that appears to be involved in illegal drug supply.
Professor Pudney said: “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. That gap should be tested, not assumed away.”
The researchers are calling for independent, offence-specific audits of platform responses to test whether online-safety systems work in practice when users directly report suspected illegal content.
Professor Pudney said: “Ofcom should be independently testing whether the systems that ordinary users rely on to report suspected illegal content work in practice. If an ordinary user can repeatedly point a platform towards apparent drug sellers and receive ‘no violation’, that is exactly the kind of real-world performance a regulator should want to understand.”