TikTok is testing 'Footnotes,' its version of Community Notes
TikTok is testing out Footnotes, which is effectively its version of X's Community Notes. The company announced the new feature Wednesday in a blog post on its website.
TikTok is just the latest social media platform to roll out its own version of Community Notes, joining giants like Facebook and Instagram. The idea is that a community of users can help combat misinformation.
In the post announcing the feature, TikTok wrote:
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"Footnotes will draw on the collective knowledge of the TikTok community by allowing people to add relevant information to content on our platform. To start, this feature will be tested in the U.S. for short form videos. It will add to our suite of measures that help people understand the reliability of content and access authoritative sources, including our content labels, search banners, our fact-checking program, and more."
U.S. users can apply to become Footnotes contributors but must meet certain requirements, including being on the platform for longer than six months, being 18 or older, and having no recent violations of community guidelines.
The tool will rely on users rating the helpfulness of different Footnotes.
Wrote TikTok:
"Footnotes will use a bridge-based ranking system designed to find agreement between people who usually have different opinions, inspired by the open-sourced system that other platforms use. It works by allowing contributors with differing opinions to leave and vote on the helpfulness of a footnote. Only footnotes that meet the threshold for "helpful" will be visible to the community, at which point the broader community can vote on it, too. The more footnotes get written and rated on different topics, the smarter and more effective the system becomes."
It's not clear when, exactly, Footnotes will launch, but TikTok noted that it'll open access to the tool in the "coming months."
Topics TikTok
Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You'll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).
