TikTok turns to users in fight against misinformation
TikTok, like several other major social media platforms, is now turning to users to help fight misinformation.
The popular video-sharing app announced Wednesday that users accepted into its pilot program can start providing additional context to short videos and rate other users’ comments as part of the new Footnotes feature.
TikTok first announced in April that it was testing Footnotes, opening up applications for users to become contributors in the pilot.
“Footnotes draws on the collective knowledge of the TikTok community by allowing people to add relevant information to content on our platform,” the platform said.
Much like the Community Notes programs at both X and Meta, only Footnotes that are deemed helpful by enough contributors who typically have differing opinions will become visible to others.
In its April announcement, TikTok noted its ranking system was inspired by the open-source system used by other platforms, linking to a page detailing the source code behind Twitter’s Community Notes. Twitter was renamed X following its acquisition by Elon Musk.
Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, similarly adopted the Community Notes approach earlier this year to replace its third-party fact-checking program — a decision that was highly scrutinized given the timing of the announcement shortly before President Trump took office.
However, unlike X and Meta, TikTok is not ditching its fact-checking program.
“Footnotes adds to these efforts with more ways to add helpful details that may be missing, ultimately enriching discussions on TikTok and improving the experience for viewers, contributors and creators alike,” the platform said in April.
In addition to rolling out Footnotes, TikTok also announced several new safety and well-being features Wednesday.
The platform is adding new features for parental oversight of teen accounts. Parents will now be able to receive automatic notifications when their children upload content that is visible to others and have greater insight into their privacy settings.
TikTok is also adding new “missions” aimed at boosting well-being, as well as new tools to allow creators to filter out certain comments, words, phrases and emojis on their content and pre-check whether their content qualifies for users’ main feed.