Fact-checkers, start your engines.
TikTok is launching a new “footnotes” feature in the US on Wednesday that allows users to add context or corrective information to videos.
The crowdsourcing tool is similar to X (formerly Twitter) or Meta’s community notes. It lets users flag videos they believe contain false claims, information that needs clarification, or media that has been edited or artificially generated. Other users then rate the submission’s accuracy and helpfulness. If enough support it, it could get added below an offending video.
The footnotes feature arrives at a key moment for TikTok, which has grown into a popular news source for young people. Last year, 17% of US adults said they regularly get news on the site, up from 3% in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.
TikTok is not relying solely on footnotes to address misinformation.
The company said it uses automation and human moderators to track down false content, working with a global network of fact-checkers to identify misinformation in different markets. But for app users, footnotes may quickly become one of the more visible forms of content review happening on the app.
To start posting footnotes, a user must be based in the US, have been on the app for at least six months, and have no recent community violations on their record. The company said it had registered around 80,000 participants to seed the product at launch.
One challenge that may crop up for TikTok is defining what is or isn’t good information in a footnote (an area of contention in the US media landscape where political divisions run deep).
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When submitting a footnote, TikTok asks users to provide a link to a “reliable source” to support their claim, though TikTok isn’t dictating what is or isn’t reliable.
“In the beginning, we’re letting our users choose which links to upload and after we go live, we’ll be taking a look at some of the sources that come in,” Erica Ruzic, TikTok’s global head of integrity and authenticity product, said on Tuesday at an event hosted at the company’s New York offices. “We will let our users decide what they’re deeming an authoritative source to begin.”
Initially, footnotes will only appear on the original offending video, which means duets or stitches won’t get flagged. They also won’t appear on content from advertisers.
The effectiveness of the program may depend on TikTok’s ability to prevent its system from being gamed, as bad actors might try to flood the zone with misinformation on a particular topic, Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, said during a Tuesday panel at TikTok’s offices.
The speed at which a footnote is submitted, reviewed, and posted will also be an important factor in the program’s impact.
“When bad content that’s harmful goes viral, it doesn’t go viral in two weeks, it goes viral in one hour,” Roberta Braga, founder and executive director of the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, said during the panel.
