Tiktok is testing a new “footnote” feature that works similarly to X's community notes. Social Networks announced that footnotes can add to the video that allows users to add additional context and related information to the video, allowing others to better understand certain content.
The company says the footnotes complement a current set of measures designed to help people understand the reliability of content, such as content labels and their fact-checking programs. In other words, Tiktok does not replace fact checking with footnotes, unlike the meta that does exactly that through its new community notes feature.
Like X and other community note systems on Facebook, Footnotes uses a bridge-based ranking system designed to find agreements among people who normally have different opinions, the company says in a blog post.
This system works by allowing users with different opinions to vote by leaving the usefulness of footnotes to the vote. If the footnote is rated “helpful,” it will only be visible to the community. At this point, the wider Tiktok community can also vote for their usefulness. Tiktok says that the system becomes more effective as more footnotes are written and evaluated on a variety of topics.
Image credit: Tiktok
While the comments section of Tiktok and other tools like Stitch and Duet allow users to share video-centric interactions, the new footnotes feature provides new ways to share expertise with users and add layers of context using a consensus-driven approach to increase reliability. Tiktok notes that footnotes can be particularly useful when covering complex STEM topics, including potentially misleading statistics, or sharing updates to ongoing events.
The launch of the new feature occurs because Tiktok was called out to spread misinformation about important topics such as health and elections. Tiktok may hope that the introduction of footnotes will help reduce the spread of some of this misinformation by registering the user base and adding reliability and additional context to the video.
From today, US users are at least 18 years old and can become footnote contributors if they have been on the platform for more than six months, and have no recent history of violating Tiktok's community guidelines.
Tiktok will begin surfaces of footnotes from contributors over the coming months. At this time, it is unclear exactly what the footnotes will look like and where they will appear in the video.
Tiktok continues, “In partnership with over 20 IFCN certified fact-checking organizations to assess the accuracy of Tiktok's content in over 60 languages and 130 markets around the world.