After first previewing them back in April, TikTok has today announced an expanded launch of its own version of Community Notes, called “Footnotes,” which will enable TikTok users to add contextual information to posts in the app.
As you can see in this example, TikTok’s Footnotes are the same as X’s Community Notes feature, providing additional context on posts to help explain potentially misleading or incorrect information in relevant clips.
As explained by TikTok:
“Footnotes draws on the collective knowledge of the TikTok community by allowing people to add relevant information to content on our platform. Starting today, U.S. users in the Footnotes pilot program can start to write and rate footnotes on short videos, and our U.S. community will begin to see the ones rated as helpful - and rate them, too.”
So, yeah, it’s exactly like X’s Community Notes, providing another information stream within the platform that can help to better inform the community.
Which could be helpful, as more insight is always better, and various studies have shown that Community Notes can play a significant role in slowing the spread of misinformation in social media apps.
The key drawback of the Community Notes system, however, which has been replicated by Meta in its application of the process, and TikTok as well, is that in order to display notes without political bias, the system uses a differential weighting system, which means that notes are only displayed when note raters of opposing beliefs agree that a note is necessary.
Which is a logical approach, that does help to alleviate biased and malicious note usage. But it also means that on some of the most divisive political issues, no notes are going to be shown, because on some issues, there simply won’t ever be consensus between the two sides.
This is less of a concern on Meta’s apps and on TikTok, because both companies have opted to maintain a level of fact-checking and moderation, which will help to catch out blatant concerns in this respect. But on X, which has eradicated third-party fact-checking entirely, and gutted its moderation team, that means that the vast majority of notes are never shown, which has left the platform rife with unchecked misinformation, muddying the waters on various major debates.
Still, that doesn’t mean that this is a bad initiative, with studies, again, showing that Community Notes do help to reduce the dissemination of misleading reports. But it can lead to expanded concerns when platforms rely on user input for a significant portion of their moderation.
But it is also the approach that U.S. President Donald Trump prefers.
Trump wants to be able to say whatever he wants on social media, regardless of truth, and he hates that the platforms ever chose to censor and restrict content based on things like facts. So this has, seemingly, been a part of the Trump Administration’s push, prompting the platforms that need Trump’s support, for whatever reason, to fall into line with this request.
And TikTok, which is still facing a full ban in the U.S., definitely needs to remain on Trump’s good side.
As such, it’s no surprise to see Footnotes getting a broader roll out, as TikTok looks to demonstrate to the Trump team that it will work with them, however it can.
TikTok says that almost 80,000 U.S. users have qualified to contribute Footnotes, with more being added each day. Notes will begin appearing to U.S. users from this week.
