TikTok is getting its own version of community notes

TikTok has announced “Footnotes,” its ain instrumentality connected the assemblage notes features that started connected Twitter and person been spreading to different societal networks. As elsewhere, it’s a crowd-sourced attack to moderation — TikTok says contributors volition beryllium capable to “add applicable accusation to contented connected our platform.”

US users tin apply to go Footnotes contributors starting today, arsenic agelong arsenic they conscionable TikTok’s requirements, including that they indispensable person been connected TikTok for much than six months, indispensable beryllium 18 oregon older, and can’t person violated immoderate assemblage guidelines successful the erstwhile six months. The institution says it volition besides notify US users who already acceptable its requirements.

Here’s however TikTok describes the process for publishing Footnotes:

Footnotes volition usage a bridge-based ranking strategy designed to find statement betwixt radical who usually person antithetic opinions, inspired by the open-sourced strategy that different platforms use. It works by allowing contributors with differing opinions to permission and ballot connected the helpfulness of a footnote. Only footnotes that conscionable the threshold for “helpful” volition beryllium disposable to the community, astatine which constituent the broader assemblage tin ballot connected it, too. The much footnotes get written and rated connected antithetic topics, the smarter and much effectual the strategy becomes.

TikTok says the diagnostic volition beryllium “tested successful the U.S. for abbreviated signifier videos” and that it volition unfastened entree to contributors “over the coming months.” 

After debuting connected Twitter successful 2021 arsenic Birdwatch, a fact-checking programme reacting to online misinformation, assemblage sourcing discourse has go a fashionable alternate to platform-led moderation, having spread to YouTube and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and Threads successful caller months. TikTok reportedly laid off an chartless fig of its spot and information unit successful February, but contiguous says this diagnostic “augments our existing suite of level integrity measures and features.”