TikTok Announces Footnotes, Continuing Momentum for Crowdsourced Context

Last week, TikTok announced that it began testing Footnotes, a new community-driven feature designed to add context to disputed content on the platform. The move makes TikTok the latest platform to introduce a context-adding feature driven primarily by its users, instead of by the company’s own policy teams or third-party fact checkers. This follows Meta’s January announcement that it would begin testing a Community Notes feature in the U.S. similar to the feature that X (then-Twitter) introduced several years ago.

The Footnotes pilot, starting with short-form content in the U.S., allows eligible users to propose and rate supplemental information that appears on posts once consensus is reached, similar to Meta and X.

Like the crowdsourced context tools on other platforms, Footnotes is being framed as a trust-building measure intended to supplement, rather than replace, TikTok’s content moderation policies and enforcement efforts. Meta, TikTok, and X all maintain and enforce their own content moderation policies, and their respective context-adding features aren’t meant to replace that work.

Notably though, unlike its peers, TikTok seems to be retaining its third-party fact-checking partnerships, with Footnotes complementing context notes added by third-party fact-checking companies as part of the company’s broader integrity suite. Meta and X, meanwhile, have opted to pivot to Community Notes as a means of replacing their respective third-party fact-checking programs — at least in markets where these features are available. Meta has only launched Community Notes in the U.S., ending its third-party fact-checking program there, but maintains its third-party fact checking network outside the U.S. where Community Notes are not yet available.

The TikTok announcement continues a trend of platforms giving their users greater agency — to decide the kinds of content they want to see, to add context to disputed information, and more. For advertisers, this concept extends to brand suitability, with marketers needing to play a larger role in determining for themselves the kinds of content they do and don’t want to align with online. I go into this in greater length in an earlier post discussing Meta’s Community Notes announcement.

Based on my time having explained and defended a similar feature when I worked at Twitter, TikTok’s announcement raises a few key questions for those working in the media responsibility space:

• How will Footnotes interact with TikTok’s ad adjacency systems? Will content with Footnotes be automatically excluded from monetization/prevented from serving immediately before or after an ad? If not, will it be made avoidable via the platform’s brand suitability tools? (Ads currently do not appear adjacent to content with published Community Notes on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and X.)
• Will sponsored videos be eligible to receive Footnotes, or only organic content? (Ads are currently ineligible to receive Community Notes on Meta platforms, but are eligible to receive Community Notes on X.)
• Is organic content from brands/businesses eligible to receive a Footnote? (On Facebook, Instagram and Threads, most forms of organic public content are eligible, including posts by brands, Meta, Meta executives, politicians and other public figures. Any post can receive a Community Note on X.)
• What guardrails will prevent abuse of Footnotes? Will the consensus-building mechanisms be made public, as X’s are?
• Are content authors notified if a Footnote is added to their post? What options for recourse does the author have?
• Provided that TikTok’s third-party fact-checking program continues alongside Footnotes, how will the platform handle disputed posts that receive annotations from both Footnotes and third-party fact checkers? How is the determination made to send a given post through one program vs. the other?

As with other platforms, feedback from users and advertisers will be critical to shape these tools in their early stages. Research is beginning to emerge that corroborates the trustworthiness of crowdsourced context tools on social platforms. As consumers increasingly turn to nontraditional media for information, it’s important that marketers (and all stakeholders) pay close attention to how the information ecosystem continues to evolve on major platforms.