Author: Adam Presser, Head of Operations and Trust & Safety

Earlier this year we announced the pilot of Footnotes, a new feature that will help bring more context to content on 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.

What are Footnotes?

Footnotes bring additional written context to videos. A footnote might share a researcher's view on a complex STEM-related topic, while another could highlight new statistics that give a fuller picture on an issue.

Who are the contributors?

Nearly 80,000 U.S. users have qualified to contribute Footnotes. To qualify, users must be in the U.S., have had an account for at least 6 months, and no recent Community Guidelines violations. U.S. users can still apply, and we expect the number of contributors to keep growing.

How will Footnotes appear to U.S. users?

Footnotes is powered by a bridging-based system that finds a broad level of consensus between people with different opinions. Footnotes that contributors agree are helpful will start to appear on videos in the coming weeks for our U.S. community, who will also be able to rate them.

At first, it may take some time for a footnote to become public as contributors get started and become more familiar with the feature. The more footnotes get written and rated on different topics, the smarter and more effective the system becomes. Our ranking systems will learn and improve over time, which we expect will help close the gap between a footnote being written and becoming visible.

How we'll keep Footnotes useful and relevant

Footnotes need to be in line with our Community Guidelines, just like other content on our platform. Moderating content of this type and at this scale can be complex, so we'll deploy a combination of automated and human moderation to help detect and remove violative footnotes. Users will also be able to report footnotes that they think break our rules. These efforts will help us ensure that footnotes enhance the TikTok experience for our community.

Our commitment to platform integrity

Footnotes builds on our extensive efforts to maintain platform integrity with content labels, search banners, and a global fact-checking program that help people understand the reliability of content and access authoritative sources. Alongside iterating and improving Footnotes, we will continue to invest in our robust content moderation efforts to help curb the spread of harmful misinformation. We also remain focused on the power of media literacy to equip our community with skills to separate fact from fiction.