Report from TechCrunch
In Brief – TikTok has announced that it is testing a new feature dubbed “Footnotes” to allow users to add additional context and relevant information to videos to help others better understand certain content. It is clearly modeled on X’s “Community Notes” feature that is central to that platform’s efforts to address misinformation, making TikTok the second social media giant to adopt X’s methodology, following Meta in January. TikTok says that Footnotes, which will roll out in the United States first, will complement its current suite of measures designed to help people understand the reliability of content on the platform, such as labels and a fact-checking program that partners with “more than 20 IFCN-accredited fact-checking organizations”. The company says Footnotes will use a bridge-based ranking system like that used by X and Facebook that is designed to find agreement between people who usually have different opinions, with participants leaving commentary and voting on the helpfulness of a footnote. A Footnote will only become visible to the community once it’s rated as “helpful”.
Context – When Meta announced its major shift in content moderation in January, including abandoning “fact-checking” and adopting X-style Community Notes in the US, it was widely seen as an effort to appeal to the incoming Trump Administration on the President’s top digital issue, opposition to anti-conservative viewpoint discrimination, in hopes of bringing them onsides in dealing with foreign government penalties and regulation, especially in Europe. TikTok is even more reliant on the Trump Administration. Without the President’s backing of an eventual agreement to transfer control of the platform in some manner to owners who are not Chinese, their US platform will be shut down. But TikTok’s Footnotes plan does not go nearly as far as X’s or Meta’s. Likely, this is another reflection of the fact that TikTok’s survival hinges just as much on the Chinese Government, and they are not moved by arguments for free speech online. Also, China is wooing the Europeans in response to US tariffs, and the European Commission is not a fan of X’s Community Notes model.