TikTok has rolled out a community-based fact-checking system in the US, becoming the latest tech platform to use crowdsourcing to combat misinformation online.
The feature, called Footnotes, which TikTok began testing in April, allows verified users to suggest text captions to provide additional context to potentially false or misleading content — similar to the Community Notes function on Meta and X platforms.
“Footnotes leverages the collective wisdom of the TikTok community by allowing users to add relevant information to content,” said Adam Presser, TikTok’s chief operating officer and head of trust and safety, in a blog post.
Users in the US who are part of the Footnotes beta can start writing and rating captions for short videos . Captions that are deemed helpful will be featured and continue to be rated by the community.
TikTok said nearly 80,000 US users who have maintained their accounts for at least six months are eligible to write footnotes. TikTok currently has about 170 million US users.
The platform emphasizes that Footnotes will complement existing content protections, including labeling unverified content and partnering with independent fact-checkers to assess the accuracy of posts.
Crowd-verification systems were popularized by Elon Musk's X platform, but many researchers have questioned their actual effectiveness in preventing misinformation.
Earlier this month, a study found that more than 90% of community notes on the X platform are never published, reflecting major performance limitations.
The study, conducted by the Digital Democracy Institute for the Americas (DDIA), analyzed the entire public database of 1.76 million annotations that X published between January 2021 and March 2025.
TikTok notes that it takes time for a caption to become public as contributors get used to the new feature. “The more captions are written and reviewed on different topics, the smarter and more effective the system will become,” Presser said.
Tech platforms increasingly see the community-led model as an alternative to professional verification.
Earlier this year, Meta ended its third-party fact-checking program in the US because it led to “too much censorship,” according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Instead, Mr Zuckerberg said Meta's platforms — including Facebook and Instagram — will use the Community Notes feature.
Some studies have shown that Community Notes can help counter misinformation like vaccine misinformation, but researchers have long warned that the tool is only effective on topics on which there is broad social consensus.
Some experts also worry that users may be politically motivated to attack opponents through this annotation system./.
Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/tiktok-bo-sung-tinh-nang-nham-doi-pho-voi-thong-tin-sai-lech-post1053023.vnp
Comment (0)