Platform

TikTok Rolls Out ‘Footnotes’ In U.S. To Add Community-Driven Context To Videos

Published on July 31, 2025

TikTok has launched its “Footnotes” feature for U.S. users, allowing community members to add contextual information to short-form videos on the platform. The feature, previously announced as a pilot program in April, is now accessible to qualified contributors across the United States.

Footnotes bring additional written context to videos on complex topics, potentially misleading statistics, or ongoing events. The system employs a “bridge-based ranking system” designed to find consensus between users with differing viewpoints. Only footnotes rated as helpful by contributors become visible to the broader community.

“Footnotes draws on the collective knowledge of the TikTok community by allowing people to add relevant information to content on our platform,” said Adam Presser, Head of Operations and Trust & Safety at TikTok, in an announcement.

Nearly 80,000 U.S. users have qualified as contributors. To participate, users must be based in the U.S., maintain an account for at least six months, and have no recent Community Guidelines violations.

TikTok emphasizes that Footnotes complements existing integrity measures, including content labels, search banners, and its fact-checking program with more than 20 IFCN-accredited organizations. The company plans to use automated and human moderation to detect and remove violative footnotes. Users can also report footnotes they believe violate Community Guidelines.

A recent UNESCO study found that only around 36% of digital content creators verify information before sharing it with their audiences, highlighting the need for additional context on social media platforms.

Shift Toward Community Moderation

TikTok’s implementation follows similar community-driven features on other major platforms. The approach began as Twitter’s “Birdwatch” in 2021 and has since expanded to YouTube and Meta’s applications.

This shift comes amid broader industry changes in content moderation. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company would end partnerships with third-party fact-checkers in favor of a community-driven system similar to X’s Community Notes. “We built a lot of complex systems to moderate content, but the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes,” Zuckerberg stated at the time.