TikTok to Launch Its Own Community Notes Feature Called ‘Footnotes’

Add TikTok to the growing list of social media services with a Community Notes feature. The video app on Wednesday said it is launching its own version of the feature — first made famous by X and later copied by Meta — that is dubbed “Footnotes.”

“Footnotes offers a new opportunity for people to share their expertise and add an additional layer of context to the discussion using a consensus-driven approach,” Adam Presser, TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety, explained in a blog post.

X’s Community Notes allow users to add context to posts that may be misleading or false. The feature was first teased in 2021 under the name “Birdwatch,” before being rolled out to the masses after Musk bought Twitter in late 2022.

Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — followed X’s lead earlier this year, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying his company was scrapping its third-party fact-checking operation in favor of its own Community Notes feature. Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan in January that Meta’s fact-checking was “too biased” and reminded him of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984.”

TikTok on Wednesday said Footnotes will start rolling out in the U.S. in the “coming months.” Plus, the app’s 170 million American users can apply to be Footnotes “contributors” by meeting a few requirements, including:

1. Be at least 18 years old
2. Have no recent violations of TikTok’s rules
3. Have been on TikTok for at least 6 months

The upcoming update comes as TikTok’s future in the U.S. remains in limbo. The app was set to be banned in January after President Biden signed a law last year requiring ByteDance, its Beijing-based parent company, to sell its American operation or face being booted from the States. That sale did not happen, but President Trump has given TikTok two 75-day extensions since then to work out a deal.

The chief concern U.S. lawmakers said they had last year was that TikTok could act as a stealth spyware app for China’s communist government; ByteDance is required by Chinese law to turn over user data, if the government asks it to.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Semafor on Tuesday that President Trump is still open to a deal.

“The ball is in China’s court,” Leavitt said at a White House press briefing, while reading a statement from the president. “China needs to make a deal with us. We don’t have to make a deal with them. There’s no difference between China and any other country except they are much larger — and China wants what we have … they need our money.”

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