TikTok has released a host of new features, including a Community Notes-style fact-checking tool called Footnotes. Enhanced parental controls bring the ability to block specific accounts to guardians who are linked to minors’ accounts using the Family Pairing feature. Parents also now receive notifications when minors with whom they are paired upload new videos, stories or photos. Creator enhancements include a new TikTok Live comment tool that can block words from comment threads entirely. Those who use a specific phrase or have used it in the past are muted for a period stipulated by the creator.

The common thread seems to be making TikTok a safer and more authentic space in which users can interact more civilly. TikTok sums them up as “trust and safety tools for creators, families and the TikTok community.”

Similar to the Community Notes added by X, Meta Platforms and YouTube, TikTok’s Footnotes feature draws on the collective knowledge of the community to add context to posts. TikTok is initially rolling out Footnotes in a pilot program for which nearly 80,000 U.S. users have qualified to contribute. (A Footnotes newsroom post explains how to qualify and apply to contribute.)

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

Social Media Today delves into problematic aspects of the approach, which requires that opposing sides agree a note is necessary in order for it to propagate to the post, consensus that is challenging to achieve in a polarized environment (noting it is “less of a concern” on TikTok and Meta apps since “both companies have opted to maintain a level of [corporate] fact checking and moderation”).

The new child safety features are add-ons to Family Pairing, a “feature that allows parents to link their accounts with their teen’s account to customize safety settings,” reports TechCrunch, specifying that parents gain “more visibility into the privacy settings that their teen selects,” with the ability to “see if their teen (aged 16 to 17) has enabled downloads for their content or if their following list is visible to others.”

A TikTok Creators post describes new creator features, including the pre-post Content Check Lite, which indicates whether content is likely to be ineligible for the For You feed, and the Creator Chat Room, which “allows creators to connect and interact directly with eligible followers on TikTok.”