Combating Misinformation

The Strategies of TikTok and Reddit

Misinformation is one of the biggest problems facing social media platforms. False information does not have to be completely fabricated to be harmful. A misleading video, an old picture presented as a current event, or a real statistic taken out of context can spread just as quickly as something that is completely made up. Two platforms that approach this problem in noticeably different ways are TikTok and Reddit. Admittedly these are my social medias of choice, which is why I decided to look into their strategies. TikTok focuses heavily on fact checking, content labels, and controlling whether questionable content is recommended to users. Reddit relies much more heavily on its community-based moderation system, where individual subreddits establish their own rules and volunteer moderators enforce them. Both approaches have advantages, and disadvantages.

Tiktok

TikTok’s current Community Guidelines have a specific section dedicated to “Integrity and Authenticity.” TikTok prohibits misinformation that could cause significant harm to individuals or society as a whole. This includes harmful health misinformation, misinformation about emergencies, conspiracy theories, climate misinformation, and political/election misinformation. TikTok also prohibits certain manipulated or AI generated content when it is designed to mislead people about world events or public facing figures.

One important part of TikTok’s strategy is that the company does not always have to completely remove questionable content. Some content can remain on the platform but become ineligible for the For You feed, i.e. TikTok identifies unverified claims about a current emergency, certain conspiracy theories, and some misleading uses of information as content that may be excluded from the For You feed. TikTok also says it can place warning labels on content that has been reviewed by fact checking partners but cannot be verified as accurate.

TikTok’s recommendation system is a major part of how people discover content, and the basis of what makes it a unique social media. Removing a video entirely is one response to misinformation, but reducing its ability to reach large numbers of people is another. TikTok’s policy therefore attempts to address not only whether misinformation exists but also how widely it can spread, which is why the debate on who should control it was so important.

TikTok has also been experimenting with additional ways to provide context. In April 2025, TikTok announced a test of Footnotes, which allows members of the community to add relevant context to videos. TikTok described Footnotes as another tool alongside its current techniques that could be beneficial for adding context. This is particularly interesting because it moves some responsibility for identifying misleading content away from TikTok employees and professional fact checkers and toward users themselves in a very small way coming closer to Reedits way of doing things.

There is some research supporting the basic idea behind TikTok’s warning labels. A 2024 study published in Nature Human Behaviour examined 21 experiments involving more than 14,000 participants. The researchers found that fact checker warning labels reduced both belief in and willingness to share false news. Importantly, the labels still had an effect among people who were not so trusting of professional fact checkers.

I think TikTok’s approach has a significant challenge: speed. TikTok is designed around short videos that can spread extremely quickly. A misleading video about a breaking news event could potentially reach a huge audience before fact checkers have enough information to determine whether it is accurate. TikTok recognizes this problem by making some unverified emergency and election content ineligible for the For You feed while it is being reviewed, but there is still a gap between something being posted and something being reviewed.

Another major issue is that TikTok users may not always recognize the difference between a creator sharing an opinion and a creator presenting an claim as fact. The platform’s rules can address some of this, but determining context at TikTok’s scale and speed has proven to be difficult.

Reddit takes a very different approach. Instead of having one centralized moderation system determine everything users see, Reddit describes its system as a layered, community-driven approach. Individual subreddits have their own rules and volunteer moderators, while Reddit administrators enforce platform wide policies.

Reddit’s current policy specifically prohibits “Manipulated Content and Misleading Behavior.” This includes deliberately misleading people about public health, public safety, geopolitical events, and civic or electoral processes. For example, Reddit specifically calls out falsely claiming that voting locations are closed, using forged government documents to mislead people, or using manipulated videos to make it appear that a public figure said something they did not say as violations of their policy.

Reddit also has a useful policy concerning AI generated material. AI generated content is generally allowed, but Reddit prohibits AI generated content that deliberately misleads people about real world events or real people. Reddit encourages users to disclose when AI has been used to create or modify content.

The community based system is probably the most distinctive part of Reddit’s approach. A subreddit dedicated to a particular subject can establish rules that are much more specific than Reddit’s sitewide rules. Moderators can remove posts, ban users, establish rules, and use automated tools to help manage communities.

Reddit’s transparency reports provide some evidence of how much this community based system matters. In the second half of 2025, Reddit reported that community moderators were responsible for 52.7% of post and comment removals, while Reddit administrators were responsible for 44.7%. That means ordinary community moderation continues to be a major part of how Reddit manages content.

The big advantage of this system is context. A moderator who specializes in a particular community will understand the subject much better than a general site wide moderation team ever could hope to. A local subreddit may be able to identify a misleading claim about a local event much faster than a platform wide fact checking system could even realize there was something worth checking into.

The disadvantage is that moderation can vary significantly from one subreddit to another. Reddit itself acknowledges that communities can have very different rules and cultures. A claim that is removed in one community might remain in another because moderators have different standards or because the community has a different purpose. This isn’t all bad though, again it comes back to context.

Policy Strengths

I think both platforms have useful pieces of the puzzling solution, but neither of them can completely solve misinformation on their platforms.

TikTok’s biggest strength is its ability to combine fact checking with recommendation controls. If misinformation cannot be completely eliminated, reducing its ability to appear in millions of people’s For You feeds can still reduce its impact and spread.

Reddit’s strength is its community. Users who spend a lot of time in a particular subreddits tend to know the subject well and can identify misleading claims that a normal moderation system might miss. Community rules also give moderators flexibility to tailor rules to their communities.

What Could Be Done Better

Platforms would benefit from prioritizing context over removal. When a post is taken down without explanation, users are left in the dark, which could feed into the conspiracy theories. Offering a reasonable explanation that specifies what made the claim inaccurate, along with a link to a credible source, offers a far more reasonable experience than a deletion.

Expanding TikTok’s Footnotes feature, while implementing some protections against manipulation by coordinated groups could prove beneficial during breaking news events, as users frequently spot questionable claims prior to professional fact checkers.

Reddit could learn from TikTok’s approach by making context more visible when a misleading claim begins spreading across multiple communities. At the same time, Reddit should preserve its moderation system because it is imperative to the sites identity.

Both platforms could also improve transparency about why and how content is being restricted. Users are more likely to understand moderation when they can see whether a post was removed because it violated a specific rule, was determined to contain false information, was manipulated, or if it failed to meet a set standard.

I don’t think there is one technological solution that will eliminate misinformation. The most effective approach may involve combining the strengths of both systems: automated detection to handle the enormous volume of content, professional fact checking for high risk claims, community knowledge for specialized subjects, and clear explanations that teach users how to recognize misinformation themselves.