TikTok shuts down its $2 billion content creator fund

TikTok has decided to bring an end to its Creator Fund, a $2 billion program that was meant to encourage content creators to use the site as a platform to grow.

The Creator Fund was first launched in 2020, with the goal of adding financial incentives to the most prolific creators on the site. At launch, TikTok claimed that the fund would “help support ambitious creators who are seeking opportunities to foster a livelihood through their innovative content”, by distributing the cash between creators who accumulated a large enough slice of the site’s views.

However, the scheme has been under fire from the creators it was designed to help ever since it launched. Many of TikTok’s most prominent content creators said that the scheme gatekept funding, and that it made it harder to monetize content creation on the platform.

TikTok closes down creator fund after monetization complaints

Most notably, Hank Green described the scheme as “outdated”- and brought the receipts from his own funding based on his own viewing numbers to prove it.

The social will stop the funding on December 16th this year for the UK, France and America, according to several industry sources, including The Verge. TikTok later confirmed that this was the case, but the social media giant has not released any more information about the closure.

The Creator Fund’s closure comes just a few months after the launch of the Creativity Program, which would perform a similar task, but has been changed to factor in feedback from the original fund. The program is still in beta stages at time of writing.

A spokesperson for TikTok said: “The Creativity Program was developed based on the learnings and feedback we’ve gained from the previous Creator Fund.

“As we continue developing new ways to reward creators and enrich the TikTok experience, we value the feedback and direct insights from our community to help inform our decisions.”

For more news and updates on TikTok, check out this nutritionist who invented a “game-changing” McDonald’s hack.