TikTok is shutting its creator fund on Dec. 16. The fund, announced in 2020 and currently valued at $2 billion, was a way for short-form content creators to get paid for their content. On Monday, Fortune reported that the company has decided to forgo the program altogether.
In 2020, TikTok announced it would pay out $1 billion from the creator fund over the course of three years to creators for videos they posted that would receive hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views. The aim of the fund afforded micro-influencers with at least 10,000 followers who had accumulated at least 100,000 views in the last 30 days to make money from TikTok. It’s not clear if TikTok paid the entire amount to the creators who qualified.
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Many creators have criticized TikTok and the fund, saying it was not that lucrative for them. Some told Fortune they earned “mere pennies” for their viral videos.
In a statement to TIME, a spokesperson for TikTok said the company is committed to creating “the best experience possible on TikTok and provide a robust ecosystem of monetization offerings to creators.” The spokesperson continued, saying, “Part of our efforts and ongoing commitment to provide requires us to evolve products and apply resources elsewhere to support creators best and explore new offerings.”
The creator fund also sparked backlash after a Forbes report showed that the company was storing creators’ data on servers in China when they promised to do so in the United States.
But it’s not an end to avenues for creators looking to make money on the app. According to Fortune, TikTok rolled out a “Creativity Program” earlier this year, which requires content creators to make videos that are longer than a minute to earn money. The long-form program seems to be more promising, with creators telling Fortune they have been making “thousands of dollars.”
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