TikTok, the popular short-video app, has announced that it will shut down its Creator Fund, a program that was launched in 2020 to pay eligible users for their content.
The fund, which had a budget of $2 billion over three years, faced backlash from many creators who claimed that it was making monetization on TikTok difficult and unfair.
The fund was intended to “help support ambitious creators who are seeking opportunities to foster a livelihood through their innovative content” by providing them with money distributed through the fund based on their shares of the platform’s overall views, according to a July 2020 news release from TikTok.
However, some creators, such as Hank Green, an early YouTube star and an authority on the culture of the internet, argued that the fund was outdated and worked in favor of the platform’s bottom line rather than its creators’ best interests. Green, who has 8 million followers on TikTok, said that per 1,000 views, he was making about 2.5 cents.
The fund will be discontinued on Dec. 16 in the U.S., the U.K., France and Germany, according to reports. A spokesperson for TikTok confirmed to reporters that the fund is shuttering but did not share its end date or any further details.
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“The Creativity Program was developed based on the learnings and feedback we’ve gained from the previous Creator Fund,” the spokesperson said in an email statement. “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.”
The news comes just months after TikTok unveiled its Creativity Program, which sought to resolve some creators’ initial complaints about the fund. In a blog post about the Creativity Program in February, TikTok said creators can “earn up to 20 times the amount previously offered by the Creator Fund.” Videos that are eligible for the program must be longer than a minute and earn at least 1,000 views, and they must abide by the platform’s community guidelines, among other criteria.
To apply for the Creativity Fund, which appears to still be in beta, creators must be based in the U.S. and over age 18, and they must have had more than 10,000 followers and at least 100,000 video views in the last 30 days. It was not immediately clear whether TikTok plans to include global creators in a different monetization program.