TikTok intends to inform creators on its site that the $2 billion effort to compensate viral stars, the Creator Fund, which is owned by ByteDance, will no longer be offered. The business will make the announcement later today that it will stop operating the three-year-old fund in the US, UK, France, and Germany on December 16.
Since its inception, the Creator Fund has generated controversy among regulators and creators due to its general failure to adequately compensate creators. According to report, the show also kept content creators’ data on Chinese servers, despite the company’s earlier claims that it kept all user data in the United States.
“Our ultimate goal is to create the best experience possible on TikTok and provide a robust ecosystem of monetization offerings to creators,” a TikTok representative told Fortune via email today about the Creator Fund’s shuttering. “Part of our efforts and ongoing commitment to provide requires us to evolve products and apply resources elsewhere to best support creators and explore new offerings.”
In the past, creators told Fortune that the Creator Fund paid them “mere pennies” for TikTok videos that received hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of views each month. Creators had to have more than 10,000 followers and more than 100,000 video views in the previous 30 days in order to be eligible for the approval.
In order to encourage creators with a similar reach to publish longer-form videos, TikTok created the Creativity Programme earlier this year. This programme pays creators for viral material and offers monetary benefits for videos that become viral and last longer than 60 seconds. Members of the programme claimed to Fortune in July that the programme was bringing in “thousands of dollars” each month.
According to Fortune, this came after the business debuted its Pulse ad revenue share programme last winter, which, like the Creator Fund, rewarded creators less than $5 for millions of views. Since revenue share is not mentioned in the Business Help Center’s Pulse section, it is likely that TikTok quietly ended this programme. (A TikTok official failed to provide a timely response to Fortune’s inquiry regarding the program’s status and the location of the members’ data on Creativity Fund.)
Members of the Creator Fund can now switch to the Creativity Programme when it finishes by changing the app’s settings for automatic acceptance.
The Creativity Fund does not pay creators for videos that are less than 60 seconds, therefore longer form is still best. As it rewards better content and more engaged viewers, this is probably an attempt to raise more advertising revenue.
It is unclear if creators who switch to the Creativity Programme will continue to get the windfalls they enjoyed in the program’s early years or insignificant payments (like they did with the Creator Fund).