In a bid to make itself a more reliable source of news and information, YouTube has begun the rollout of its new Community Notes-like feature. First announced in June, the feature aims to reduce misinformation by allowing users to provide contextual notes to any information in a video they deem confusing, vague, or incorrect.
YouTube has invited a few lucky users to join the beta of its new feature that resembles X’s Community Notes. Users in the program should see an ‘Add Note’ button below the video feed. This will, in theory, allow users to add context to statements in the video that are either unsubstantiated by cited sources or are misleading in some way, be it using footage that is older than stated, strategic use of partial quotes to frame a narrative, or if AI has been used discreetly anywhere in the video. That is, among many other forms of mis- and disinformation.
Taking note of YouTube’s notes
Eager potential note contributors need to have an account older than six months. As long as that account isn’t shared, owned by a business, or suffered a community guidelines strike in the last two years, it should be eligible.
Notes will be assessed by external third-party evaluators – the same ones who are responsible for providing feedback on YouTube’s search results, recommendations, and the relevance of specific videos – with the name of the person or channel that submitted the note omitted should it be published.
Over the course of the next few months, notes that have been deemed helpful will appear in the description. Users will have to rate the notes on a scale from ‘unhelpful’ to ‘helpful’ while an algorithm will weigh these ratings and publish the most relevant ones.
A bridging-based algorithm highlights notes that people with different perspectives find helpful and pushes them further, leveraging people’s differing opinions to indicate helpfulness and prevent echo chambers.
The video-sharing platform also promises to eventually take a closer look at the notes ratings from the third-party assessors.
Right now, the rollout of YouTube’s Community Notes-like feature is only for a select few English-speaking US mobile users. However, its wide-scale implementation should go a long way towards curbing misinformation, whether intentional or not. Its introduction could mark a significant step toward enhancing YouTube’s credibility and with an estimated 2.5 billion active users, a feature like this is much overdue.
