YouTube videos are getting the Community Notes treatment.
The platform will be experimenting with a community-driven fact-checking feature, announced June 17, and designed to provide « relevant, timely, and easy-to-understand » context to YouTube videos — an apt endeavor as misinformation (and disinformation) proliferates online.
« This could include notes that clarify when a song is meant to be a parody, point out when a new version of a product being reviewed is available, or let viewers know when older footage is mistakenly portrayed as a current event, » YouTube explained in a blog post.
Early versions of notes will be created by users determined to be in « good-standing » by YouTube, and then rated by third-party evaluators on their helpfulness. This feedback, the platform explains, will help train an in-house bridging-based algorithm that will screen notes in the future.
Viewers will also be asked for feedback on the helpfulness scale, with justification. « For example, whether it cites high-quality sources or is written clearly and neutrally. »
X’s own Community Notes feature has offered an example of just how (mainly, how not) to approach a community-led fact-checking system. While CEO Elon Musk has alternated between bolstering and waging a war on the feature, a Mashable investigation found that few of the platform’s users actually see approved Community Notes addressing misinformation. « Many times, misinformation on X spreads without any Community Note. Or in another common scenario, a Community Note is approved, but then later removed from the post, » reported Matt Binder. When a post receives a community note, and it stays attached to the post, Binder wrote, « the falsehood in the post is often viewed around 5 to 10 times more than the fact-check. »
Speaking to Poynter about the efficacy of Community Notes at curbing misinformation, former Twitter head of trust and safety Yoel Roth said there were « some areas where it’s successful, » but also said he saw « many other areas where it is not a robust solution for harm mitigation. » MediaWise director Alex Mahadevan was quoted as calling the user rating system « mostly a failure. » It’s often a site wide vessel for memes.
Still, YouTube is taking a stab at a similar real-time feature, among other efforts to create a more transparent platform. The company has previously rolled out a variety of topic-specific information panels and now requires creators to disclose the use of generative AI when its applied to alterations of real people, real events, or otherwise « realistic » looking scenes.
The notes pilot will only be available in English and to select Creator Studio users in the U.S. during early tests. According to the platform: « We anticipate that there will be mistakes – notes that aren’t a great match for the video, or potentially incorrect information – and that’s part of how we’ll learn from the experiment. »
