Just in time for the election and not long after Poynter called out YouTube as a major source of misinformation online, the platform is rolling out its own version of Twitter‘s Community Notes, asking users to give creators’ content the ol’ sniff test and see if it smells factual.
The platform first introduced this feature back in June, but per PC Gamer, is just now starting to invite a select number of people to submit fact-checking and context-providing notes on uploads. These contributors are part of the first wave, and YouTube says it’ll use their notes to “test the feature and improve our systems before we consider expanding.”
For now, all notes will be available on mobile in the U.S., and will only cover English-language content. Similar to Twitter’s system, YouTube will post contributors’ notes alongside videos and ask some viewers if those notes are helpful and/or factual, with information conveyed “clearly and neutrally.” It’ll use those ratings to determine whether the note is displayed to all viewers.
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YouTube has several use cases it envisions will work for this feature. “For example, 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,” it said in a company blog post.
We suspect the platform will also want people to provide notes around more serious things like the election, providing context and fact-checking for content uploaded by or about candidates and the voting process. A lot of YouTube’s past fact-checking focus has been on elections, and we’re keeping an eye on what it’s planning for this year, since it fumbled during the 2020 presidential.
YouTube’s being realistic about this debut; it says it anticipates there will be issues, like “notes that aren’t a great match for the video, or potentially incorrect information,” and that its primary goal is to “learn from the experiment.”
A couple things to think about: First, this won’t change how YouTube takes action on videos that violate Community Guidelines. Violative videos won’t suddenly be permitted just because they have a clarifying note. And second, it’s not clear yet if videos having notes will impact them in any way. Will YouTube’s algorithm ever lessen the reach of a video because it has a clarifying note? Will it flag the video as less informative than others about similar topics? We expect we might hear more about these potential effects (or lack thereof) as this feature becomes more commonplace.
As we mentioned above, this rollout comes not long after Poynter–a nonprofit journalism school and research org that, among other things, provides fact-checking training to newsrooms–identified YouTube as “a major conduit of online disinformation.” Past data has shown that when misinformation is controlled on YouTube, it significantly lessens the amount of misinformation on other digital platforms, so if this new mobilization of YouTube users as fact-checkers works out, it could impact how much truth is out there across the web.
