Social media is chaotic by nature, as everyone has voices and sometimes it gets out of control with the spread of misinformation. To that end, Twitter (now X under Elon Musk’s ownership) introduced Community Notes, a crowdsourced fact-checking tool that helps combat misinformation on a platform most prone to spread them quickly.
YouTube is looking into applying a similar feature to keep viewers better informed, though with a slightly different implementation.
YouTube Clearing The Air
According to its blog post, this feature will apply to any video that contains parody, outdated information (i.e. a new version of the product has been released), or misinformation. The initial rollout will begin in US only, applying to English language only (though wider rollout is expected).
Unlike Twitter’s fully crowdsourced approach, YouTube will instead start with “a limited number of eligible contributors” invited via email or Creator Studio notification (if they’re a creator, for example) to write notes on videos that needs additional context. Any notes added will then go through third-party evaluators (the same ones dealing with YouTube’s search and recommendations) which will be used to train the system. In a later phase, the company will open the evaluation to contributors themselves as well.
The fact-checking system then becomes a straightforward screening process for the end user – they can rate the information as “helpful,” “somewhat helpful,” or “unhelpful” (they can state the reason if needed.) The video-sharing platform already have a limited use of information panels, which includes vaccines, climate, and other critical topics.
Source: PCMag
Pokdepinion: Hopefully this has the positive side effect of eliminating clickbaits.
