Social media platforms have various safeguards in place to help battle misinformation and YouTube being the largest video streaming platform globally, is now testing a new feature where it’s inviting users to write notes below ‘inaccurate or unclear’ videos, a feature similar to that of X’s community notes.
YouTube began testing the Notes feature back in June with creators while the first batch of invites were sent out to general users just yesterday. The pilot will be available on mobile in the U.S. and in English to start. If you’re eligible to write notes, you’ll need to sign up on the YouTube mobile App to get started. YouTube iterates that Notes should always be in your own words, not copied text directly from sources, and they should add clarity or useful context to videos.
Aside from the language and region criteria, there are other prerequisites required for users to access Notes in YouTube, such as:
- The account created six or more months ago.
- The account hasn’t had a Community Guidelines strike in the past 12 months.
- Your account Isn’t a supervised account.
- The account shouldn’t have multiple owners.
- Isn’t owned by an account that can be owned and managed by multiple users, like a Brand Account or school account.
The Notes feature will allow people to add notes to provide relevant, timely, and easy-to-understand context on YouTube videos. “To help others stay informed, you can sign up to submit notes on videos that you find inaccurate or unclear. After submission, your note is reviewed and rated by others. If your note is rated as helpful by many people with a broad set of perspectives, it may be published and appear below the video,” said YouTube in a Google support page.
Read More: X Community Notes Now Available In India: What Is It, How To Sign Up?
How Will Note Rating Work?
Notes will appear publicly under a video if they’re found to be broadly helpful. People will be asked whether they think a note is “helpful,” “somewhat helpful,” or “unhelpful” and why – for example, whether it cites high-quality sources or is written clearly and neutrally. From there, YouTube will use a bridging-based algorithm to consider these ratings and determine what notes are published.
A bridging-based algorithm helps identify notes that are helpful to a broad audience across perspectives. If many people who have rated notes differently in the past now rate the same note as helpful, then our system is more likely to show that note under a video. These systems will continuously improve as more notes are written and rated across a broad range of topics, as per YouTube.
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How To Sign Up For Notes?
- Sign in to the YouTube mobile app.
- Tap your profile picture.
- Tap Settings, then General.
- Tap Help inform viewers to begin signing up.
If you are granted access to the feature, under any video that you’re watching, you’ll start seeing a button called “Add note.”