YouTube, the world’s most popular video platform, has begun testing a new experimental feature that will allow people to add notes to content, enabling what the team at the Google/Alphabet-owned service says is relevant, timely, and easy-to-understand context on videos, the YouTube Team has announced. The feature, which could help clarify when a song is meant to be a parody, if older footage is mistakenly portrayed as a current event, and more, will be available on mobile in the U.S. and in English to start, YouTube confirmed.
YouTube writes:
- “This work builds on a number of products we’ve launched to display helpful context alongside videos, such as information panels, or our recent disclosure requirement when content is altered or synthetic.”
- “To start, a limited number of eligible contributors will be invited via email or Creator Studio notification to write notes so that we can test the feature and improve our systems before we consider expanding.”
- “Viewers in the US will start to see notes on videos in the coming weeks and months. In this initial pilot, third-party evaluators will rate the helpfulness of notes, which will help train our systems.”
- “These third-party evaluators are the same people who provide feedback on YouTube’s search results and recommendations. As the pilot moves forward, we’ll look to have contributors themselves rate notes as well.”
A mock-up of what the feature might look like:
YouTube added:
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, we’ll use a bridging-based algorithm to consider these ratings and determine what notes are published.