YouTube is testing a way for viewers to add of community origin context of the videos. The characteristic, called noteswill allow people to add snippets of information to clarify things like whether a video is a parody or contains old footage presented as a current event.
If a note is deemed useful, you may see it appear in a small box below a video. YouTube says only a “limited number” of eligible contributors can write notes for now, while third-party evaluators will rate the usefulness of the notes. YouTube will then use this feedback to train its rating system over the coming weeks and months.
As the pilot progresses, YouTube will eventually start asking viewers whether they consider a note to be “useful,” “somewhat useful,” or “useless” and explain why. It will then feed these answers into its algorithm, which will determine whether a note is “broadly useful.” YouTube says its system is more likely to show a note if many people who previously rated notes differently now rate the same note as helpful.
Bringing notes to YouTube will introduce the feature to a broader audience, which could also increase the chance that notes contain errors or unrelated information. Other platforms, such as twitter (now x), began testing community notes in 2021 to provide context to posts.
Like twitter, it appears that YouTube is trying to keep misinformation at bay by limiting this pilot to a limited number of users and testers to begin with. YouTube says any incorrect information is “part of how we will learn from the experiment.”
