YouTube’s latest initiative, “YouTube Heroes”, is gamifying viewer participation in content moderation, angering several content creators who believe incentivising crowdsourced moderation isn’t a great approach.
Philip Defranco’s “THE INTERNET IS FREAKING OUT OVER NEW CENSORSHIP/MODERATION MEASURES“
Announced Tuesday, “YouTube Heroes” will allow enrolled YouTubers over 18 (or over 13 with a guardian’s consent) to receive points for sharing knowledge on videos, captioning videos or moderating content. YouTube Heroes with more points will have more tools to moderate and access to perks, like sneak peeks at upcoming YouTube features. At the fifth level, the highest, YouTube Heroes will be able to speak directly with YouTube staff.
Here’s the program’s trailer:
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the initiative is the ability for higher-up Heroes to mass-flag videos. Like this, Heroes are incentivised to flag videos and receive more points (albeit, videos with unsavoury content). While, like always, a person will go through to confirm Terms of Service violations, YouTubers wonder whether there will be enough employees to handle a potential influx of complaints.
YouTube gaming personality Jim Sterling describes YouTube heroes as “another bafflingly out-of-touch idea from the minds of Google”, YouTube’s owner, that will prove “deeply ineffective, exploitable and wholly indirect”. Reflecting these criticisms is YouTube vlogger Philip DeFranco, who argues that we’d have “armies of people going around, saying, ‘That’s offensive.’”
“Do you really have enough stuff to go through the material volunteers are flagging?” he asks.
Over at media analysis YouTube channel Folding Ideas, “YouTube Heroes” is described as a “Failure to read the optics of the situation”. The channel’s run-down of the program is even-handed and digesteable:
On one hand, YouTube heroes will be rewarded for combating harassment and fleshing out videos’ captions and citations. On the other, moderation is labour and should be fairly compensated for.
Comments
15 responses to “YouTubers Agitated Over Crowdsourced Content Moderation”
I swear, there’s a new genre of professional YouTuber; “YouTuber reacts to YouTube”
lol the internet given responsibility to curate youtube… what could possibly go wrong!!!
Yep, because this is working great for Steam so far….oh wait.
“Failure to read the optics of the situation” is the stupidest thing I’ve heard today
Hey, he’s a porfessional word speaker! Who are you? How many subs do you have?!
Thought so.
Perhaps, through dialogue he was attempting to vocalize a profound and succinct point… per say… nevermore… supercalafragalisifsbdgbvhsdg
It just sounded like a lot of wank. Haha
The definition of optics is, asides the study of light and its properties, also: the way in which something, an event or significant action, can be perceived by an individual or the public.
So I’m sorry but if it’s the ‘stupidest thing you’ve heard today’, it’s simply because you don’t understand the term itself. Sometimes honestly, it can pay to google quickly to see if they’ve utilised a word correctly or not before condemning. 🙂
optics is also how something is perceived to a group of people. it is used quite wildly in the US especially in political. it may sound stupid to you but to some people it reads like a normal sentence
YAY i have a feeling that all of my subscriptions will be attacked by these so called YouTube Heroes since they don’t like the real news, anything anti religious or proper science since religious nuts cant accept it oh and people commenting on SJW/PC/Feminists and people who want to be special snowflakes who are offended by everything.
I guess we can all join and just troll and flag all of youtubes actual videos and any big company like EA and the shitty movie companies
This is the best thing to happen to the special snowflakes of Tumblr.
Mass flagging videos has to be the worst idea ever… it should be mandatory to watch the full video before being able to flag it.
What are they going to do about it? Move to that other popular video website??
Porntube? Maybe the optics guy…
Yeah, I watched the YouTube announcement.
My thought process was:
“Oh hey, a reward system for the volunteers who do closed captions for videos is awesome! They are totally the real heroohhhhmygod you’re giving points for complaining WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
given how many truly vulgar anti-feminist creators/viewers their are on Youtuber, truly despicable cesspools of misogyny and the like, I welcome this but then I know in reality something like this wont work in the good way of ridding the platform of such vileness, it will just lead to a whole bunch of stories of useful commentators OF the questionable stuff becoming targeted.
It’s a terrible idea.
Whenever Youtube blindsides the community with one of their “initiatives” its always puzzles me they dont group test these ideas with youtubing community… its not like they have a warehouse full of them they can go ask… oh wait they do have warehouses full of them.
reading this made my brain cry.
wow theres so much rubbish on youtube