Suppose you launch a YouTube video and within the first two minutes the guy in the thumbnail says something that is clearly untrue.

Similar to Twitter's community notes, YouTube's experimental notes will be written by users: in this pilot program, Google will use "third-party evaluators" to assess the usefulness of the notes and ultimately decide whether they should appear below the video. Once this feature is expanded, contributors will eventually be able to rate the notes. The company announced this feature on its YouTube blog in June, and is now finally inviting trial users.

As shown in the mockup above, approved notes will be prominently displayed in a blue box below the video title and can be expanded and read in their entirety like comments. In an email sent to testers, Google invites them to submit notes about "videos that seem inaccurate or unclear," but adds that "notes should always be in your own words, not text copied directly from the source, and should add clarity and useful context to the video." (*cough* ChatGPT) (*cough* ChatGPT *cough*)

Sounds like a decent idea. Community notes have proven to be one of the few positive changes Twitter has made in the last few years. While these notes can be abused by overzealous watchdogs who expand on the definition of "fact-checking," they have generally been successful in pointing out when widely shared posts are blatantly wrong. [The same thing should happen to YouTube, the Internet's center of misinformation, where algorithms regularly promote creators who support conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers, or blatantly mislead viewers with fictitious thumbnails and titles that are not representative of the content. I would like to see that happen. Of course, Google could change its algorithm and not lift the charade, but that is not part of its business plan. Better to put the burden on the user and make it look like they are fighting the misinformation they promote.

If you are a potential note writer eager to make YouTube less annoying, check your inbox.