YouTube will soon ask audiences to add context to videos
YouTube is testing a way for viewers to add community-sourced context to videos. The feature, called notes, will allow people to add bits of information to clarify things like whether a video is a parody or contains older footage presented as a current event.
If a note is considered helpful, you might see it pop up in a small box beneath a video. YouTube says only a “limited number” of eligible contributors can write notes for now, while third-party evaluators will rate the helpfulness of notes. YouTube will then use this feedback to train its note evaluation system over the coming weeks and months.
As the pilot progresses, YouTube will eventually start asking viewers whether they consider a note “helpful,” “somewhat helpful,” or “unhelpful” and to explain why. It will then feed these responses into its algorithm, which will determine whether a note is “broadly helpful.” YouTube says its system is more likely to display 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 possibility of notes containing errors or unrelated information. Other platforms, such as Twitter (now X), started testing community notes in 2021 to provide context to posts.
Like Twitter, it seems YouTube is trying to keep misinformation at bay by limiting this pilot to a limited number of users and evaluators to start. YouTube says any wrong information is “part of how we’ll learn from the experiment.”
YouTube is testing a way for viewers to add community-sourced context to videos. The feature, called notes, will allow people to add bits of information to clarify things like whether a video is a parody or contains older footage presented as a current event. If a note is considered helpful,…
Recent Posts
Archives
- June 2026
- May 2026
- April 2026
- March 2026
- February 2026
- January 2026
- December 2025
- November 2025
- October 2025
- September 2025
- August 2025
- July 2025
- June 2025
- May 2025
- April 2025
- March 2025
- February 2025
- January 2025
- December 2024
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023