Technology
YouTube has launched an innovative program, entitled YouTube Heroes, which rewards its users for reporting the videos that violate the community guidelines. Under the scheme, the so-called Heroes are incentivized with access to the “heroes dashboard”, workshops and video chats. The site, which already allowed people to report abusive or offensive content, will now give reward points to the users, who add subtitles to a video and respond to questions in the help forums.
While Google claims the move is aimed at delivering the best possible YouTube experience to everyone, the new program has been greeted with some criticism, reports the BBC. Analysts believe that the scheme will result in a dramatic surge in the number of videos being reported.
A feature “supertool,” which allows Heroes to flag video en masse, is open to abuse, writes Betanews. The scheme has also been criticized for the reason that it crowdsources free content moderation from the site users.
Google has released an introductory video to educate the users about the program, which works somewhat like an online game, where the participants unlock achievements and build up points as they proceed from one level to the other.
