Elon Musk has often highlighted the importance of the Community Notes feature on X, talking about its role in providing accurate information to users. Musk has repeatedly praised the feature, saying that it helps ensure the factual integrity of content shared on the platform. In April this year, the Community Notes feature was introduced in India, allowing users to verify the authenticity of information circulating on the platform before accepting it as true. Recently, there have been reports that suggest that YouTube is also developing a similar feature to let users know what is inside a video.

According to a report from The Verge, YouTube is testing a new feature that lets viewers add community-sourced context to videos. The feature, called Notes, will allow users to provide additional information to clarify whether a video, for example, is a parody or contains old footage presented as current.

When a note is deemed helpful, it will appear in a small box below the video. Similar to X, YouTube is also launching this experiment with a small group of users and evaluators to reduce misinformation. According to The Verge, the company has acknowledged that misinformation may appear during this test, but it considers it part of the learning process.

Therefore, right now only a limited number of selected contributors can write these notes, and third-party evaluators will evaluate their usefulness. YouTube plans to use this feedback to improve its note evaluation system over the next few months.

The report says that as the testing phase progresses, YouTube will ask viewers if they find a note “helpful”, “somewhat helpful” or “unhelpful”, and they will have to provide reasons for their choice. This feedback will help the algorithm decide which notes are generally helpful. Notes that many people find useful will be more likely to appear.

Talking about X’s Community Notes feature, it was introduced in December 2022 and allowed users to view community notes attached to posts around the world. Initially, X limited the ability to post such notes to users from select countries. Over time, the platform expanded the availability of community notes to users from various countries, including India.

Last year, the platform also expanded Community Notes, formerly known as Birdwatch, to include images and videos. While Community Notes have proven useful in fact-checking posts on the platform, they sometimes struggle to prevent the spread of misinformation, even when contributors provide context to stories. It will be interesting to see how the feature plays out on YouTube once more people have access to it.