More Misguided Online Moderation: YouTube Heroes

Two weeks ago, YouTube introduced a new program that enables volunteers to moderate site content. The program, called “YouTube Heroes,” allows content creators to earn points when they caption, flag, or report videos that violate the YouTube Terms of Service. The program, however, is just another attempt to get users to perform online moderation tasks for free.

Disregarding the negative reaction from those who have valid issues with biased mob rule, the site caving to advertiser pressure, rewarding trolls, the ethics of gamification, and YouTube’s push to monetize the site (as brought up in this video response), the main issue I have is that you are unnecessarily splitting users into privileged and unprivileged classes.

Allowing unpaid users to flag content is nothing new. What’s different here is that a few “trusted” users are “rewarded” for doing something that all users should be allowed to do. Giving points to those who report a higher number of valid violations (spam, profanity, personal attack, etc.) is fine – it creates engagement and civil social accountability. Creating a separate program, with five different levels, , however, contributes to the “us-versus-them” mentality that has been plaguing the comment sections of YouTube’s commentary channels for years.

One thing I am grateful for is that flagged content submitted by any user is ultimately reviewed by a paid, trained, and unbiased moderation team who have received additional training in dealing with the increased hostility that the You-Tube Heroes program has created.

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