YouTube’s new feature to prompt users ‘to reflect before posting’ hateful comments

YouTube is now set to follow in the hate-combating footsteps of fellow social sites and spring the question: “Is this something you really want to share?”

The new feature will target comments that it screens as offensive and alert users that they may be posting harmful content.

The idea behind its conception is to allow users “the option to reflect before posting,” according to the company’s blog post. The tool, however, won’t actually stop people from posting said comment.

Prompts won’t appear before every comment, but it will for ones that are based on content that has prior been repeatedly reported.

The feature will also benefit creators, with the new filter unearthing inappropriate or hurtful comments — automatically flagged and held for review — and removing them from the queue so that users don’t have to read them.

It is set to roll out on Android first and in English before release elsewhere.

The platform has since early 2019 been afflicted with over 46 times more daily hate speech than ever before, according to the global video-sharing site.

YouTube also claims that of the 1.8 million channels terminated last quarter, more than 54,000 were due to hate speech. Those were the most bans for hate speech content in a single quarter that YouTube has seen, and three times as high than in early 2019 when new hate speech policies went into effect.

YouTube is also trying to combat other ongoing issues including monetisation and channel growth concerns for creators. The site intends to request voluntary input of information on gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity starting 2021. The move will seek to better understand how different communities are impacted, and resolve to address the arising issues.

The LGBTQ community has long raised an alarm that the platform inherently hides or demonetises their content — YouTube’s teams are also working to use the data to find “possible patterns of hate, harassment, and discrimination.”

The consequent security and safety concerns that follow the admission of these delicate details is an obvious concern. However, YouTube assures that the survey will outline how the information will be applied to the company’s research and what control creators retain would over their data. Users will also have the ability to opt out and delete their information whenever they want.

There’s no current timeline for when the surveys will roll out, but more information about the project will be released in early 2021.

[Sourced from Agencies]