You might be aware of the flagging feature on YouTube which allows you to report a video which you believe is breaking its community guidelines and you also might be aware of the fact that there is a belief that a large number of people when report a video, immediate action is taken on it. However, we may have to burst your bubble and tell you that this belief you are holding onto may just be a myth.
Matt Koval, from Creators Insider, met with the YouTube’s Trust and Safety team and he learned some really great facts about videos that have been flagged. One thing he learned from the YouTube team was a belief that the more the number of reports are on a video the more it is likely to be looked through urgently is in fact false and Matt cleared that the number of reports on a video does not impact the outcome of a video’s policy assessment. This means that if a video is reported by one person or 500 people report it, it will go through the same stages of trial and none of the two videos will be given more importance over the other.
This may raise a question that when one video has so many flagged reports shouldn’t it be a red alert for the tech giant to look into the matter urgently? The tech giant has assured people that yes in some cases it does happen that videos with thousands of flags does get immediate attention by the company and on reviewing it if they believe it is bad, it is either age restricted, the video is banned or entire channel is taken down.
However, this does not happen in most cases because the tech giant has learned of a technique that people use which is called “brigading” where a large group of people report a video not because it holds something insensitive or policy breaking but because they simply do not like it.
Hence, according to the tech giant most of the videos are given a fair treatment when going through a review process so that injustice is not done to someone’s hard work and in the end it is YouTube who makes the final call about what to do with a certain video. The tech giant has a really great team for evaluation with people who speak different languages from around the world working throughout the year every day to ensure a positive environment on the app and take down videos which harm the company’s policy.
However, though the evaluation team is responsible for making the final decisions most of the times, in some rare cases there are tough calls for a video where the evaluation team cannot decide what to do, those videos according to the tech giant are sent up the chain of command until a final decision is made for it.
We all learn something new every day and we are sure this new information and your belief breaking apart must have been informative for you too because it sure was for us.
Illustration: YouTube Help.
Matt Koval, from Creators Insider, met with the YouTube’s Trust and Safety team and he learned some really great facts about videos that have been flagged. One thing he learned from the YouTube team was a belief that the more the number of reports are on a video the more it is likely to be looked through urgently is in fact false and Matt cleared that the number of reports on a video does not impact the outcome of a video’s policy assessment. This means that if a video is reported by one person or 500 people report it, it will go through the same stages of trial and none of the two videos will be given more importance over the other.
This may raise a question that when one video has so many flagged reports shouldn’t it be a red alert for the tech giant to look into the matter urgently? The tech giant has assured people that yes in some cases it does happen that videos with thousands of flags does get immediate attention by the company and on reviewing it if they believe it is bad, it is either age restricted, the video is banned or entire channel is taken down.
However, this does not happen in most cases because the tech giant has learned of a technique that people use which is called “brigading” where a large group of people report a video not because it holds something insensitive or policy breaking but because they simply do not like it.
Hence, according to the tech giant most of the videos are given a fair treatment when going through a review process so that injustice is not done to someone’s hard work and in the end it is YouTube who makes the final call about what to do with a certain video. The tech giant has a really great team for evaluation with people who speak different languages from around the world working throughout the year every day to ensure a positive environment on the app and take down videos which harm the company’s policy.
However, though the evaluation team is responsible for making the final decisions most of the times, in some rare cases there are tough calls for a video where the evaluation team cannot decide what to do, those videos according to the tech giant are sent up the chain of command until a final decision is made for it.
We all learn something new every day and we are sure this new information and your belief breaking apart must have been informative for you too because it sure was for us.
