[infinitesoup]

There's a lot of misinformation going on in the Reddit thread. These "Heroes" get better tools for flagging videos faster (among other things), but it's still just flagging. Every flag still gets reviewed by a human at YouTube, according to their documentation:

> YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and videos that violate our Community Guidelines are removed from YouTube. Videos that may not be appropriate for all younger audiences are age-restricted.

> Flagged videos are not automatically taken down by the flagging system. If a video doesn't violate our guidelines, no amount of flagging will change that, and the video will stay on the site. [0]

And that documentation is still true for the Hero program:

> As always, the policy team at YouTube makes the final determination of whether content should be removed. [1]

[0]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802027

[1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2803402

[pdkl95]

> YouTube says that those who participate will be eligible to receive perks, including access to exclusive workshops and sneak preview product launches, for example.

Gamifying content flagging with mass-flagging tools combined with their stupidly vague content rules[1] is a gift to the people that abuse moderation tools for hateful or trolling purposes. Maliciously flagged videos are already a problem (regardless of any human review), and YT is now going to reward (some of) these assholes?

[1] Remember the recent mess regarding the de-monitisation of videos arbitrarily deemed "not advertiser friendly"? The problem isn't that some videos were de-monotized; the guidelines - as written - could apply to anything.

[infinitesoup]

I agree that their monetization policy is pretty vague; I wish it was clearer but they probably have to cover their bases.

As for "people that abuse moderation tools for hateful or trolling purposes": these people won't be given access to the tools. According to the site [0], you only get points and level up for actually flagging things correctly, and you get kicked out if you're abusing it. And the improved flagging tools are only available once you reach a higher level. So it would be pretty hard to abuse (especially since even after all that, there's oversight).

[0]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7159025

[falcolas]

> Every flag still gets reviewed by a human at YouTube

Blizzard claimed something similar recently. Long story short, they weren't actually reviewing every report, and there were a number of people who were wrongly penalized or banned.

If Blizzard, a company with a lot of consumer good will and a stellar customer service group, can't get flagging right, why do we think that Google will, with a user base exponentially larger than Blizzard's?