Google is turning to a group of 200 people and organizations to help remove inappropriate content from its popular video streaming site, YouTube.
Google is attempting to make its YouTube video streaming service a place for everyone to watch desirable content, which does not violate its community guidelines. Despite a dedicated team filtering the videos for inappropriate content, several forbidden videos appear on the site. But to fight this, Google is granting super powers to a select group of people who can flag up to 20 videos at a time. According to the Wall Street Journal, around 200 people and organizations have chosen to be the so-called "super flaggers."
What's so special about them, WSJ says, is that more than 90 percent of the videos flagged by these people will either get pulled from the site or get adults restriction.
For its part, YouTube is quite stringent on its community guidelines and anyone found violating them can face consequences. The Google-owned video streaming service does not allow content including sex and nudity, hate speech, copyright infringement and shows zero tolerance toward predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, invading privacy, or the revealing of other members' personal information. Such acts can result in YouTube permanently banning the user from the site, according to YouTube's Community Guidelines.
"We have a zero-tolerance policy on YouTube towards content that incites violence," YouTube told Financial Times. "Our community guidelines prohibit such content and our review teams respond to flagged videos around the clock, routinely removing videos that contain hate speech or incitement to commit violent acts. To increase the efficiency of this process, we have developed an invite-only program that gives users who flag videos regularly tools to flag content at scale."
According to the Financial Times, the 200 super flaggers comprise of less than 10 government or non-government groups, and also includes the British police unit. The majority is held by a trusted group of individuals who spend their time flagging videos that violate YouTube's guidelines.
