Growing our Trusted Flagger program into YouTube Heroes

YouTube has always allowed people to report content they believe violates our Community Guidelines and we often hear questions about what happens to a video after you've flagged it. When a flag is received, the reported content is always reviewed by YouTube before being removed. We have internal teams from around the world who carefully evaluate reports 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and these teams remove content that violates our policies or are careful to leave content up if it hasn't crossed the line.

Back in 2012, we noticed that certain people were particularly active in reporting Community Guidelines violations with an extraordinarily high rate of accuracy. From this insight, the Trusted Flagger program was born to provide more robust tools for people or organizations who are particularly interested in and effective at notifying us of content that violates our Community Guidelines.

As part of this program, Trusted Flaggers receive access to a tool that allows for reporting multiple videos at the same time. Once content is flagged, our trained teams review them to determine whether to remove the flagged videos or not. Our Trusted Flaggers' results around flagging content that violates our Community Guidelines speak for themselves: their reports are accurate over 90% of the time. This is three times more accurate than the average flagger.

Given the success of the Trusted Flagger program, we want to do more to empower the people who contribute to YouTube in other ways. That's why we're introducing YouTube Heroes, a program designed to recognize and support the global community of people who consistently help make YouTube a better experience for everyone. These “Heroes” do this in big and small ways by adding captions & subtitles to videos, reporting videos that violate our community guidelines, or sharing their knowledge with others in our help forums.

The program is now available to a select group of contributors from across the globe who have histories of high quality community contributions. People who are interested in joining the program can express interest here and we will gradually admit other top contributors into the program. 

YouTube Heroes will have access to a dedicated YouTube Heroes community site that is separate from the main YouTube site, where participants can learn from one another. Through the program, participants will be able to earn points and unlock rewards to help them reach the next level. For example, Level 2 Heroes get access to training through exclusive workshops and Hero hangouts, while Level 3 Heroes who have demonstrated their proficiency will be able to flag multiple videos at a time (something Trusted Flaggers can already do) and help moderate content strictly within the YouTube Heroes Community site.

A sneak peek at the new YouTube Heroes Community site

YouTube Heroes will also be able to track their own contributions and see their overall impact. They can easily find out when a video they reported has been removed by YouTube for violation of our policies, a subtitle they contributed has been approved by the creator, or a help forum answer they've posted has been marked as best answer.

A look at how YouTube Heroes can track their contributions

To kick the program off, we brought our first class of YouTube Heroes together for the first time this week at a two-day summit at YouTube HQ.

Meet our first class of YouTube Heroes!

It's early days for the program and we will continue to roll out the details of YouTube Heroes and the dedicated YouTube Heroes Community site over the coming months. We're excited to learn through this initial launch and to continue improving the program over time, as we've done with our Trusted Flagger program. We appreciate everything our community does to make YouTube vibrant and diverse, so on behalf of the team: thank you!

Jen Carter, Product Manager, YouTube Heroes, recently watched “#voteIRL - Use Your Voice. Vote in Real Life.”

Celebrate Minecon on YouTube

I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Transformers." Now when I spend time with my nephew and niece, we watch Minecraft videos, the new version of Saturday morning cartoons. Minecraft can be both educational and entertaining to people of all ages - players create their own worlds whenever and wherever they want. Minecraft is a huge phenomenon on YouTube with rich content, an engaged community and 130M+ videos.

Minecon, an annual event dedicated to all things Minecraft, is happening on September 24 and 25 in Anaheim, Calif. For Minecrafters who can't attend, we are bringing Minecon to you by launching a Minecon 2016 event page on YouTube Gaming. You'll be able to keep up with videos from your favorite creators and the latest Minecon announcements as they are happening.

Minecraft gamers have been incorporating 360-degree video and VR into their content, and one of my favorite examples of this is the “Wonder Quest” series, which just released a new episode called "Spot the Differences.” Fans can expect more VR in upcoming episodes with a rollercoaster ride through highlights from season two, a 360-degree look into Stampy's dreams, a scary Halloween-themed tale and much more.



We are also excited to announce support for 360-degree live streaming of Minecraft videos, which will come from the developer CrushedPixel. CrushedPixel first blew our minds with his Replay Mod, which allows you to record Minecraft videos in 360 degrees. His new upcoming mod will take it a step further with the capability to live stream Minecraft videos in 360 degrees! CrushedPixel will be joining YouTube creator and star StacyPlays on stage at Minecon for a special 360 panel to discuss both her Bookcraft series as well as his work with the 360 mods.

Together, we've built a new virtual world and a strong and open community on YouTube. We're excited to celebrate Minecon with you this year.

Posted by Ryan Wyatt, Global Head of Gaming Content, recently watched "Wonder Quest 360 Video - Spot the Difference" with my nephew.

Change is Made with Code

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

What would the world look like if only 20 percent of women knew how to write? How many fewer great books would there be? How many important stories would go unreported? How many innovations would we lose? How many brilliant women would be unable to fulfill their potential?

That's not just a theoretical question. Today, only a small minority of women know how to write code. That limits their ability to participate in a growing part of our global economy. It limits their ability to affect change as entire industries are transformed by technology. And it limits their potential to impact millions of lives through the power of code.

To change this trajectory, we need to do all we can to inspire women and girls that learning to code is critical to creating a brighter future for everyone. That's why I'm excited to share that, today, Google's Made with Code, together with YouTube, is teaming up with the Global Citizen Festival and millions of teen girls to ignite a movement for young women to change the world through the power of code.

Over the last five years, millions of Global Citizens have influenced world leaders and decision makers, and contributed to shaping our world for the better. As we've seen this movement grow, we've learned about some incredible women who saw problems in their communities and realized that the biggest impact they could have was through computer science. They've used an interest in computer science and tech to help the homeless, stop sexual assault, and bridge the gender gap in technology - check out their stories here:

 

These women are doing big things, blazing a path for the next generation of girls, but they can't do it alone. The vast potential around using code to improve the world cannot be realized if there are only a few voices influencing how it's shaped. That's why, today, we're inviting teen girls everywhere to join the movement. Our new coding project gives young women a chance to make their voice heard by coding a statement about the change they want to see in the world.

This week, hundreds of thousands of girls from around the country have already used code to share their vision for a better, more inclusive, more equitable world:

These coded designs will be displayed onstage at the Global Citizen Festival, as symbols of the many different voices from teen girls, standing up for the change they want to see in the world.

Together with musicians, sisters, YouTube sensations and newly minted coders, Chloe x Halle, teen girls are getting their start in code

Our efforts go well beyond this project. Made with Code is joining forces with Iridescent and UN Women to support the launch of the Technovation Challenge 2017 which gives girls the opportunity to build their own apps that tackle the real-life issues they see around them.

Please tune into the Global Citizen Festival livestream at youtube.com/globalcitizen on September 24 to catch all the action. And, more importantly, join us and encourage the young women in your life to try out coding and contribute their ideas for how to make a better future.

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, CEO, YouTube

Why flagging matters

YouTube allows people anywhere to share their stories with the world. They share their sense of humor, their talents, their opinions, what's happening around them and within them. YouTube is also a community, and over the years, people have used the flagging feature located beneath every video and comment to help report content they believe violates our Community Guidelines.

We want to empower you, the YouTube community, to better understand how flagging works and how you can get involved in maintaining our community guidelines. To shed some light on how your flagging activity has helped keep YouTube a platform where openness and creative expression are balanced with responsibility, here are some of the latest data:

• Over 90 million people have flagged videos on YouTube since 2006 - that's more than the population of Egypt - and over a third of these people have flagged more than one video.
• As YouTube grows, the community continues to be very active in flagging content: the number of flags per day is up over 25 percent year-on-year.
• Community flagging on YouTube is international: People from 196 countries have flagged a video. The five countries with the most accurate flagging rates are: Indonesia, Turkey, Germany, Ukraine and France.
• We're also continuing to strengthen our policy enforcement processes: In 2015 alone, we removed 92 million videos for violation of our policies through a mix of user flagging and our spam-detection technology. While we are vigilant and fast in removing terrorist content and hate speech, it's worth noting that it actually represents a very small proportion of the content that violates our guidelines - those two violations account for only 1 percent of the videos removed in 2015.

When flagging, you can report which policy you think a video violates, from spam and sexual content to harassment and violent content. This helps us route and review flagged content more efficiently and effectively:

We have trained teams, fluent in multiple languages, who carefully evaluate your flags 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year in time zones around the world. They remove content that violates our terms, age-restrict content that may not be appropriate for all audiences, and are careful to leave content up if it hasn't crossed the line. As YouTube grows, we continue to scale our policy enforcement resources to meet your needs as a community.

Flagged content, however, doesn't automatically get removed. YouTube is an important global platform for information and news, and our teams evaluate videos before taking action in order to protect content that has an educational, documentary, scientific or artistic purpose.

We also take into account local laws in the countries where we operate and if we receive a valid legal notice that content violates a local law, we will restrict that content in the local country domain. You can find information about government removal requests in Google's Transparency Report. Similarly, if we remove content for policy reasons after receiving a valid legal request, we will include that in our transparency reporting.

We want to encourage you to continue flagging and we hope this additional transparency will help you continue reporting responsibly. For more information about how these processes work, visit our Policy and Safety Hub.

Posted by Juniper Downs, Head of YouTube Public Policy, who recently watched “Leon Bridges' NPR Tiny Desk Concert.”

Why Flagging Matters

YouTube allows people anywhere to share their stories with the world. They share their sense of humor, their talents, their opinions, what's happening around them and within them. YouTube is also a community, and over the years, people have used the flagging feature located beneath every video and comment to help report content they believe violates our Community Guidelines.

We want to empower you, the YouTube community, to better understand how flagging works and how you can get involved in maintaining our community guidelines. To shed some light on how your flagging activity has helped keep YouTube a platform where openness and creative expression are balanced with responsibility, here are some of the latest data:

• Over 90 million people have flagged videos on YouTube since 2006 - that's more than the population of Egypt - and over a third of these people have flagged more than one video.
• As YouTube grows, the community continues to be very active in flagging content: the number of flags per day is up over 25 percent year-on-year.
• Community flagging on YouTube is international: People from 196 countries have flagged a video. The five countries with the most accurate flagging rates are: Indonesia, Turkey, Germany, Ukraine and France.
• We're also continuing to strengthen our policy enforcement processes: In 2015 alone, we removed 92 million videos for violation of our policies through a mix of user flagging and our spam-detection technology. While we are vigilant and fast in removing terrorist content and hate speech, it's worth noting that it actually represents a very small proportion of the content that violates our guidelines - those two violations account for only 1 percent of the videos removed in 2015.

When flagging, you can report which policy you think a video violates, from spam and sexual content to harassment and violent content. This helps us route and review flagged content more efficiently and effectively:

We have trained teams, fluent in multiple languages, who carefully evaluate your flags 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year in time zones around the world. They remove content that violates our terms, age-restrict content that may not be appropriate for all audiences, and are careful to leave content up if it hasn't crossed the line. As YouTube grows, we continue to scale our policy enforcement resources to meet your needs as a community.

Flagged content, however, doesn't automatically get removed. YouTube is an important global platform for information and news, and our teams evaluate videos before taking action in order to protect content that has an educational, documentary, scientific or artistic purpose.

We also take into account local laws in the countries where we operate and if we receive a valid legal notice that content violates a local law, we will restrict that content in the local country domain. You can find information about government removal requests in Google's Transparency Report. Similarly, if we remove content for policy reasons after receiving a valid legal request, we will include that in our transparency reporting.

We want to encourage you to continue flagging and we hope this additional transparency will help you continue reporting responsibly. For more information about how these processes work, visit our Policy and Safety Hub.

Posted by Juniper Downs, Head of YouTube Public Policy, who recently watched “Leon Bridges' NPR Tiny Desk Concert.”

#AskJuncker: YouTube creators to interview the European Commission President

Cross-posted from Google Europe Blog

This Wednesday, President Juncker will deliver his State of the Union address at the European Parliament. The next morning, the European Commission - along with partners Debating Europe and Euronews - will turn to YouTube to field questions about the issues that matter most to people across Europe.

YouTube Creators Jonas Ems, Laetitia Birbes, and Łukasz Jakóbiak will travel to Brussels from their homes in Germany, France and Poland to meet with President Juncker at the Commission's headquarters at the Berlaymont. While Euronews has hosted live Hangouts on Air with European Commissioners in the past, this is the first time that YouTube Creators will have the opportunity to conduct a full interview with the President.

Nineteen-year-old Jonas is already a veteran YouTuber - not only has he built up a large following for his commentaries and comedy, he's also published a book about his experiences. Laetitia focuses on sharing her values, like ecology and recycling, and she recently participated in YouTube's Toi-Même Tu Filmes initiative, aimed at fighting hate speech. Łukasz, who conducts interviews from his tiny Warsaw apartment, explained in an inspirational TedX talk last year how he went from dreamer to doer (and how he got to meet Lady Gaga along the way).

It's up to Laetitia, Jonas, and Łukasz to choose the questions: They'll focus on the issues that are top of mind for them and their fans. If you want to weigh in, they'll be looking at suggestions on social media with the hashtag #AskJuncker.

You can watch the whole thing on the European Commission YouTube channel - the live stream will begin at 11 am CET, and the recording will be available afterward.

Posted by Mark Jansen, Senior Communications Manager at Google Brussels

Rio 2016 celebrations on YouTube

The Olympic Games Rio 2016 have yet to commence, but for sports fans the world over, the excitement is already well underway. In the last 12 months, over 23,000 years of content have been watched on YouTube for the four most popular Olympic Games' sports alone - athletics, gymnastics, diving and swimming, and volleyball. To put this in perspective, that's the equivalent of watching all 17 days of the Olympic Games, 24 hours a day, not once, but over half a million times. Nearly two thirds of that viewership has happened on mobile devices -- and even more in countries like the U.S., U.K. and Japan.

As the miles continue to rack up on the Olympic torch, viewership on YouTube continues to rack up as well. To help make that viewership experience even richer, we have partnered with broadcasters in more than 60 countries, including the BBC (U.K.), America Movil (Latin America excluding Brazil), NHK (Japan) and many others. These partners will bring official highlights from the Games on YouTube to make sure you can keep up with the most breath-taking moments. We will also link these official broadcasters' highlights directly into Google Search and YouTube Watch Cards for Rio 2016.

And if you want to experience Rio and the environment surrounding the Games through the eyes of some of your favorite creators, 15 of them will be on the ground bringing you the best of Rio. Creators such as Liza Koshy, Brodie Smith, Ben Brown, Caeli, Chloe Morello, and Felipe Castanhari will provide an on-the scene view of the celebrations in Rio, everything from their own commentary of the Games' celebrations, from the first victory to the last defeat, to long days around Rio on bike rides and aerial tours. These creators will take advantage of our brand new mobile live streaming feature to share real-time moments from Brazil as they unfold, as well as 360-degree videos that will make fans feel like they are on the streets of Copacabana.

 

But it's not just creators and broadcasters getting into the action. Brands are already uploading ads celebrating the athletes, culture, and passion around the Olympic Games–and viewers are taking notice. From April 2016 through June 2016, ads from Worldwide and National Olympic Partners have already received the equivalent of over 400 years worth of watch time. Here's a look at a few of the top ads so far: “Always #LikeAGirl - Keep Playing,” Minute Maid's "#doinggood | See What U.S. Olympian Missy Franklin Has To Say," Samsung's “The Chant,” P&G's “Thank You, Mom - Strong,” and Visa's “The Carpool To Rio.”

From epic wins to all-star performances, YouTube will bring you the best from Rio, before, during and after the Games through official broadcaster channels and celebration via content creators.

Christoph Heimes, Head of News and Sports Partnerships, EMEA, recently watched “Gillette: Perfect Isn't Pretty.”