- Hello insiders, this is Todd back with another update
and bringing Conor with the Trust and Safety team today
to tell us more about an update to the help center
related to self-certification.
Connor, what's been happening
in the self-certification world?
- Thanks, Todd.
So some exciting things on our side.
Over the course of rolling out self-cert to everyone,
we've learned a ton about where creators
can get tripped up by our policies
as well as acknowledging ourselves
that they can be very nuanced.
So today we want to talk about a helpful resource
for creators so that they can more easily now
begin at self-certification
and get to know our policies more holistically as well.
- So how did you approach this update?
- Where we started was really looking at
the objective of self-certification.
I'm looking at this program which we've launched.
It's all about transparency, and that's exactly
what we want to bring to this helpful article as well.
So where we started was we looked at the internal guidelines
that we give our human review team
and we looked at what summary could we provide
to the creator community.
Surface and key definitions that have long been asked for
by creators, for example, how do you define nudity?
Nudity means a ton of different things
to a ton of different people, but this article
really defines these key concepts
and what they mean to YouTube so the creators
can more accurately complete their questionnaire.
- So which creators would you recommend
check out this new help center article?
- Well, ideally all creators.
Anyone who wants to know our policies better,
this is the first time that any content-centered platform
has been this transparent.
The questionnaire has eight sections
but they're only ever gonna ever be a summary
of all of the policy guidance that YouTube maintains
but if you're looking for it, you should definitely
be reading this article.
It's gonna be especially helpful
to creators with low accuracy.
- I see.
So tell me more about creators who don't really
see their content being reflected in the questionnaire.
- Yeah, so when I said the questionnaire
is only ever gonna be a summary,
it's eight sections, with short options
to help guide creators to the right ratings.
Now, naturally, that's not gonna be the full detail
of any of the policies each section represents
and what we're really conscious of
is that creators want to get it right
and that when they get it wrong, there can be a huge impact
and that impact is low accuracy,
which means we trust your answers an awful lot less.
So both in terms of accuracy
and to ensure we're being transparent,
we're going all-in on transparency
and really this is only gonna be the beginning
of the publication of these guidelines,
but we've quadrupled the word count,
we've introduced these new concepts and definitions,
so we are hoping it's gonna be really helpful.
- Word count.
I thought you said we've quadrupled the word can't.
- Yeah, it's the Irish accent, really, isn't it?
(laughs)
We've actually expanded the number of words on the page
so typically what we've heard from creators
is that we're never detailed enough.
Detailed to the extent that they need
when they're trying to forecast one monetization rating
they're going to get on their content.
So our quadrupling of the word count is a first step.
We've introduced a lot more guidance.
- Are you including all the details
of the policy in this update?
- Yeah, so that's really important to call out.
We're not there yet.
Our policies are incredibly detailed,
so we're working to translate them
into really neat sentences and we're planning on
updating this article at least every two months
if not more frequently.
- Great, and if creators have feedback about this
or questions, what should they do?
- Well, we're gonna review all of the comments
so if you have any thoughts, good or bad,
leave a comment and we'll review it and who knows?
You might see your own bullet point represented
in the next update to this help center article.
- Great!
Well, thanks Connor for coming on
and telling us more about the details we're releasing
around self-certified to be more transparent
and please leave your feedback, and otherwise,
keep it real.
- Thanks, Todd.