Last week YouTube uploaded a video outlining its new “YouTube Heroes” program, which will “reward” users of the site with new features for essentially moderating the site. The program was heavily criticized by both YouTube content creators and users, with many pointing out how the system could be abused to allow people to effectively delete or edit content they disagree with. Certain features offered to “Heroes” included the ability to mass-flag videos, along with deleting comments and reporting content.
Now it has been revealed that, despite the video only being uploaded on September 20, it has proven to be so divisive that it ranks among the top 20 most disliked videos ever posted to the site. The video, titled ‘Getting Started with YouTube Heroes,’ is the 18th most disliked video in the site’s history, ranking just behind ApoRed’s music video for ‘Everyday Saturday’ and Rebecca Black’s ‘My Moment.’ It also has the highest dislike percentage of YouTube’s most loathed videos, with it sitting at a whopping 97.28%.
The list of most disliked videos is topped by Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby,’ with the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare reveal trailer and Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ coming in at second and third place respectively. YouTube’s parent company Google has yet to directly respond to the criticisms of the YouTube Heroes program, and it remains to be seen whether or not they plan to go ahead with it despite the tremendous amount of criticism it has generated.
YouTube Heroes was seemingly set up in response to growing concern regarding moderation on the site, along with Google’s attempts to make it more advertiser-friendly. However, it seems inevitable that many will seek to abuse the program and make life more difficult for content creators, leading to many hoping that Google will choose to it as a result of external pressure from the site’s users.
Check out its reveal video below:
