YouTube is finally offering content creators a much easier way to make any corrections to their videos. In the past, the only way to make corrections was to re-shoot, re-edit and upload a brand new corrected version of the video. However, this isn’t ideal as the creators would lose all the metrics as they don’t carry over. So how is YouTube solving this issue?
YouTube is introducing a feature called ‘Corrections’ which will allow creators to add clarifications directly to the video. These corrections will appear as ‘InfoCards’ at the relevant timestamp in the video. Viewers can click on the card to see what correction was made and see expanded notes in the video’s description.
This new feature seems to be a way of trying to restore balance. As mentioned, in the past, corrections meant that creators had to re-shoot, re-edit and then re-upload the video, which meant that all comments and engagement metrics would be lost. Many creators tried bypassing this by adding the correction into the description or by pinning a comment with the corrections. However, these fixes could easily be missed, leading to a barrage of comments noting the error.
While this new feature is a great alternative as it allows creators to make visual corrections without risking their valuable performance metrics. However, we did notice that it’s only possible to add one correction card per video. We don’t know if this is a mistake by development that will be corrected or if it was purposefully done. It means that if you have multiple corrections at various timestamps in your video, there will only be one card at the earliest correction listing all the corrections made.
While this feature solves an issue faced by many creators, we can’t help but wonder if creators can misuse these cards to share misinformation or harmful content without penalties? We look forward to learning more about the feature In the meantime, you can check out why YouTube pulled the plug on YouTube Go.
