I'll admit this is low-hanging fruit, but, this needs to be said: YouTube Heroes is proof that YouTube both doesn't understand and can act without fear of failure due to it's position in the market. I may not be a content creator, but I spend a lot of time on YouTube, sometimes, I even dive into the comments section sometimes. I can say that, without a doubt, YouTube Heroes will be a negative force for the website.

YouTube Is Out of Touch With its Users

If anything, the release of YouTube Heroes confirms that the YouTube staff has no idea what the users of it's website want or need. I constantly hear content creators complain that they don't have the moderation tools they need to properly manage their comment sections, to the point that may simply disable them and direct their viewers to Reddit or Twitter to discuss the video. Specifically, a common complaint I hear is moderators are unable to hide a user's comment, they can only ban users. Bans don't work on trolls, since they will just create a new account and say something even more vile and inflammatory, fueled by the knowledge that they are getting a reaction from both the owner of the channel and the rest of the comment section. A much more useful tool, is to simply hide the comment or account so that no one can see it. It takes much more time for a troll to figure out that no one can see what they wrote, always leaving the possibility that no one is taking their bait. The kicker here is, only the channel admin has the ability to do this, not any of the moderates they appoint. A simple fix for the comments section, assuming that the goal of YouTube Heroes is to clean up the site, would be to simply give moderators that ability as well. Instead, YouTube thought that a good solution was to let members of the community who prove themselves through a perverse set of incentives.

And here lies the biggest problem with the YouTube Heroes program. Members earn points to "level up" and receive new abilities and benefits. A few of the tasks are relatively harmless, such as answering a question on a help forum or submitting some subtitles for a video that get accepted, however, most rely on moderating user-generated content. Additionally, the system rewards flagging videos, comments, and other moderation features far more than the other and more helpful contributions. Even more concerning, is at level 3, users are granted the ability to bulk-flag videos. I cannot imagine how this passed any meeting, since community moderation like that never works as soon as personal politics get involved, just take a look at any mildly controversial Wikipedia article's discussion page. All that will result in is a ton of flags because a user doesn't like the content of a video instead of for legitimate reasons for breaking rules.

YouTube is a Monopoly

If these features were launched on just about any other website, there would be a mass exodus of users to an alternative platform- the Great Digg Migration / Reddit Exodus comes to mind. However, there is no suitable place on the internet to replace YouTube. A video site lives and dies by it's viewers and content creators. There needs to be a large enough viewer base to attract content creators, and, content creators need to make new content to keep users. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem where a new platform has both no users and no content creators so there is no reason for users to switch. Furthermore, even if there is a reason to switch, the startup costs and risks of a video streaming website are so high that there are nearly zero new video websites, at least, video websites that let anyone upload whatever they want to get started. Since they have, essentially, zero risk of failure, YouTube has made a long series of awful decisions which the users hate, but, they have nowhere else to go. YouTube is where both the viewers and content creators are, and sadly, I don't see that changing anytime soon.