YouTube has announced that it is experimenting with a new feature that allows users to add context notes to videos. 

The notes experiment, first discovered by techopedia, is similar to Elon Musk's Community Notes tool that still exists on the X platform. 

Both experiments on YouTube and Community notes on X allow users to add additional context to content posted on the platform. For example, it may point out that the clip misrepresents the old footage as more recent, or that the video is intended to be a parody or comedy.

Viewers can also provide feedback on the note. The company says users can tell YouTube if the notes are useful and why. They can point out whether the notes utilize accurate sources or unbiased language. 

Like everything on YouTube, notes are fed into algorithms to determine whether notes are useful or not.

"If many people who have evaluated different notes in the past now rate the same note as useful, our system is more likely to show that note below the video," YouTube said in a blog about the experiment. "These systems will continuously improve as more notes are written and evaluated across a wide range of topics.

The experiment seems to be a slow deployment. To get started, various creators will be asked to write a note for the algorithm. 

The company did not provide a strict timeline, but said that "in the coming weeks and months," U.S. viewers will start watching the notes of various videos. During the first run, YouTube uses a "third-party evaluator" to evaluate the usefulness of the note. 

I believe community notes on Twitter are very useful. They add a lot of context to things, especially since that platform allows people to say it...Whatever they want. At the moment, it is unclear how it will help on YouTube. An example provided by the company was a video titled "15 Extinct Animals You Should Know" featuring a giant turtle. The attached note points out that some giant turtles were actually recently discovered living in the Galapagos... So they are not actually extinct.

YouTube is not saying whether the Notes feature works with Shorts videos. For many YouTube creators, shorts are a very different posting animal, but notes can be a way to add context to clips that are pushed into that section of the platform.