Youtube's attempt at explaining it: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7124236?hl=en

Recap of the news, the most unbiased way I seen: http://fortune.com/2016/09/21/youtube-heroes-community-moderate/
"Google’s video-sharing site wants volunteers to help moderate its content by flagging inappropriate content, fielding questions in YouTube Help forums, and contributing video captions and subtitles. Performing those types of tasks will help users earn points in the site’s new crowdsourcing program, called “YouTube Heroes."

Another Source:  https://boingboing.net/2016/09/22/youtube-announces-crowdsourced.html
Reddit and social media have proven that some people will do anything for points, likes, follows and so on, including work for free, so YouTube announced Heroes, a new platform for people who will moderate their site in exchange for points. Ironically/unsurprisingly, the announcement video hasn't gotten many likes.

People are declaring the death of youtube with the introduction of Youtube Heroes, yet again, because this will censor the internet, with user backed moderation tool. 

However I do agree level 3 is a bit concerning. 

Levels:

At Level 2, you can join in on ‘exclusive workshops’ and participate in video chats with other heroes.
At Level 3, you can mass flag videos and delete user comments like a champ.
Level 4 gives you ‘sneak peaks’ at new products and lets you chat directly with YouTube team members,
and finally Level 5 lets you try new features before they’re public and attend something called a Hereos Summit event.

Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2016/09/22/youtubes-new-heroes-program-gives-volunterer-moderators-serious-perks/#gref

No thanks youtube. You can take almost all that user generated content and shove it up your ass. If I care to watch something funny then I'll just watch Tosh.0 for a recap of stupid shit that goes on the internet.

Maybe I'm just missing some sort of point, but why is this a bad thing?

There is a lot of shit on YouTube. Has anyone seen the comments on most vids? Or even how some sick ppl mislabel kid related content and then the poor hapless kids end up watching adult material.

If there is one thing I think YouTube needs is some moderation.

People feel they are allowed to be dicks on the internet, because people always confuse what Freedom of Speech means and how it reflects everything essentially. Namely people don't seem to understand is youtube is a company that gets advertisement revenue as the main source of income, and advertisors are more likely to pay more if the site was well more civil, thus more profit.

I think the real issue is level of freedom that might be granted for moderators. It allows a lot of room for abuse. 

You have to much faith in humans to do the right thing, especially on the internet.

Sounds mostly good, but users deleting other users' comments is extremely worrying. That's a lot of power, and giving that power should be very well moderated.

No... don't get it wrong. 

For me it's simple, we can't all keep acting like rebels and think its cool while ignoring the obvious issues that are already out there. YouTube is big and if you can find a toaster with a screen it probably will play YouTube too. 

Some moderation, even bad moderation is better than no moderation at all. And that is undeniable. I believe thst for every 10 bad moderators we will have at least 2 good ones. And that's an evil I'll take anyday over what we have right now. 

And how will they control this? What about biases? Politically incorrect content? Or "wrong" political opinion videos? The thing is, that the most interested in moderating and filtering the internet are SJWs, and desperately.

But yes, if Youtube could somehow control for all of this and the "heroes" would all be impartial and unbiased moderators, sure; deleting spam, flagging incorrectly labeled videos, adding captions, etc, would be all nice. But I strongly think that won't be the case.

You should know this is just a few weeks after Youtube decided to unmonetize (as in, creator makes no revenue) on "sensitive" content. This "sensitive " content ranges from nobody knows to who the fuck knows. Videos discussing abortion, atheism, the 2016 elections in USA, gaming, or anything that is "controversial", or heck any video that says "fuck" or "shit" at any point.

And that comes from years upon years of Youtube's Content ID shit problem. 

The point is, it's very damaging to content creators, specially because Youtube doesn't give freaking samples on what is considered as "sensitive" content. It's a slow way of incorporating censorship, and Youtube seems to not listen to the content creators.

As for Youtube Heroes, it's giving power to monkeys. Like, imagine if LeafyIsHere is level 4 and decides to mass flag all Keemstar videos because he doesnt want him to have any videos? It's dumb, diva drama, but he could do it. He is a "hero", after all...

Incoming Youtube Heroes Heroes. People with the task of moderating the Heroes because of the inevitable abuse of their powers.