YouTube

YouTube is finally doing something about comment spam that impersonates creators

Ben Schoon | Jun 30 2022 - 11:25 am PT

YouTube is full of great creators, but some of the most popular names on the platform often see their comments section full of comment spam where accounts are impersonating the creator to scam viewers. Now, YouTube is finally doing something about it.

YouTube today detailed to The Verge three new policies it will enact with the goal of addressing comment spam as it relates to accounts that impersonate creators.

The first of these new policies is that YouTube channels no longer have the ability to hide their subscriber counts publicly. This is in an effort to make it more obvious if someone has just clicked on a scammer’s account, as they obviously wouldn’t have the same subscriber count as a large creator.

YouTube is also imposing limits on the types of characters that can appear in a channel name, as well as the frequency at which those characters will appear.

And finally, YouTube is expanding a new comment moderation setting where creators can “increase strictness” on comments that are held for manual review. This should cut down on the number of spam comments that slip through YouTube’s filters, but The Verge also points out it could result in more false positives as well.

This “Increase strictness” content moderation tool is a new experiment from YouTube that’s been in the works for a bit. Hoping it can make a dent in this comment spam we’ve been seeing so much lately pic.twitter.com/KVkjVCOUKZ
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) April 8, 2022

This tool is being expanded to more creators

While today’s moves are certainly appreciated, and might have an impact, they’re definitely not very proactive.

Comment spam on YouTube has been a serious problem for quite some time, and has gotten to the point where some major personalities on the platform have spoken out against the practice. In the tech space, that includes Marques Brownlee of MKBHD, who called on YouTube to “fix this” problem back in April. A couple of months early, Linus Tech Tips called attention to the same problem, also highlighting a third-party tool that made it easier for creators to clean up comment spam.