YouTube

YouTube Help forum disables posting and new comments, changes planned

Abner Li | Mar 1 2023 - 9:58 am PT

YouTube announced today that its English Help forum has disabled new posts and comments as it switches to read-only ahead of “improvements” in the “next several months.”

YouTube says that “many threads are not relevant for user-based discussion and a large amount of questions go unanswered.” Anecdotally, there’s often a lot of spam and self-promotion.

Ideally, the company wants the main Help forum to be a “place for users and creators to discuss YouTube with each other, and share tips and ideas to help each other get the most out of YouTube products and services.”

To get there, YouTube is running “experiments to inform the long term plan for this forum” over the coming months. This might result in a new homepage design, updated category boards, and threads.

During that period, YouTube has disabled posting new threads and leaving comments in the English Help forum. Other languages are not impacted as “those separate forums are experiencing quality user questions and user-based discussion, with the large majority of forum threads getting answers or comments in a timely manner.” Meanwhile, the YouTube Music forum is still around.

Existing content remains available to read, with YouTube still using the forum to make longer announcements about product changes and known issues.

In terms of support, YouTube users are advised to directly contact support, including for account hijackings:

Last year, we significantly increased the support we provide, and for creators, we more than doubled the number of creators and partners who can get real-time help through chat or email from our Creator Support team.