It’s been a problem for a while, even prompting some creators to publicly comment, but YouTube spam is a problem. Perhaps not in the way many expect though, with bot comments and just generally pointless comments. There is also the problem of accounts that impersonate larger personalities.
The introduction of new tools in YouTube Studio will allow creators to do a couple of things. The feature labelled “hold potentially inappropriate comments for review” gives channel owners a bit more freedom. The first bonus here is obviously inappropriate comments won’t go on your channel. The second is that impersonation accounts will be held for review. This is far less time-consuming than manually approving all comments on a channel, particularly as a viewer base grows.
The update also makes it harder for accounts impersonating another to be successful by showing their subscriber account. Seeing a comment from Marques Bronlee with 200 subscribers versus Marques Brownlee with almost 16 million are two very different events. The other trick used by these accounts often uses special characters to make the name look — at a glance — to be the more prominent content creator. This is being addressed with reduced special characters available in channel names.
While some content creators will argue this is far too little, too late; it is showing that YouTube is working on the issue. Stay tuned, there’s likely more to come.
