What you need to know
- YouTube has issued new updates to how it will tackle comment spam and make it more difficult to impersonate creators.
- Users will no be able to hide their subscriber count or use certain types of special characters in channel names.
- Creators will be able to take advantage of YouTube's comment moderation to filter out certain types of comments.
YouTube is a great streaming service, but its comment section is easily the worst thing about it. That's why YouTube has announced a new set of rules that it hopes will improve them at least a little.
In a community post on Thursday, YouTube announced that it is introducing new updates to the service that will help protect users from spam comments or bad actors trying to impersonate creators.
By the end of July, users will no longer be able to hide their subscriber sounds on their channels. This way, it'll be much harder to impersonate creators with larger subscriber counts.
"We've seen bad actors hide their channels' subscriber counts to impersonate larger, more prominent channels on YouTube - they pretend to be other creators in comments, then lure people to their impersonating channel page."
This update will take effect on July 29. That said, YouTube recognizes that some legitimate creators may prefer to hide their subscriber counts as they attempt to grow their channels. These creators are encouraged to check out YouTube's tips on how to establish their fanbase.
Additionally, YouTube is restricting the types of special characters users can set for their channel names. This means users won't be able to create similar-looking names to other creators, one example being "¥ouⓉube✅."
Lastly, YouTube is giving all creators access to its new content moderation setting, allowing them to easily filter out spammy comments by holding certain or all comments under review. The new "increase strictness" setting will hold even more potentially inappropriate comments for the creator to review. Creators can visit the support page to learn how to enable this setting.
