From July 29th onwards, YouTube channels will no longer be able to hide their subscriber counts. Hiding subscriber counts has resulted in making an easy way for spam accounts to portray a large amount of following. The platform acknowledges that “some creators prefer to hide their subscriber counts as they try to grow” but the company has considered the potentially controversial action crucial to decreasing the majority of impersonators.
Spam Accounts Portray Themselves to be Well Established Channels by Hiding Subscriber Counts
Furthermore, YouTube is also putting new special character constraints on channel names, another measure designed to make it harder for imitators to hide in plain sight. Spam accounts often copy the name of whichever channel they are pretending to be and subtly change one or two characters. At first glimpse, a fake YouTube channel might appear as the real thing, and at a scale that’s enough to lure unwitting users to a fake channel or scamming links.
YouTube is also declaring that its “increase strictness” comment moderation setting will be rolling out to all creators. The option, which can be changed in the community settings menu, will filter out comments more aggressively than the default setting, potentially stopping more of what YouTube calls “identity abuse” along with other spamming material clogging up the space of the platform.
YouTubers Are Frustrated with Spam Comments and Accounts
YouTube creators have been calling attention to a frustrating uptick in spam in recent months. In April, consumer tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee posted a video expressing his frustration with the subject and remarking that for months he’s been dealing with spam that’s “next-level out of control” in his comments. Brownlee tweeted about YouTube’s “increase strictness” comment moderation tool at the time, and now that previously experimental feature will be available to everyone tired of slogging through spam.
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
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