We’re introducing a number of enhancements today that will help to better protect our viewers and artists from comment spam and make it more difficult to impersonate creators since we know that identity abuse-related spam connected to comments is a major concern for YouTube community.
While we are aware that there will never be a single solution, these modifications (described below) are a part of our ongoing efforts. We are dedicated to continually improving our methods to address the issues of spam identification and minimization.
Youtube Updates
No longer enabling channels to “hide” subscriber counts: As of July 29, 2022, YouTube channels will no longer be able to conceal their subscriber counts. This change was made to make it more difficult for people to mimic other creators. Bad actors have been known to conceal the number of subscribers on their channels in order to imitate popular, well-known channels on YouTube. They do this by pretending to be those creators in comments and drawing viewers to the fake channel page.
We created this choice to make our community as a whole safer, but we also acknowledge that not all producers who use this option are negative people. If you want to learn more about building your fans, check out this link. We are aware that some authors choose to keep their subscriber count a secret as they work to expand.
Enhanced YouTube Studio creator comment moderation settings: All creators have access to the new “Increase strictness” comment moderation setting under the “Held for review” page. This tool, which is optional, will further screen out spam and comments involving identity theft.
Limiting the kind and/or frequency of special characters in channel names: We’re limiting the character set that may be used to mimic channels when picking a channel name. With this modification, channels won’t be able to modify their name to anything like “youTube.”
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