YouTube introduces new tools to battle comment spam and account imitators
YouTube has recently had a hard time with scammers, as earlier this year a group of top content creators presented videos highlighting large amounts of people on the channels responding to other commenters with fake gifts and other scams.
As a result, the platform is taking more action in its fight to curb fraudulent comments and channel impersonation, and YouTube has responded to these complaints. It announced three new policies to try to stem the tide.
Channels will no longer be able to hide their subscriber numbers, and scammers use this method to help disguise themselves. Checking the number of subscribers to a channel is a quick way to verify their identity. Impersonators often leave comments across other videos to bring people to their fake page.
The platform acknowledged that some content creators prefer to hide the number of subscribers they have while building a fan base. However, she says the move makes things safer for everyone.
And when it comes to fake channels that use special characters to imitate more popular content creators, this strategy soon becomes less effective.
The platform limits the type and number of special characters that can be used in channel names. This is another common tactic by phishing comment senders, sometimes used in concert with hidden subscriber counts.
YouTube has new tools to fight counterfeiters
Phishers are essentially trying to make channels look legitimate by using special characters to make up friendly names. Reducing the frequency of special characters reduces the options they have for doing so.
In addition, YouTube is expanding access to an improved comment editing setting that it began testing earlier this year.
The company now says that all creators can toggle the Increase Strictness setting on the Pending for Review tab in YouTube Studio's moderation tools.
This is based on the “Submit potentially inappropriate comments for review” setting. It reduces the number of fraudulent comments and misuse of identity. It is also a less strict option than requiring manual review of all comments or turning them off entirely.
YouTube explains that this may reduce the number of fraudulent comments. But with stricter filters in place, there's always a risk of an increase in false positives, too.
Although the announcement includes a small number of relatively small changes. But it is useful that YouTube is still working to solve this problem.