New YouTube updates target channel memberships, comment spam, and impersonation

You could argue that YouTube creators have a love/hate relationship with the platform. While it provides plenty of monetization options to make being a “Youtuber” a viable full-time job for some, it also has its downfalls and shortcomings that the creator community has been calling attention to for a while. One of these is the amount of comment spam and impersonations that are taking place, hurting not just the creators but also the viewers.

To address the situation, YouTube announced a series of measures they will take to help curb it. While they know they can’t 100% get rid of abuse-related spam, the updates outlined below are just the beginning of an ongoing strategy to face this challenge head-on:

• YouTube will no longer allow channels to hide their subscriber counts. According to YouTube this has been a common denominator that scammers have used in order to impersonate larger channels. They would usually reply to a comment on one of these channels’ videos, pretending to be the creator. Some viewers have fallen victim to this because when they click on the imposter’s profile, it takes them to a channel that looks identical to the legit creator, only it doesn’t show how many subscribers it has. YouTube hopes that if you click on one of these profiles and are taken to a channel that has significantly less subscribers than normal, it would tip you off that this is not the real McCoy. However, this measure is sure to impact newer or smaller channels that prefer to keep their subscriber count hidden, as they won’t be able to do that anymore.

• An additional moderation setting is being implemented in YouTube Studio that will allow creators to “increase strictness” when it comes to filtering out spam and identity abuse comments. These comments will be kept in the “Held for review” tab and the setting will be completely optional.

• Channel names will now be limited in the type and/or frequency of special characters that they use. This is to hopefully stop bad actors from impersonating a channel name by using symbols that can look almost legit. For example, a channel with the name ¥ouⓉube✅.

YouTube also shared some good news earlier this week when it announced that Membership Gifting is being expanded to all eligible monetized channels. This means that channel members can purchase a predetermined number of channel memberships in a single transaction, which YouTube will “gift” to other viewers in one of that channel’s live streams. Viewers who receive gift memberships pay no fees, and the creator gets the usual revenue share from each transaction.

It’s encouraging to see YouTube listening to the community and implementing changes to address this spam and comment scam problem. I hear about these issues every day from creators I subscribe to, and I see the spam comments myself all the time, particularly when that channel is popular. Hopefully, these measures will discourage most scammers, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. They always have a way of evolving to find ways to circumvent the rules.