Something tells me YouTube's algorithm isn't going to like this one.
My Patreon link is in the description.
[intro music (chiptunes and guitar thing), followed by a paper tear sound]
Greetings, and welcome to another "bite the hand that feeds"-tastic episode of Veronica Explains!
I'm Veronica, and YouTube comment scams are terrible.
Even on my little channel, I've seen a few comments by jerks pretending to be me,
reaching out to folks in the comments, telling them they've won something,
or that I'm selling some crypto, or something like that.
[buzzer sound] [16-bit audience making disappointed sound]
So first off, a housekeeping thing- I won't do that. I don't do giveaways, and aside from my
cheesy domains I show you in these episodes, you won't see me post a ton of links in the videos,
or by extension, the comments.
I also don't do that much for social chat apps, so I wont tell you to message me on Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, or anything else.
I'm a millennial from Minnesota, so I pretty much want no messages from anyone at all. Ever!
And I will never, ever try to sell you any cryptocurrency,
real currency, fiat currency, or any other currency in a YouTube comment.
The only financial advice I'll ever give is this: don't take financial advice from YouTube commenters.
In any case, the comment spam is real bad on a lot of the channels,
and it's not just a nuicance. It's cybercrime, and it hurts everyone on the internet.
I don't think any reputable YouTuber would ever
try to scam you like this in the comments. What do you think, folks?
[typing sounds]
[Jay] Hello Everybody! My name is Jay, and I'm obsessed with Linux.
Oh, um, I thought that we were having the Linux Anonymous meeting today.
Darn. That's awkward.
Anyway, I have a YouTube channel that's all about Linux called "LearnLinuxTV", perhaps you've heard of it?
And on that channel, as the name would imply, I teach people about Linux.
And it's come to my attention that some YouTubers are apparently scamming people in comments.
You know what, you'll never have that problem with me, because that's something that I'll never do.
So if you see any suspicious links with my profile image or whatever tactic people are doing nowadays, it's definitely not from me, because that's just not something that I would do.
So, shame on these opportunists for trying to scam honest people, that's horrible.
And more than that, it's about being a good person.
Good people just don't scam other people.
So shame on these people for doing something like that.
[Veronica] Thank you, Jay for telling us about how you're not going to scam us.
Does anybody else have any perspectives on this?
[Chris] I do hereby solemnly swear that I will never ask a viewer or subscriber to contact me via WhatsApp.
Nor do I even have a WhatsApp account.
Additionally, I will never promote or recommend any cryptocurrencies in my YouTube comments.
[Veronica] Thank you Crosstalk Solutions for letting us know you're not going to scam us.
Is anybody else out there planning on doing any scamming?
[Nick] Oh, I absolutely would, but all the good ways are taken, and are now super obvious!
No, just kidding. I wouldn't do it either.
[Veronica, exaggerated] Oh Nick. I'm glad you're not planning on scamming anybody.
It's tragic, but unfortunately, the baddies are horribly successful at
getting folks to hand over their money. YouTube needs to put a stop to it,
and I have some ideas for what they can do. We'll get to that in a minute.
But first, what can I, as a YouTube creator in 2023 currently do to stop comment spam?
To start with, you might notice that most links won't post on my videos. These get dumped
by YouTube into a "held for review" tank, where I have to approve them. Some I do,
particularly if it's a link to Wikipedia, or perhaps another YouTube video.
But most I don't bother clicking, for reasons which are probably obvious.
Second, I've blocked a lot of the terms that get used a lot by scammers. Terms like "winner",
"telegram", "prize", that sort of thing. Those get
sent to the review hold as well where for the most part, I just block them.
The problem is most of that can be easily overriden by either intentional
misspelling or just inserting all of it into your handle on YouTube.
All the work that I do isn't enough.
[record sound, then me doing a voiceover]
Hi there! While editing this video, I came up with an idea.
I started a website called "no scams dot tube". This will be a list of YouTubers who,
like me, publicly state that they will not send you scam messages in the comments.
As you can see, I am the only person on this list
so far. That's because I just made this website like a few minutes ago.
Who knows, by the time you are watching this, there might be a billion names on this list,
and all comment spam will be a thing of the past.
But that's unlikely. Anyway, on with the video.
[bump music - "Vaudeville Fanfare" arranged in a chiptune-esque style]
But this only takes care of a small amount of what's out there,
and I have some ideas for what YouTube can do to tackle the rest.
To start with, it seems like low hanging fruit that YouTube could simply block any
commenter using the same profile picture as the channel they’re posting under.
I mean, come on now. YouTube is owned by Google,
which made Google Reverse Image Search. They clearly know how to do it.
Plus, YouTube’s content matching algorithm certainly can find content
that vaguely matches something else that someone already posted.
They’re willing to deploy all of this tooling to “protect copyright” from the creators who are
making the content, but can’t turn it against the comment criminals?
I don’t buy it.
YouTube should let me block any comments from anybody besides me using my avatar. That seems
like an absolute given, and it’s stunning that here in 2023 I even have to mention it.
But beyond that low hanging fruit, I have another idea which would help me immensely as a creator on the platform.
Batch deleting comments, and batch banning channels.
I should be able to insert a term, select every comment or username
matching that term, and batch delete those comments, and ban those users.
I've had a few creators share some third party tools to help with some of this nonsense.
But the fact remains that this tooling should absolutely be available in vanilla YouTube,
without the need for any outside tools.
In my opinion, at least- it's just common sense.
My last big idea for how YouTube could help handle the comments is with advanced comment filtering.
Right now, I have to maintain a long list of words that are “forbidden”,
but a lot of the bad comments come from words that are innocent until placed together.
Take “won” and “prize”. If a comment contains both of those words,
it’s probably spam. At the very least, I might want to review it.
But banning both words is just going to lead to a lot of challenges in moderation,
and is going to pick up a ton of false positives.
I’d love to see an advanced comment filter using wildcards, or better yet,
regex, to specify the terms I want to keep out of the comments.
Anyway, all of this seems like stuff YouTube could implement in short order. I mean,
they got rid of the dislike button just to satisfy a reletively small group of users,
while closing their eyes to the cybercrimes that are taking place every minute on their platform.
[child shouting "1, 2, 3, 4!"] [punky bass music starts]
They have the power to do something, and they should.
YouTube comments don’t have to be a terrible hellscape. Anyone who tells
you that is just defeatist, and I for one don’t buy it.
Here's the thing. I like YouTube.
I like discovering fun new folks on this site, and engaging with all of you in the comments.
I just think it’d be nice if Google showed YouTube creators
and users - their most valuable asset - the same appreciation.