There is a big change coming to YouTube and unlike a lot of changes that really
only matter to creators, this one is going to affect literally everyone on the platform. And
it's because YouTube is introducing over the next couple weeks a feature called Handles,
which is going to fundamentally change basically how usernames and things work on YouTube.
So you may know how on YouTube you really don't have usernames. There is channel names where it's
the display name, but then there's also a channel ID on the back end and there's custom URLs,
but not all channels have it. It's kind of a mess. Whereas on other social media sites,
you kind of have some username and then a display name separately.
And that's basically what YouTube is going to be implementing now. So over the next few weeks,
you're going to be able to choose a "handle" is what they're called. And it's basically
just an @ username. Like, you know how Twitter has the @, Instagram as well. You'll be able
to choose that for YouTube. And the key is that it's going to have to be unique.
It's like a true username, kind of like how YouTube used to have usernames,
but then they kind of got rid of it to have the real name thing. And now...
they're going back to it. And a lot of people probably are going to say something like, "Oh,
they're just copying TikTok. Nobody asked for this. What's the point?"
But I actually think there are some major benefits to this. Like I already said,
there's really no unique identifier for a channel, unless you talk about the channel ID,
which is like a string of, I think, 16 or 32 letters and numbers. You're not going
to be able to tell someone, "oh yeah, go to my channel X two, three, five, whatever."
And there is the URLs that some channels can use, but that requires a hundred subscribers
before you can choose that, whereas handles will be for everyone. And
you'll actually have to choose one to be able to comment, but everyone will be able
to. And also the handle will be able to be used for your account for the channel URL.
So in my case, it's going to be Youtube.com/@ThioJoe. Now the
existing URLs, if you have one still will work. So for me, I actually had like an old
school channel where I originally had just Youtube.com/ThioJoe. So that still works,
as well as the /c/ custom URL, which was always kind of janky to tell people to use that URL.
And I mean, ideally it wouldn't have to have an @ in front of it,
but they kind of had to do that because of the previous format of URLs. As for
where these handles are going to show up, most places it seems. So comments,
they said specifically, search results, on your channel page in addition to your display name.
So it's not like your display names going anywhere to be clear. It's going to be like I said,
on Instagram, you have both the handle and whatever you want for the display name. So on the
channel page and maybe elsewhere, it'll show both your username and handle, I don't know. I think
in the comments, it'll probably just show the handle, but like on a video, it might show both.
And then also it'll, I think only show that for shorts videos. So in that situation,
they kind of are copying TikTok. Another big benefit of this is it should be a severe blow
to spammers and scammers. So I don't think I have to tell you about the spam comment
problem on YouTube. This has been going on for awhile and spammers have so many techniques.
They can either try to straight up impersonate the
channel by using like literally the same name or lookalike characters,
or they do the thing where they have like emojis in the username to try to get you to click on,
or go to some WhatsApp or telegram message. And it's all a scam, obviously. Where now that won't
be possible because handles only allow letters and numbers, and underscores periods and hyphens.
So with that extremely limited character set, which is going to make things, first of all,
way more human readable. So it'll be easier to search for a unique username instead of
some weird emoji or something, that'll make it not only harder to make closely
looking impersonations, but also because they have that limited character set,
it should be a lot easier to detect spam accounts like as soon as they're being made.
Because a lot of times what a spam comment will do, is not just even in the comment body itself,
advertise a URL or some number, but they'll actually put like a WhatsApp number in the
username or a URL in the username. And then they'll say "contact the number in my username"
to get around any filters because apparently the YouTube filter doesn't really check usernames,
I don't know. But anyway, maybe now with this new system, they're implementing that on the
backend too. Because YouTube does specifically say that the handle can't be URL-like or phone
number-like. So presumably they'll be having some kind of check in there that
will check if someone puts, you know, nine or 10 numbers suspiciously right in there,
that's probably a phone number they're trying to get you to click on or something like that.
And also handles are going to be limited to 30 characters, which should also limit how
many techniques spammers can try and use to get around. Now I do not doubt they are going to try,
and they'll probably start using the similar techniques that they've been using now.
So they'll probably put "contact whatever on WhatsApp" as the whole thing and separate it
by periods. But like I said, hopefully with the limited character set, that'll be easier for
YouTube to catch those because there's fewer characters to try and get around those. Now
as for how to claim a handle, the first thing you can do is to go check Youtube.com/handle.
And that'll give you some instructions if you're able to right now, but it is going
to be rolling out. Also, if you already have a channel URL, like for example,
with me, I for the longest time I've had Youtube.com/ThioJoe or
/c/ThioJoe as the URLs. So it actually reserves automatically your URL if you already have one.
So it's not like you're going to have to go and rush and try and claim a handle
if you already have an established URL or something like that, it should theoretically
reserve that for you. Now, if you don't already have a channel URL,
which requires at least 100 subscribers, it is kind of going to be a land rush.
So you probably want to keep an eye on your emails and YouTube notifications. They say
"you'll get a notification in YouTube Studio once you can choose a handle. We're rolling
out the launch of handles gradually to all channels over the next few weeks." Now,
in my experience, initially, it didn't really give me the option to change my handle,
but it did say that because you have these URLs, they'll probably be reserved.
And then actually today, before I recorded this video, I did receive an email that said
"you can now choose your handle" and then some other information and a link that takes you to
the same page as YouTube.com/handle. So even if you're not getting this email,
you can still check yourself by manually going to that URL,
it's the same thing. And then I guess once it rolls out to you,
then you'll have the option to change [handle]. But for me before I even chose it,
it was already set. So if I wanted to, I could change it from ThioJoe, but obviously I would
not want to do that. And you can change it by either going to this YouTube.com/handle site,
or actually in the YouTube Studio under customization, you can do it there too.
And there it says if you change it, you'll have 14 days, where I guess they'll keep reserving it
if you want to change it back. So no one else can take it like a minute after you change it,
or something like that. Now if I do click the change handle thing anyway,
it does say "Confirm your handle or create a new one."
So I'm just going to hit confirm selection and keep it the same. And then it actually
pops up a thing, "Your handle is confirmed", but I don't think I actually had to do this,
I think it was set from the beginning. So overall, in my personal opinion, I think this
is a good update, I think it's a good change. Because like I said, it's not unprecedented.
It's the same how other social media sites work, so it's not like anyone's going to
be wondering how this works or what the @ means. Will it be as nice looking as seeing
just the display name without the @ symbol in front of it in the comments? Obviously
not. But I think that's still outweighed by everyone actually being able to have a
unique identifier instead of being locked off to just people with a hundred subscribers,
or alternatively using the channel ID, which is so ugly and janky.
I do hope they still show the display name in a decent amount of places because there are a lot
of channels that have spaces in their display names and you can't have a space in the handle,
it has to be a period. So having periods instead of spaces or underscores or dashes.
Yeah I mean it'll technically work, but it's obviously not as nice looking as
just a space. But they kind of had to do that if you're going to be using it as a username.
So we're not going to 100% know how this is going to turn out until November 14th
when they flip the switch. So before then is when you'll be able to choose
the handle. And after that, I think it'll actually automatically set one
for you, but it will let you change it obviously. But I am optimistic about it.
Yeah, there's slight annoyances and things that are not ideal about it,
but I think the benefits outweigh those by far. But I'm very curious to know what all
you guys think as viewers, or maybe you also have your channels of your own. Do you think this is
a good change or you think it's annoying? Do you think it'll help with the spammers?
Maybe not? We can all talk about that down in the comments,
so I'll look forward to seeing that. If you guys enjoyed this video,
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