YouTube Is Cracking Down On Tricks Spammers Use For Impersonation

Lately, YouTube has witnessed a fair share of tough times in the hands of spammers. Earlier in the year, a bunch of big creators like MKBHD and Jacksepticeye made videos highlighting the unending digital prints of spammers warming their channels, these spammers have taken into replying to other commenters, staging fake giveaways and other scams epistles. YouTube has soaked in quite a number of these complaints and has announced a few new changes that are about to stem the tide adequately.

In a bid to address this, YouTube releases three new policies in that regard. Firstly, channels on the platform no longer have the ability to hide subscriber count — a move often used by spammers to help camouflage themselves. This is because checking a channel’s subscriber count could quickly help verify that they are who they say they are (aka Big Name Content Creator X).

Secondly, YouTube puts a limit on the type and frequency of special characters a channel name can adopt. This has been identified as a common spammer tactic, sometimes used in coordination with hidden subscriber counts. Essentially, spammers employ the use of special characters to form familiar names in order to make a channel look legitimate. For example, calling your channel “¥ouⓉube” in an attempt to mimic the official YouTube account. By reducing the frequency at which these special characters are used, the options they have to do so are also reduced.

Thirdly, YouTube is expanding access to enhanced comment moderation settings. Reports say earlier in the year, these settings were in their testing phase. The company now says all creators can toggle the “increase strictness” setting in the “held for review” tab in the platform’s moderation tools. Doing this automatically cuts down on the frequency of spam/scam comments, though, with stricter filters, there’s always a risk that there’ll be an increase in false positives, too.

Although the new policies YouTube is rolling out are a small number that may appear to bring relatively small changes, it feels good to know that YouTube recognises the creators’ efforts and is still putting in work to improve this issue.