YouTube‘s new feature will have mean comments coming back to haunt the people who posted them.
The platform already bugs people if it detects the comments they’re about to post may be abusive or otherwise Community Guideline-violating. But that feature doesn’t actually keep users from just dismissing the notification and posting the comments anyway, and YouTube doesn’t tell them if their comments were later deleted.
Or, it didn’t—until now.
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Its new comment removal warnings will tell users exactly which of their comments were deleted and why. In addition, it’s instituting 24-hour bans if users continue posting “multiple abusive comments” after they’ve received these warnings.
“Our testing has shown that these warnings/timeouts reduce the likelihood of users leaving violative comments again,” Rob, a member of Team YouTube, wrote in a community blog post.
“Our goal is to both protect creators from users trying to negatively impact the community via comments, as well as offer more transparency to users who may have had comments removed to policy violations and hopefully help them understand our Community Guidelines,” Rob added.
They went on to explain there are also appeal procedures in place for users whose comments are flagged by mistake: “Of course our systems don’t always get it right, so users who receive these warnings can give feedback to help us know if we’ve gotten it wrong.”
For now, the notifications/timeouts are only available on English-language comments, but YouTube will add more languages “in the coming months,” Rob said.
Along with the new notifications and timeouts, YouTube is updating its spambot detection system for livestream chats. It didn’t give details about what changes the update brings, but said it should “make live streaming a better experience for everyone.”
YouTube added that it’s been working throughout 2022 to improve spam detection, and has removed more than 1.1 billion spammy comments in the last six months.
