YouTube’s new weapons for fighting comment spam include 24-hour bans

YouTube says it will begin to warn users when it’s spotted and removed their comments for violating the company’s guidelines, according to a post signed by “Rob” at TeamYouTube. Big creators have been increasingly drawing awareness to comment spam on the platform, and this change and other updates shared Tuesday could help reduce the volume of spam.

If the user keeps posting abusive comments, YouTube may block them from posting further for up to 24 hours. “Our testing has shown that these warnings/timeouts reduce the likelihood of users leaving violative comments again,” Rob writes in the post.

The notification is only available for English comments for now, “but we hope to bring it to more languages in the coming months,” Rob says. The company has also improved its ability to detect spam in comments as well as bots in live chats.

Creators including Linus Tech Tips, Jacksepticeye, and MKBHD have all made videos this year about comment spam. The spam itself takes many different forms, but you might see waves of copy / pasted comments, comments impersonating big creators, or scams for things like Robux.

In response, YouTube has introduced a way to increase the strictness of its comment moderation and is cracking down on tricks that let people impersonate creators. And now, it’s adding a warning for spammers, too.

YouTube:

Improved Spam Detection on comments

We’ve been working on improving our automated detection systems and machine learning models to identify and remove spam. In fact, we’ve removed over 1.1 billion spammy comments in the first six months of 2022. As spammers change their tactics, our machine learning models are continuously improving to better detect the new types of spam.

Improved bot detection in live chat

We’ve improved our spambot detection to keep bots out of live chats. We know bots negatively impacts the live streaming experience, as the live chat is a great way to engage and connect with other users and creators.This update should make live streaming a better experience for everyone.

Comment removal warnings & timeouts

We’re launching a new feature that warns users when we’ve detected and removed some of their comments for violating our Community Guidelines. Additionally, if a user continues to leave multiple abusive comments, they may receive a timeout and be temporarily unable to comment for up to 24 hours. Our testing has shown that these warnings/timeouts reduce the likelihood of users leaving violative comments again.