If you ever wanted to feel truly bad about the future of humanity, just visit the YouTube comments section. The YouTube comments section has had a well-deserved horrible reputation for a long time.
But now YouTube is trying to change that.
YouTube is rolling out some new features that are designed to improve conversation in your comments section and also filter out the comment trolls.
Here are six YouTube features you can use to clean up your comments section to help increase engagement.
1. Pinning Comments
Similar to how you can pin tweets to the top of your timeline, YouTube now lets you pin a comment to the top of your feed. You can promote any one comment you want from your feed.
“This lets you highlight great engagement from your fans or share information with your audience,” according to YouTube.
2. Giving a Heart to Great Comments
Whenever you see a comment you like, you can give it some love. YouTube now lets you give a heart to comments.
This works the same as on other social platforms (Twitter, Instagram, etc.) – it’s all about rewarding comments with the goal of encouraging more engagement (and better comments).
3. Highlighting Your Username
YouTube is adding what it calls a “pop of color” around your user name whenever you post a comment on your channel.
This is “so your viewers can easily tell that the comment is coming from you,” according to YouTube. “If you are a verified creator, you will still have a verification checkmark appear beside your name.”
4. Opting in to YouTube’s Comment Algorithm
YouTube is testing a new opt-in moderation setting that will algorithmically hold potentially inappropriate comments for review. Though YouTube acknowledged that the feature won’t be perfect at first.
“If you choose to opt-in, comments identified by our algorithm will be held and you have the final decision whether to approve, hide, or report these comments,” according to YouTube. “We recognize that the algorithms will not always be accurate: the beta feature may hold some comments you deem fine for approval, or may not catch comments you’d like to hold and remove.”
5. Creating a Blacklist
Want to block certain words or phrases (or even links) from appearing in your comments section? You can. All you have to do is add them to your Blacklist.
Any comments containing or closely matching the specific words you’ve added to Blacklist will be held for your review.
6. Choosing Moderators
Since June, YouTube has let creators assign multiple moderators to a channel. Any user with a YouTube channel can become a moderator.
These moderators can flag comments for removal. Flagged comments remain in a “Held for Review” queue until the creator approves or deletes it.
Image Credit: YouTube
