Google No Longer Allows YouTube Channels To Hide Subscriber Count

YouTube creates new policy to reduce spammers (photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Spam is not a new thing in social media. However, at the beginning of 2022, Google was having a hard time due to the soaring number of spammers in the YouTube comments column.

This was conveyed by a great YouTuber Marques Brownlee who said that YouTube spammers had crossed the line, and asked YouTube to take immediate action.

Apparently, YouTube is taking this issue seriously. According to TechCrunch, YouTube has made several changes to reduce this spam problem.

This “Increase strictness” content moderation tool is a new experiment from YouTube that's been in the works for a bit. Hoping it can make a dent in this comment spam we've been seeing so much lately pic.twitter.com/KVkjVCOUKZ

— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) April 8, 2022

Starting July 29th, any YouTube channel will no longer be able to hide their subscriber count. Because according to Google, hiding subscriber counts is an easy way for spam accounts to hide what's really going on in order to emulate bigger, more established channels.

YouTube's next step is to limit the type and frequency of special characters that can be used for channel names. Basically, spammers are trying to make a channel look legitimate by using two or more special characters to form a similar name for the original channel.

For example, calling your channel "¥ouⓉube" in an attempt to impersonate an official YouTube account. Reducing the frequency of special characters reduces the options they have to do.

Further, YouTube is expanding access to enhanced comment moderation settings to roll out to all creators, and will begin testing earlier this year.

The company now says all creators can enable the "increase strictness" setting, which will allow YouTube to filter comments more rigorously and more aggressively than the default setting.