YouTube is more than a repository of Minecraft videos. It’s also a flourishing social media network. There are no clear statistics about how many comments people leave on YouTube, but it’s a lot. Around 100 million people engage with YouTube videos every week through likes, shares, and comments. Normally, this is a good thing for content creators and consumers, but there is a dark side to YouTube comments in the form of comment spam.
DespiteYouTube’s best efforts, it’s still a problem. As of the fourth quarter of 2022, nearly two billion comments were removed from the platform for terms-of-service violations. So how can you protect your account and yourshiny new Chromebookfrom becoming inundated with a deluge of spam?
How to change the default comment settings on your YouTube channel
The default setting for comments on YouTube is to enable them across the board. There are only two instances where comments are turned off by default.
Additionally, users under the age of 13 with a supervised YouTube account can’t see or engage with video comments. If you don’t fall under any of these edge cases and want to change your default settings, here’s how to get it done.
From here, you have control over the default comment settings on your videos. There are a few settings:
Any changes you make from here take effect for new videos you publish and aren’t retroactive. These options are only available in the browser version of YouTube Studio, not the Android or iPhone app.
How to change the comment settings on individual YouTube videos
Sometimes you don’t want to take the nuclear option of blocking all comments on your videos. If you turn off YouTube comments across the board, you risk alienating a significant portion of your audience and taking away their opportunity to engage with your content. Often, it’s better to enable comments across the board but not allow comments for specific videos.
Changing video comment settings in the browser
From here, you’ll have the same options as previously, but their scope is restricted to the current video.
Changing video comment settings in the YouTube app
Again, you’ll have the same four options as you do on a desktop, and they behave the same way.
Changing video comment settings in the YouTube Studio app
Take control of YouTube
