YouTube is reacting to the volume of abusive and spam comments posted on videos by instituting warnings and, for serial offenders, timeouts.
YouTube modified its spam and abusive comment policies, stating that it will now adopt a policy of brief bans for repeat offenders. Users who breach the community standards will be warned at first, but if they continue, their commenting rights will be put on probation for up to 24 hours.
When YouTube identifies and erases hateful comments, the user is notified that they have violated community guidelines. If the same person continues to leave toxic comments, they will be given a “timeout” and will be unable to leave any more comments for 24 hours. If users believe their comments should not have been removed, they can share their thoughts with YouTube, though it is unclear whether this will help remove the timeout.
According to YouTube’s testing, these measures are effective at preventing accounts from spamming. YouTube also claims to have improved bot detection in live chats, which should reduce the flood of spam and promotions that frequently accompany discussions during live events. The company also claims to be working on improving its machine learning models to remove spam in comments.
The sources for this piece include an article in EnGadget.
