YouTube heats up fight against channel impersonators TechRadar Skip to main content TechRadar is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here's why you can trust us. YouTube heats up fight against channel impersonators By Cesar Cadenas published 1 July 2022 Platform is adding three new tools to creators' arsenal (Image credit: Alexey Boldin / Shutterstock.com) Audio player loading… Spam comments on YouTube have been getting worse recently and the platform has decided to fight back. Via a Twitter thread (opens in new tab), YouTube revealed it's working on three new tools to combat spam comments and the bad actors who impersonate content creators. As it currently stands, the update includes removing the ability to hide subscriber counts, improving comment moderation, and changing the rules on special characters in a name. Cleaning up comments YouTube states removing the ability to hide subscriber counts will make it more difficult for people to impersonate creators. Copycats have become so prominent that big-name YouTubers like Marques Brownlee have published videos (opens in new tab) showing the severity of the problem. In his video, you'll see, in what is obviously a scam, spam comments with Marques' channel logo telling people to message him on Telegram to get a prize. The subscriber count change releases on July 29. It's unknown if the other tools will release on that date too. We asked YouTube if they could tell us when they'll launch, but we didn't get a response. We'll add an update if they do respond. For comment moderation, creators can turn on "Increase strictness" in their channel settings to place inappropriate comments, in up to 100 languages, under a new "Held for review" tab. Comments in this tab must be manually approved by the channel before they can show up on the video. Channels have up to 60 days to review comments, according to a YouTube Help page (opens in new tab). As for special characters, YouTube is restricting the amount that can be placed in a channel name. Apparently, impersonators would get around YouTube security by swapping out letters for a symbol. For example instead of "TechRadar", you might see a copycat with "T€chR@d@r". Spam accounts may be more subtle, however, like exchanging the letter "B" with "Ḃ". That tiny little dot above the "B" can fool people into clicking a scam link. We also asked YouTube how many special characters will now be allowed in a name, but we've yet to hear back. Analysis Fighting spam While these changes are fairly small, it's still good to see YouTube actively working on the spam problem. The platform did say it's working on improving (opens in new tab) its systems and tools to better detect spam but didn't go into detail about what they are. Best of luck to YouTube, because like the Hydra, you cut down one scam campaign and another pops up. The platform has been actively fighting comment spam as far back as 2017. Back then, the platform implemented a new feature that held comments with URLs for review. But now they've taken to putting URLs in channel names. And in 2021, Google squashed a massive phishing campaign that targeted YouTubers. If you're curious to know what you can do to protect yourself, we recommend getting a VPN. TechRadar has a list of the best YouTube VPNs for 2022 to help narrow down your decision. Cesar CadenasContributorCesar Cadenas has been writing about the tech industry for several years now specializing in consumer electronics, entertainment devices, Windows, and the gaming industry. But he's also passionate about smartphones, GPUs, and cybersecurity. See more Software news Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to theTechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Thank you for signing up to TechRadar. You will receive a verification email shortly. There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again. MOST POPULARMOST SHARED1You may not have to sell a body part to afford the Nvidia RTX 4090 after all2One of the world's most popular programming languages is coming to Linux3The iPhone 14 Pro is made of the wrong stuff; the Pixel 7 proves that to me4Stop saying Mario doesn't have an accent in The Super Mario Bros. Movie5Google Pixel Tablet is what Apple should've done ages ago1Best laptops for designers and coders 2The iPhone 14 Pro is made of the wrong stuff; the Pixel 7 proves that to me3Stop saying Mario doesn't have an accent in The Super Mario Bros. Movie4iPhone 15 tipped to come with an upgraded 5G chip5Google Pixel Tablet is what Apple should've done ages ago Technology Magazines (opens in new tab)● (opens in new tab)The best tech tutorials and in-depth reviewsFrom$12.99 (opens in new tab)View (opens in new tab)