On youtube comments, and how they're actually good

 The title is not meant to be provocative, really it's just an honest clear statement of my views on the content produced by the amazing youtube channels I follow and am a part of the community of.

Not that long ago Youtube comments were considered the bottomless piece of shit content, vast uncharted savage territories where nobody dare travel even with the thickest of skins. They were rude, mean, racist, sexist, demeaning to the creators, complaining, and often wouldn't add much to the conversation. They were not communities, they were drive-by attacks on the community the creators meant to start. It was a morass for sure, nothing good was coming off it for anybody involved, not anybody reading those comments, not the creators and certainly not youtube. 

Since then something changed, probably youtube realizing that if it wants content creators to be more engaged with their channels and viewers, which would lead to better retention better advertisers higher ad money, they would have to help them create thriving communities. These drive-by sharp-shooters would have to be discouraged, chased away from proper civilization and into whatever stinky holes they dared raise their heads from.

So they came with user moderation tools, keyword based and made comments easy to delete. They encouraged a certain kind of comments through their algorithms, encouraged the creators to ask for feedback from their biggest fans. Soon the good stuff started displacing the bad, and now when you go to the comments section of any decently sized channels, the comments are actually often quite helpful encouraging and constructive.

That's not universal of course, and doesn't apply everywhere. There are still the old crappy comments on videos with hundreds of millions of views, attacks on women's channels and their foray into technology circles and more technical fields. But the attacks have softened, there's no incessant complaints about snowflakes or ethics in gaming journalism, no political rants gone out of control. The 'bots' seem a lot less active, more pleasant than ever i they still exist.

The creators play the biggest role, clearly. Kenji alt-lopez talks about how he has to delete dozens and tens of dozens of comments on his videos every week or so because of their low quality. That is however quite an achievement as his views are in the millions. It's hard to scale, but it's not as difficult as it used to be, and you can maintain your positive outlook and be in close touch with your fans and community around the shared interest, while spending lot lesser time fighting trolls.

Good stuff, youtube.