YouTube rolls out new tools for combating spam and account hijacking

YouTube introduced a couple of new tools that will help its creators fight comment spam and channel impersonations. A new moderation setting for comments, allows creators to "increase strictness" while filtering them.

The online video platform said that the new setting will hold inappropriate comments for review, and was designed to reduce spam and identity abuse comments. YouTube made it clear that this was an alternative to manually filtering comments, or being forced to switch them off completely.

Another setting YouTube is introducing, is to combat the increasing problem of knock-off or fake YouTube channels that impersonate the real one. As of July 29th, YouTube Creators will no longer be able to hide their subscriber counts.

The company noted that the tactic was commonly used by fake channels to lead people to them. YouTube said that it understood some creators preferred to keep their subscriber counts private, but said that the change will help in making things safer for everyone in the community.

YouTube is also reducing the character set that people use while updating a channel name. This will prevent bad actors from using special characters to imitate official page names, and escape the algorithm.

After the change, creators will no longer be able to appropriate channel names using special characters.