This is how YouTube wants to stop spam and identity theft
YouTube announced a series of channel changes aimed at eradicating spam and phishing.
YouTube’s new policies are intended to disrupt some of the strategies trolls and spammers use to trick users on the platform. We tell you what this new update is about that will affect YouTube creators.
YouTube will no longer allow channels to use these options
One of the new policies will prevent channels from hiding the number of subscribers. While some adopt this strategy as the channel grows and creates content to be successful on YouTube, others take advantage of this opportunity that YouTube provides to trick users.
Some trolls and spammers use names similar to popular channels to camouflage themselves and attract users’ attention. Not being able to verify the number of subscribers these fake channels have, many fall for it. So as of July 29, no channel will be able to hide the number of subscribers.
On the other hand, YouTube will limit some types of special characters as it is another tool used by those who want to impersonate popular channels. Using special characters, at first glance it seems that they have the same name as a certain channel, but in reality it is a strategy to deceive users.
[…] We are reducing the available character set when choosing a channel name, as some characters can be used to impersonate channels. For example, channels will not be able to update their name to something like “¥ouⓉube ” with this change.
And one last novelty that this YouTube update brings to creators is that they will be able to count on the new comment moderation settings. Within this new configuration they will have a new option to “increase strictness” that will reduce spam comments, since it will retain those that are “potentially inappropriate for review”.
