How to Moderate YouTube Comments

However, as your channel grows, your videos’ comment sections can attract negative attention and undesired visitors. People may leave unpleasant YouTube comments that may put off your target audience and other users.

Fortunately, you can set moderation rules in your YouTube comment settings to help process some of the new comments to help you with the process. This post will teach you how to moderate your comments and keep your community positive and safe!

Monitoring, replying, and removing YouTube comments from videos can easily become a full-time job. As your channel grows, dealing with multiple videos and your comments section is definitely overwhelming, especially if you are unfortunate enough to receive many negative comments.

This doesn’t mean you should disable comments altogether. Luckily, YouTube provides a set of tools for channels, such as automated filters that will block words or certain users, to moderate their comment sections. Learn more about each one and how to make the best use of them:

• Add moderators

  Comment moderators are users that can remove comments from your videos, which will then appear on your Held for Review page. Moderators can also remove user comments during live transmissions.  

• Approved Users

  When you approve users in your community settings, all of their comments will be automatically published under your videos, even if they contain blocked links, certain words, or potentially inappropriate content. Channel owners should only use the approve tool on members of your community that you trust and rely on, so you’re sure they won’t mess up your comment sections!

• Hidden Users

  After marking a user as hidden, none of their comments (both on videos and live chat) will appear on your channel. This hide user tool is key for dealing with persistent trolls or spam accounts. Just remember to report users that disrespect the YouTube Community Guidelines. Users will not be notified about being blocked. 

• Blocked Words

  Comments containing words marked as blocked (or close matches) will be automatically held for review. You will then be able to go through the unpublished comments to see if they can be approved for that individual video. Live chats messages matching these words will be deleted. 

  Note: the default settings for Youtube comments is to “Hold potentially inappropriate comments for review.” That means that Youtube has its own list of harmful words that cannot be posted by viewers. You can add extra words you don’t want to see on your channel by adding them to the blocked words list.

• Block Links

  Activating this option will hold comments with hashtags or URLs for review. All the comments containing URLs in live chat will be blocked. By blocking links, you can prevent viewers from using your comment section as an advertising platform and dragging your subscribers’ attention away from your YouTube videos. This option does not apply to you, moderators, or approved users.

  Note: Comments that are held for review will not be published until you approve them. You can also delete comments that you don’t want to have published.

• Disable Comments Option

  If you don’t want to bother moderating YouTube comments on your YouTube channel, you can always make the choice of disabling comments on either your entire channel or on a specific video. All you need to do is turn comments off in your YouTube studio either when you upload a new video or by looking through your YouTube videos. You can always enable comments again in the future if you change your mind.

To access the Community Moderation options listed above, go to YouTube Studio and click the “Community” tab, under the “Settings” button on the sidebar.

Moderators play an important part in keeping your comment sections tidy, as they can help you by removing harmful, spammy, or suspicious comments for you to review. When picking users to moderate comments, make sure to choose people you can trust, either from your official team or from your most loyal subscribers!

It is a good idea to talk to your moderators about what you perceive as inappropriate comments. No two channels are the same and to ensure the quality of your own public comments, it is a good idea to be clear with your help. There are two ways to add moderators to your YouTube comments:

Through Settings

Here is how you can add comment moderators to your YouTube channel through your comment settings:

1. Step 1

   

   After logging into your YouTube account, click your profile picture, and access “Settings.”

2. Step 2

   

   On the settings tab, click “Community” to access moderation settings. Under “Moderators,” paste the channel URL of the profiles you want to moderate your comment sections. Click save when you’re done. Moderators can remove comments to be held for your approval, and can also block comments in your live chat messages.

Through Video Editor

Here is how you can add a comment moderator through the video editor:

In YouTube Studio, open any video for editing and click the comment section on the left side. Click the three dots on any comment and choose “Add this user as a comment moderator” to give any user the ability to moderate comments. On this menu, you can also remove a user as a comment moderator from your YouTube channel or make all of their comments automatically approved.

Sometimes, moderating a video’s comments is not enough. If you have a particular video that’s controversial or you simply don’t want anyone’s opinion on it, you can disable comments for this particular video.

Learn how to fully prevent people who hold potentially inappropriate comments from leaving messages on your video:

1. Step 1

   

   Access your YouTube Studio page through your profile icon’s dropdown menu. Scroll through your own videos and find the one you want to disable comments on.

2. Step 2

   

   Click the pencil to edit a video. Scroll all Click the pencil to edit a video. Scroll all the way down to the “Show more” button.

3. Step 3

   

   In the “Comments and Ratings” section, alter comment visibility to “Disable comments.” When you’re done, remember to save all changes.

Disable All Comments on Your YouTube Channel

If you want all your videos to have future comments disabled by default, follow these steps:

1. Step 1

   Access YouTube Studio, then select “Settings” on the left-hand side of the screen.

2. Step 2

   Go to “Community” and click “Defaults.”

3. Step 3

   Select “Disable comments” under “Comments on your new videos.”

4. Step 4

   Click “Save” when you’re done.

Note: private videos and videos marked as “for kids” always have comments disabled.

If the ability to moderate comments isn’t enough, you can also delete any YouTube comment from the comments section of a video or through your YouTube Studio. Check it out:

From the comment section, click the three dots next to any comment and click “Remove” to delete comments on YouTube.

From YouTube Studio, go to your uploads and select “comments” under any video. Find the comment you want to delete and click the three dots near it.

While it is a good idea to set aside comments for review when you first start your YouTube channel, there may be a time where you outgrow the feature and, instead, focus on individual comment moderation. Here is how you can turn off comment approval on YouTube:

1. Step 1

   Access YouTube Studio.

2. Step 2

   Select “Settings” on the left menu.

3. Step 3

   Go to “Community” and click “Defaults.”

4. Step 4

   Select “Allow all comments” under “Comments on your new videos.”

5. Step 5

   Click “Save” when you’re done. This will mean that the platform will automatically approve comments when they were written unless they include one (or more) of the video’s blocked words. These will still be set aside for comment moderation.

Upon receiving a comment notification, click the bell icon on the upper-right corner of the screen and click the said notification. Click “Approve comment” to publish the YouTube comment under your video. 

You can also scroll through your comments for review on YouTube Studio:

1. Step 1

   On YouTube Studio, click the “Content” tab to access all your YouTube videos. 

2. Step 2

   Click the balloon icon near the video you want to view comments for.

3. Step 3

   Filter the YouTube comments by “Held for review.”

4. STep 4

   Approve the comments you want by clicking the “Approve” button next to it.

Here is how you can check your comments on YouTube:

On YouTube Studio, go to your uploads and click “Comments” on any uploaded YouTube video.

Once the comments load, you can sort them by filters, making your task of moderating comments that much easier.