Is there some youtube algorithm/glitch that could make my comments invisible to the channel owner?
I subscribe to several youtube channels and have been posting (positive/complimentary) comments for years. The channel owners in question have have a habit of of “loving” almost all comments, mine included. (comments are flagged with a icon when the owner does this) It’s a nice way of acknowledging everyone and promoting engagement.
As of about 6 weeks ago, my comments on these channels don’t seem to be registering with the owners. This is across all of the channels. They still appear in the comment section but aren’t acknowledged. As a test, I posted the same comment twice, once with another youtube ID – one comment got a , the other one didn’t.
I can’t imagine I said anything on these different channels that would cause them all to ignore/mute me at the same time. I have to assume that my comments have somehow become invisible to the owners. Any ideas on how that would happen?
No, not trying to bypass any rules. It’s just very odd that my comments, that were always acknowledged, seemed to have become invisible to the channel owners all at the same time.
As another test, I posted a comment from the “invisible” account to a video on my secondary youtube channel (different google account). It shows up and I can the comment as the channel owner.
It’s quite possible that you’ve been caught up in an algorithm that is meant to keep people from comment-bombing YT comments. Nobody wants to come to a platform and engage with discussion if every post on a topic has the same comments from the same people. Or worse yet, the same comments from the same bots.
You might think to yourself “well, I am a real person leaving nice commentary! I’m not an angry bot!” True that. But algorithms aren’t always discerning.
How that may translate to your comments still being public but the creator not seeing them? I don’t know. Could be the creator gets notices of new fresh content but not content by suspected bots, and only loves non-bot comments.
Makes sense. That’s my theory as well, but it’s strange that it happened across several different channels at the exact same time. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to post my comments from another account.
As a bystander, I can say that your comment does not appear to me if I leave it on the default sort of “top”. I only see your comment if I switch to “newest”.
Youtube does some super weird stuff with comments behind the scenes - as a completely separate layer of activity from the comment controls that are available to the channel owner; as a channel owner, I can report and delete comments and I can shadowban individual commentors (so their comments are not visible to anyone but themselves - I believe this was conceived as a way of drawing less attention to a ban than outright refusing to accept comments from a person).
I also have access to a simple keyword filter that I can configure, along with a standard profanity filter - comments disqualified by this go into a quarantine where I think they are visible only to the commentor, and to me, when I view the quarantine - where I can release the comments, or delete them, or ignore and leave them (and they get automatically deleted after 6 weeks).
But in addition to that, the YouTube algorithm does some banning and hiding etc, based on its own criteria, which are not published, but probably include things like analysis of the content/wording of their comments and whether their comments get reported a lot.
I do know that really long comments are more likely to get incorrectly flagged as spam, and I have encountered cases where I could see a comment on my mobile version of YouTube Studio, but it was nowhere to be found on the desktop browser version.
From my “invisible” account: Hi there, greetings from blondebear!
From my other account: Can man live on bread alone?
I’m thinking that might be the issue. I had a habit of posting long comments, sometimes a couple of paragraphs. It that is the cause, I wonder if there’s any way to un-spamify myself.
icon when the owner does this) It’s a nice way of acknowledging everyone and promoting engagement.
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