# YouTube seems to delete any comment containing an email address? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 20, 2023, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336 "2023-05-20T17:38:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2023, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/1 "2023-05-20T17:38:49Z")
Recently got into a discussion on YouTube comments about a rather technical issue involving audio levels. I thought it was probably of not much interest to the general audience, so I suggested we take it to email, and provided an address. Very soon, my response was deleted. Wondering if this was a bot, I repeated the address in a text form: handle, domain etc. It too vanished rapidly, which suggests to me that they have actual humans filtering the posts? Anyone else encountered this? And if so, why are they doing so? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2023, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/2 "2023-05-20T18:00:41Z")
YouTube does have rules against posting spam in comments ([see here](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801973?hl=en&ref_topic=9282365#zippy=%2Ccomments-spam)—scroll down to the “Comments Spam” section). I couldn’t find anything referring to email addresses, though. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re trying to prevent people from posting _other people’s_ email addresses. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2023, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/3 "2023-05-20T18:05:28Z")
I’ve had comments disappear because I posted links…I think it’s a setting controlled by the channel owner. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2023, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/4 "2023-05-21T19:25:38Z")
I _think_ (not 100% certain) that you can post YouTube links in the comments without problem (YouTube wants to promote people seeing more videos). ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2023, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/5 "2023-05-21T19:45:03Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > Wondering if this was a bot, I repeated the address in a text form: handle, domain etc. It too vanished rapidly, which suggests to me that they have actual humans filtering the posts? Unless you have a personal domain and you post it in a really obscure way, surely a Google bot can figure out that you are giving an email address however you type it? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2023, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/6 "2023-05-21T19:54:23Z")
Excuse my ignorance, but what would an email address in “text form” look like? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2023, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/7 "2023-05-21T19:57:53Z")
I’ve seen comments on YouTube about not being allowed to post links (and I’ve never seen links) and I suspect email addresses are included as pretty much being like a link in html. It’s fairly easy to parse something as an email address - I wonder if breaking it by spaces or putting “dot” for “.” might help. I’ve seen websites for conferences say break email addresses of a committee in a way that they would be hard to harvest. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2023, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/8 "2023-05-21T20:02:13Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > what would an email address in “text form” look like I assume they meant writing something like “biden at whitehouse dot gov”, just avoiding the format that makes it _really_ obvious that it’s an email adress. But unless you have a personal domain and omit “at” and “dot” and the suffix, it’s still going to be obvious to our AI overlords. Google can probably quite easily _predict_ that you are about to attempt to communicate an email address to someone and delete your comment before you write it. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2023, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/9 "2023-05-21T20:34:11Z")
My understanding is that the default settings will withhold any Internet address to be inspected by the channel owner for moderation. And it seems to me that any attempt to replace the comment also gets held for moderation. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2023, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/10 "2023-05-22T18:28:23Z")
Yup. I guess they don’t want any conversation taken to email (nothing to do with the channel owner, probably) because they think they will lose advertising revenue by "eyeballs and ‘mindshare’ " (remember those memes from early Internet days? Rather silly, since modern ad blockers are quite able to remove ads from YouTube. But I guess it provides employment for a cubicle farm of workers? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2023, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/11 "2023-05-22T18:58:04Z")
From what I’ve seen from content providers, the mighty algorithm gives credit for engagement in the comments section, so moving discussions to email would decrease this metric. Perhaps YouTube doesn’t want to be responsible for crooks trolling for suckers. There is some content that would be a treasure trove of the gullible. Same goes for links, I suppose. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2023, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youtube-seems-to-delete-any-comment-containing-an-email-address/984336/12 "2023-05-22T19:14:11Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > Yup. I guess they don’t want any conversation taken to email (nothing to do with the channel owner, probably) because they think they will lose advertising revenue by "eyeballs and ‘mindshare’ " That’s one possible reason, but I can think of at least two others: (1) an attempt to keep spam out of the Comments section, and (2) to keep people from posting _other people’s_ email addresses in an attempt to get people to flood their inboxes and invade their privacy (as I suggested before). @blondebear is correct that disallowing links in comments is an option controlled by the channel owner.I don’t know whether or not that includes email addresses.