YouTube was announced today a new comment moderation setting, “Pause,” that allows creators and moderators to prevent viewers from adding new comments, but keep existing comments on videos.
Instead of turning off comments completely or holding comments to manually moderate them, you can pause comments until you have enough time to filter out the trolls and negativity. The Pause option can be found in the video-level comment settings in the upper right corner of the comments panel either on the watch page in the app or in YouTube Studio. When Pause is enabled, viewers can see below the video that you have paused all comments as well as comments that have already been posted.
The video sharing platform was they experiment with Pause mode from October. According to YouTube, the experimental group reported feeling less overwhelmed by managing too many comments and having “more flexibility.”
YouTube also renamed some of its comment moderation settings as part of today’s announcement. The new, simpler names may make it easier for people to identify what the tools do. For example, “On”, “None”, “Waiting for all” and “Off”. Other settings are less self-explanatory, such as Basic, which keeps potentially inappropriate comments for review, and Strict, where a wider range of potentially harmful comments are put on hold.
In related news, YouTube is also testing a new feature that summarizes topics in comments.
