Early Sunday, YouTube's most popular attributor, PewDiePie, uploaded a video entitled "Let's Fix the Comments." In the video Felix Kjellberg, AKA PewDiePie, confronts his issues with the system behind YouTube's comment section. He talks about how because of the amount of subscribers he has, 46 million and counting, people have begun using the comments section under his videos as spam to either promote their own accounts, or online scammers luring people to click on links that take them to spam websites. The comments section should be where creators go to receive feedback on the videos they've created, not where scammers and bot accounts go to lure people, often young children who don't know better. He also addresses how once Google+ took over YouTube, accounts could begin using the same name for different accounts.
For instance, anyone can change their screen name on YouTube to PewDiePie, misleading people into trusting their comments. They make their accounts look nearly identical in thumbnail view, with the only difference being a small, gray checkmark.
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As anyone can see, this difference is small and barely noticeable to someone who isn't aware of it.
Kjellberg also brings up a much more serious and pressing issue in the video. Currently, the closed captions and subtitles that are available on YouTube are able to be input by anybody. That's right, anybody. If you go to YouTube's official website you can see the very few, loose rules there are to adding subtitles to a video. While this may not seem like that big of a deal on the surface, subtitles are crucial for understanding videos to viewers who may be deaf, hard of hearing, or even learning a new language. And just like the comments section, it is being very misused and misunderstood.
These are all screen shots from various YouTube videos that clearly depict the issues behind their current closed captioning system. Imagine for a moment, not being able to rely on what the video sounds like, but relying solely on the subtitles. YouTube has admitted that their current subtitle and closed captioning methods are "by no means good enough yet," but still haven't done much to fix it. While creators can report and have faulty subtitles removed, that becomes a bit difficult for popular channels like PewDiePie and Good Mythical Morning, (both pictured above) because it would be virtually impossible to constantly monitor subtitles that can be submitted and changed at any time by anyone.
Here's what we as viewers can do. Share videos that speak out on these topics and talk about them on your social media platforms, while tagging YouTube. Stand behind the mediation of YouTube comment sections. Be sure to double check the accounts posting links in comments. It's generally a good idea to not click links in comments sections, but if you feel like you want or need to, please do a double check. You can also block and report any spam content you see. If you see faulty subtitles, take a screenshot and tweet @YouTube with your concern; your voice can be heard and it matters. Spread the word on the issues that the digital age face, because these problems are new and very specific to a certain type of culture. Hopefully soon these problems will be fixed, or at least better addressed by the people at YouTube.
