YouTube said it is revamping the way it displays comments below videos, giving higher placement to comments left by the video's creator and "popular personalities" and giving content creators more control over moderating comments.
The move also more closely integrates Google+ (Nasdaq: GOOG) with YouTube's comments. The new features will let content creators review comments before they're posted, auto-approve comments from certain fans and create filters to block certain words or commenters.
YouTube comments can be dicey territory. A quick scan of some comments on recently popular videos revealed examples of racism, sexism, nonsense and spam. Some YouTube contributors simply choose to disable or remove all comments on certain videos to avoid these pitfalls.
YouTube framed the issue more diplomatically: "What type of video comment would be awesome to see?" it asked. "One from people who care about the video... or one from just the last random person to stop by?"
For more:
- read YouTube's blog post
- AllThingsD had this report
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