YouTube's new feature is proof that social networks are scared of losing more celebs like Madonna and Selena Gomez

• YouTube, the video sharing platform, has been spotted testing a feature that hides the comments section of a video by default.
  
• Madonna and Selena Gomez recently stopped using social media on account of their negative impact.
  
• Social networks have woken up to the problem and each has its own solution of how to tackle it.
  

The anonymity of the internet can lead to some harsh criticism on social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. To limit the negativity, these platforms are trying new ways to shield users and creators from the worst of it.

YouTube is currently testing a new feature that automatically hides the comments section of videos on Android phones. The feature has only been spotted in India so far. Yet, it shows that social media giants care about people’s feelings.

Comments haven’t disappeared altogether but there’s one extra step — clicking a separate button involved — before you can actually view them.

It doesn’t keep bad comments away but if you’re on YouTube only to watch videos and don’t particularly care about the comments — which are, more often than not, less than positive — then this change is something that will work in your favour.

‘Internet is Evil’

Celebrities like Selena Gomez and Madonna have quit Instagram and other social networks, citing the adverse effect that the platform was starting to have on their lives.

Madonna told the Sun, that Instagram was making her ‘feel bad’ while Gomez — the third most followed person on Instagram — spoke at Cannes about how Instagram would make her ‘depressed’ and she eventually had to delete it from her phone altogether.


Pete Davidson, a comedian on Saturday Night Live and Ariana Grande’s ex-fiance, said, “The internet is evil and it doesn’t make me feel good,” in an Instagram post when negative comments flooded his account after his break up with Grande.

Kelly Marie Tran, the actress who played Rose Tico in the latest installment of Star Wars, deleted her account last year after facing harassment from racist fans of the franchise.

There’s a long list of celebrities who have quit using social media because of the unnecessary flak that they have had to face — mostly in the form of trolls and online harassment.

All hands on deck

The problem of trolls and negative comments monopolizing feeds isn’t a platform specific problem, but one that plagues all of social media.

While YouTube is trying to go about solving the problem by rolling up the comments section, TIkTok, the video sharing mobile app by Bytedance, has a different approach. In order to keep the hate away, users can now apply custom comment filters to their videos.


Essentially as a TikTok user, you can choose words or phrases that you don’t want to see in the comments section or you can select a group of pre-approved people who will be allowed to comment on the video.

Facebook is also trying its hand at tweaking the public comments section on posts so that the worst of them don’t show up right on top based on certain ‘integrity signals’ like how many interactions a particular comment generated.

One cannot take hate away from the Internet, but social media giants can try and shield their users from it.

See also:
Instagram's new rules to ban trolls have the same old problem

A fresh wave of bad news haunts TikTok

Facebook and Cognizant get smeared by whistleblowers who exposed an office of horrors with stories of death, theft and dirt