YouTube expands the hyperlinked comments no one asked for to even more users

There are plenty of reasons to avoid scrolling through the comments section of a YouTube video. Now you’ll have one more reason to steer clear as hyperlinked comments are appearing more widely on mobile.

Back in 2023, it was revealed in a YouTube Creator Insider announcement that the platform would start running a limited experiment that would allow users to initiate a search on certain topics straight from the comments section. Specifically, a word in a comment could be hyperlinked if related information or topics are available. Any word chosen to be hyperlinked would appear blue with a magnifying glass next to it. Clicking on the hyperlink would take the user to a results page as their video continued to play in the mini-player.

YouTube said in the announcement that it is aiming to “reduce friction” when users attempt to learn more about a subject. As a commenter, you have no power to pick which word is hyperlinked or remove a hyperlink. However, the company said creators can remove those hyperlinks from their video’s comments if they want.

First spotted by 9to5Google, it appears the limited experiment has now been expanded to more users on mobile. You can see an example in the left screenshot above where Fallout 76 has been hyperlinked. Clicking on that hyperlink takes you to the results page you see in the right screenshot above.

At the moment, it’s unclear what criteria a word must meet to be hyperlinked. The implementation seems random, as the feature only appears in some comment sections and not in others. Whatever the case, it appears that the experiment is only visible on mobile.

In a more welcomed change, we recently discovered, through an APK teardown, that YouTube is working on making the bedtime reminder function easier to find. A change that could help some from staying up too late watching videos.