YouTube's comments section is about to become a less awful place

YouTube‘s comments sections are often filled with wonderful insight buried between many layers of deliberate obfuscation. The situation may be about to improve, however, as YouTube rolls out some tools for content creators to help them manage comments sections a little better.

‘Pinned comments’, perhaps the most significant of these, allows a creator to push a single comment to the top of the thread, similar to how pinned Tweets work. This could incentivize non-troll comments – as users vie to have their comment pinned – and allow the video creator to highlight something particularly relevant to the conversation.

‘Creator hearts’ provides creators with another way to show some love for their community. Instead of a ‘Like’, content creators can select comments to ‘Heart’, which will display their icon and a heart symbol clearly beside the comment.

‘Creator usernames’ highlights the creator’s name when they comment on their own video, helping it stand out against the others, and a verification check mark will be shown next to verified creator’s names.

YouTube is also introducing a new opt-in beta feature that employs algorithms to flag potentially inappropriate comments until the creator approves them.

These additions join a number of other comment section-specific YouTube features including a function for blacklisting words and phrases, and a moderator system which lets creators select specific users to monitor their comments sections.

The new features are rolling out within the next few weeks. What do you think of the changes? Will they make conversations better? Give us your thoughts below.