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Do people even read YouTube comments? Serious question. They've been pretty low-quality for years, so I've stopped reading them a long time ago.
by ihuman 8y ago
Do people even read YouTube comments? Serious question. They've been pretty low-quality for years, so I've stopped reading them a long time ago.
- danso 8y agoThat's exactly what I was thinking. I'll sometimes skim comments during a boring bit in a video (such as an old-school NES/SNES speedrun), but I don't attempt nor expect serious discussion or rebuttals. I imagine the noise-to-signal ratio is even worse for videos with any type of political content.
- beatgammit 8y agoI get a chuckle out of them sometimes.
- rawrmaan 8y agoIt's a pretty easy question to answer: Yes, they do. Look at the engagement in terms of likes and replies on almost any video. Clearly people are reading and participating.
- l9k 8y agoThey are not available on TV (Smart TV, Fire Stick, PS4...) which is used more and more. So I guess, fortunately, they are not that important to Google
- Kagerjay 8y agoI only look at the first 5 comments, incase the youtuber responds to them or likes them directly. Everything else is just repetitive low quality spam usually
- CM30 8y agoI sometimes read them, especially on my own channel. Surprisingly, I haven't really encountered too much in the way of political idiocy there, perhaps because I don't tend to make videos about politics/anything that could get an ideological reaction. So if a channel is fairly obscure and doesn't focus on politics, the comments can be... bearable. But anything remotely popular is a hive of scum and idiocy that most people will rightfully not touch with a fifty foot bargepole. Less political there just means more 12 year olds posting outdated memes in place of the Russian bot farms and political trolls.
- brokenmachine 8y agoI read them more for entertainment than any other reason. Just to see what's out there. When I watch youtube videos of a technical nature, there tends to be much higher-quality comments.