Anyone familiar with the internet is familiar with the infamous titan that is the YouTube comments section; full of terrible grammar, angry rants, confused relatives, and the occasional, waxing-on-philosophical question about the meaning of life, YouTube comments are one of the symbols of the internet, representative of both its terrible way of corrupting everything it touches while simultaneously breaking out new, revolutionary ideas that have the ability to change the world for the better. (That may be a bit of a stretch, but the point still stands.)
Google, and, consequently, YouTube, seem to be rolling out the carpet for a fresh change of pace, however. Starting with a limited amount of YouTube users today, YouTube will be featuring priority for comments based on relevancy rather than how recent they are. The change is being powered by Google+, and features a slew of other nifty tools that may just change how the internet and world views YouTube comments sections.
Nundu Janakiram, product manager at YouTube, said that, YouTube comments will have three main factors considered when determining their relevancy; “community engagement by the commenter, up-votes for a particular comment, and commenter reputation.” This also means that comments flagged as “spam” or “abusive” are more likely to be buried, while posts from popular, active YouTubers will be elevated.
Since the tools will be powered by Google+, there are predictions that the relevancy and usefulness of Google+ accounts will rise. After all, who wouldn’t want the ability to filter through the racism, misogyny, and hatred so embedded in YouTube comment culture in order to get straight to the good stuff; relevant conversations concerning that adorable video of a kitten in a box.
Image courtesy of the comment’s section on this adorable YouTube video of a tickled kitten.