The YouTube queue of the week opened in the name of news, as evidenced by a promo departing from the USA in favor of the spin-off Premium, and by some measures announced to combat spam against the Channels on the standard platform.
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YouTube, often at the center of news for its various emanations (just think of the recent improvements for YouTube Music, with suggestions on the lock screen and a restyling for albums on tablets), has certainly not exhausted its proactive verve and, indeed, in the past few hours, along with a promo related to YouTube Premium, it also announced some measures to combat the spam that has plagued several popular managers of its channels for months.
Like social networks, even a video sharing platform like YouTube is suffering a lot from the spam problem, as complained last April by the well-known youtuber Marques Brownlee: in the end, after having run in the necessity, Google decided to intervene on the merit, announcing the launch of 3 measures, precisely from an anti-spam perspective, to curb the phenomenon of those users who, pretending to be famous content creators, imitate their identity in order to carry out malicious operations, ranging from scams (often with a cryptocurrency theme) , to fake gifts, passing through the sharing of malicious links.
The first provision, in this sense, provides that, from 29 July, the Channels will no longer be able to hide the number of subscribers: Google, while admitting that creators often prefer not to show this counter when they are still growing and establishing themselves, believes that it can be It is useful to provide this feedback as a yardstick to distinguish a real, and popular, account from one pulled up out of thin air precisely to engage in malicious and spam behaviors.
Secondly, Google, aware that special characters are often used to imitate the name of famous channels and thus divert the visit of users in this way deceived upon themselves (eg calling themselves ¥ ouⓉube to look like the original YouTube ), has established limitations on the type and frequency of the use of special characters in the name of the Channels, in order to reduce the options in favor of scammers. Last but not least, after the limited tests conducted since April, the “increase strictness” option will be made available to all creators in the comment moderation settings (pending review), as a trick to slow down. the phenomena of spam and identity abuse.
Having fixed the spam on YouTube, Google has launched an initiative of a completely different kind, with the aim of increasing the number of subscribers to the spin-off YouTube Premium. From the USA, in the past few hours, reports have been received of some users to whom Google has proposed a promotion, as a result of which they will earn a free month of subscription to YouTube Premium as a bonus for each user (new, that is, that has not expired a previous subscription to the platform), up to a maximum of 12 possible invitations, to which they can try three months of promotional subscription (0.99 dollars instead of 11.99 per month for 3 months9 to YouTube Premium.