I don’t agree at all. This was true a decade ago, but today YouTube comments are almost all positive, and you’ll often get some really insightful ones too.
Channels can moderate their comments too. So channels run by thoughtful, community-oriented people will zap trash comments. The music production sphere is especially good.
Maybe I’m just really lucky, but I feel like almost all the channels I watch have supportive, normal comments at the top. Especially on music related videos. Maybe that’s just moderation, but I feel like it could just be self-selection.
> but today YouTube comments are almost all positive
Yeah, exactly. I believe this is the main reason the quality is so bad. Comments with any negative language get pushed down, creating an empty (sometimes toxic), artificial positive atmosphere.
To be fair, Youtube isn't about the comments and the discussion. The comments are sort of there just to give feedback to the creators and serve as a signal to the YouTube algorithm.
Their algorithm has a toxic positivity problem where they weight positivity so much the most moronic, saccharine crap sits at the top and you'd be hard pressed to distinguish the comments from LLM slop.
I went to see if I had any replies to a comment I left on a video for the first time today and it's really hidden to get back to them if you don't remember the exact video. I wonder if it's purposeful friction or just not a priority.
If you watch Shorts, maybe. If you watch normal videos, the comments are pretty much an afterthought.
But even shorts, assuming they're like reels/stories, the "social" aspect is very minimal compared with, say, Facebook posts back in the day, where your friends would see and comment and reply to each other.
The Algorithm doesn't really want that anymore; it wants to feed you content from arbitrary people to keep you passively engaged, not to foster conversation/active engagement.
But if the 99% garbage is the price of the emerging of channels like 3B1B, I think it's still a pretty good deal.