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.