Even though it is full of gems, one of the most well-known platform's stars, MrBeast, has recently revealed that he despises the way the comment section is structured on YouTube.
The American content creator, who managed to grow his own channel to the point that he even got to overshadow PewDiePie himself, was asked on a recent podcast what he would do if he were to take over YouTube for a year.
While he was overall satisfied with the way the platform works, he said he has a problem with how the top comments in every YouTube video are either meaningless spam or bots trying to scam users.
The YouTuber then mentioned Reddit which, in his opinion, does a much better job with that feature, as it actually allows users to leave behind constructive comments.
YouTube's promoted comment environment has gotten so awful for MrBeast that he frequently skips reading what viewers are saying about his videos, preferring to check out the feedback on other places, such as the aforementioned Reddit and Twitter.
Despite that, the platform remains immensely popular. As of June 2022, more than 500 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. This equates to roughly 30,000 hours of new content every hour.
The amount of content on YouTube has increased dramatically as consumers’ appetite for online video has grown. In fact, the number of video content hours uploaded every 60 seconds grew by around 40 percent between 2014 and 2020.
Online video is one of the most popular digital activities worldwide, with 27 percent of internet users watching more than 10 hours of clips on a weekly basis.
In 2020, it is estimated that YouTube counted more than 2.1 billion users across the globe, resulting in more than one billion hours of video being watched every day. In 2021, the video platform was one of the leading media and entertainment brands, with a brand value of more than 47 billion U.S. dollars.
And while TikTok has rocketed in popularity since its North American debut several years ago, YouTube tops the current online landscape even among younger generations.
A new survey by the Pew Research Center revealed that it is used by 95% of teens. (TikTok is next on the list of platforms that were asked about in this survey (67%), followed by Instagram and Snapchat, which are both used by about six-in-ten teens.)
As anthropologist Krystal D'Costa said, online comments help us understand where we fall in the range of perspectives about a particular view. And the thing with the internet is that we don't have to engage. If we see something we don't like, we can choose to "walk away."