YouTube has announced that it will disable the option of hiding subscriber count hoping the feature will make it harder for fake accounts to impersonate real ones.
The feature will be implemented from July 29, and YouTube channels will no longer be able to hide the number of subscribers they have.
According to YouTube, hiding subscriber counts is one of the ways spam accounts go unnoticed, allowing them to impersonate other channels when leaving comments.
However, this move will affect creators who find the option valuable, especially those who are starting and do not want to be judged by their subscriber count.
YouTube will roll out several updates to help protect viewers and creators from spam comments while making it harder for fake accounts to appear real.
Other updates will include strengthening auto-moderation capabilities which will give creators the option to increase strictness.
YouTube says it plans to increase detection settings for potentially inappropriate comments and spam.
Additionally, the company is also limiting the use of special characters in channel names, however, those with pre-existing special characters will not be affected.
It plans to reduce the character set creators choose from when updating their names. This is because spam accounts often copy the name of whoever they are pretending to be and then subtly change one or two characters.