An Experiment With YouTube Comments…

I wonder if this will hurt "engagement" metrics with YouTube, since commenting is one of the ways creators usually drive engagement and get their videos in more of the suggested feeds

YouTube needs to give us a way to disable shorts. I don’t want to see them, but they always end up taking away hours of my time.

For years I’ve been a student and thus banned from becoming a Bonnie Bee. I’m finally in a financially stable place outside of school and so I’m so happy to be a Bonnie Bee.

I love being part of exclusive content.

Blue ticks are out, being allowed to comment on CGP Grey videos is in as the internets new status symbol

God, I hate those bots. So glad you’re doing something about it!

I fear putting the comments section behind barriers of entry that require you to already love and support CGP Grey (or at least care about enough to click onto a subreddit) is going to come at the huge cost of creating artificial environments where you will no longer recieve feedback from more "casual viewers" or "people who dislike your content but have something productive to say about it." To me this is ripe grounds for creating an echo chamber of false positivity- fundamentally altering the function of the comments section as a whole and isn't worth it just to get rid of scambots or sexbots. Also the way you frame this pivot in your Patreon post focuses more on gaining more monetary support as the primary goal with the sexbot/chatbot deterrent almost as secondary. But it is the opposite for the Youtube video itself. I understand and would be happy to support your videos as you are one of my favorite Youtubers, but not empasizing the obvious monetary gains and even framing it as, "a better way to get rid of sexbots and chatbots" (especially given my critisms with the experiment) feels irresponsible at best and fraudulant at worst.

I love that you are doing this. Thank you! I will try to comment and engage on every video you make from now on, to help with that "engagement" score YouTube likes so much.

Feels awkward since my username was already “bee” before this, but this finally encouraged me to join. What Grey said about YouTube favoring shorts at the cost of long-term videos really hit home with me. I guess YouTube was trying to rival tiktok with their mindset behind as they offered up to a 10,000 dollar bonus depending on how well it did. As such, minimal effort, low quality content that can be pushed easily for views gets shown to viewers. Meanwhile, high quality, high effort content often suffers at the cost of it and hardly sees anywhere near as much SEO. It’s frustrating, but it’s the nature of things I suppose. Still, it’s amusing to me how I’ve seen certain content creators upload a short, wait a couple months, then upload it again and gets hundreds of thousands of views.

But how will I find out if there’s hot singles in my area now 😭

I don't like this grey.....

Sounds like a lot of work. Hope to see it work out.

been a fan of yours for a long time and am happy to see every one of your uploads

Happy to support your efforts! Only recently found you but your Tiffany pain struck me.

Just checking if I can still comment after my patreon expired

I thought that as someone who is both a Patreon member and someone who doesn't use Reddit, I should provide a voice of dissent. Grey is more qualified than I to speak to the business ramifications. I speak to the unfair effects for freezing out on the actual medium anyone who can't pay for the membership. I'd much rather we had an experiment where bonnie bees were urged to aggressively report the spam comments, rather than ignore them. I would also rather deal with any leftover spam than freeze out such a huge fraction of our membership. To me, such a significant difference between the have-bees and have-not-bees, is counter to the ethics of Grey's community.

I am now a proud Bonnie bee! 🎉🎉🎉

This is going to be an interesting experiment indeed. 🐝 I wish YouTube weren't such a seemingly effective target for scammers.

I've been here a while and I am happy to support you and do what I can to make your process easier

I have a question, If we join for 1 month and then choose to not renew, we will no longer be able to comment or will we still be "verified humans"