This can be somewhat of a problem on YouTube, especially if you leave comments on a video where you’re somewhat “swimming against the stream” in terms of the general beliefs of the channel audience. YouTube does create something of an “echo chamber” effect, where content creators are largely preaching to the choir in terms of their audience.
Disagreements can also happen just because people are often split down the middle on certain core political/social issues. – you’ve always got two sides and on some issues, it’s difficult for either side to ever really come closer together. They’ll never be on the same page, so you’ll just find them going back and forward relentless on the comments on YouTube, arguing but not really arguing, because in large part they’re just talking past one another.
What can you do if you’re caught in this and are just a bit sick and tired of it, realizing it’s not going anywhere and that you’ll NEVER be on the same page with the person you’re arguing with in the comments? The simple option is to just ignore and stop responding after a while, but what if the other person is actually being obnoxious and/or abusive, and also replies to your comments on other videos as well, always looking to start an argument?
There is an option on YouTube to mute a user who is annoying you in the comments section, so that you won’t see any more of their comments.
- Go to Notifications in the top right corner
- Scroll down your latest comment replies to find the user
- Click on the 3 dots icon next to their comment
- Select “mute…..”
- Their comments will now no longer appear in your feed.
This is a great way of just getting rid of someone entirely from your YouTube life if you find them annoying/abusive/obnoxious, though it only works if you are logged in.
Let’s look closer how to do this
Using The Mute Feature On YouTube To Block A User’s Comments
To mute a user, you first of all just need to click the Notifications bell in the top right corner of the YouTube interface (make sure you’re logged in):
A feed of all recent replies to your comments should appear. You need to find the comment(s) from the annoying user, click on the 3 dots burger icon next to their reply, and then select Mute …….:
You also have the option to Hide this notification, which also deletes it from your feed.
From now on, whenever this user wants to post any more obnoxious/annoying/troll replies to your comments, they’re basically talking to themselves.
Their comments/replies:
- Won’t appear in your notifications feed
- You won’t get email alerts when they comment/respond
- You won’t even see any of their comments underneath videos, as long as logged into your account.
- To my knowledge, this also applies to ALL comments/replies they leave on the platform, even ones where they’re not interacting with you.
Basically, you won’t see their presence at all on the platform. You’ve deleted them out of your YouTube experience, which is unfortunately necessary with some of the trolls about.
Other people with other accounts, or users viewing comments without being logged in, WILL still see their comments and replies, but specifically for you, Muting a user removes them from your experience on the platform.
How To Ban A User From A Channel (Channel Owners)
If you’re actually a content creator uploading your own videos, and you’re getting tired of a particular troublemaker in the comments section of all your videos, you can also Mute/Ban them entirely from your channel, hiding all their comments to all users on any of the videos you publish.
This is restricted only to channel owners though, with published videos – standard users who have an account but no published videos can’t do this. You need to do it from the comments section of one of your own videos, where a toxic comment has been posted.
You need first of all load up the video in question from your library – you can find it quicker by loading up Your Videos from the left hand sidebar of YouTube when logged in:
You then need to find the comment in question, click on the 3 dots icon next to it, and then click Hide User From Channel:
From that point on, that user is basically talking to themselves with ANY comment they publish on ANY of your videos. They’re basically invisible not just to you, but to all users and commenters on your channel. Their comments won’t show up on any of your videos.
This is an especially satisfying way to deal with obnoxious, repetitive trolls, especially if they don’t even figure out they’ve been muted, and keep tapping away at their keyboards, posting comments that no one ever sees. Let the trolls waste their energy – I’m not fond of a lot of things YouTube does, but I do like this feature.
