YouTube added hyperlinks to the comment sections, and people are not pleased...
In July 2023, YouTube posted a video in which they introduced the experimental concept of hyperlinks. Seeing as it was just an experiment, people didn't worry about it too much at first. But now that hyperlinks are beginning to spread everywhere, people are concerned. And slightly annoyed.
What is a hyperlink?
A hyperlink is a clickable word, sentence or image that will redirect the user to a different page — both within the currently used app and outside.
In the case of YouTube's limited experiment, a hyperlink will appear when someone posts a comment that includes topics that the algorithm sees many related topics on YouTube to. It picks specific keywords from the comment and automatically turns them into a hyperlink.
When the hyperlink is clicked, it will redirect the user to YouTube's search page using said keywords, while the video continues to play in the miniplayer. This was introduced in order to "reduce friction" when trying to learn more about something, according to YouTube.
The issues with the hyperlinks
The issue is that the commenter has no influence over these hyperlinks — they cannot add or edit them.
In their video, YouTube stated that creators have the option of turning hyperlinks in their comment sections off, but so far there hasn't been any signs of that option in the settings anywhere. Or perhaps it is very well hidden — both cases are terrible.
Many people are, justifiably, concerned that the addition of hyperlinks are too similar to scammy chrome extensions or advertisements, where the user could get sent to a less favorable place.
Hyperlinks have begun to spread out more and more, making many people complain about them clogging up the comment section — it's spam, in a way. And that bothers people. After all, people head into the comment section to read the comments, not to go on fifty side quests to learn about things that may or may not even be true.
But what is worst of all, the hyperlinks are not even very accurate. So far, they only seem to really appear on mobile, and in most cases, they are seemingly completely random. Arbitrarily picked words or sentences are suddenly turned into hyperlinks and send the user to often unrelated search results.
It is certainly noticeable that the hyperlinks are still in their testing phase, but feedback to YouTube has been overwhelmingly negative in this case. People are concerned that YouTube does not take their feedback to heart and simply just goes to make adjustments and additions to the page that no one asked for or needed.
What's your take on the hyperlink situation on YouTube? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
