Ham-fisted is right. This is going to kill family vloggers, or even just vloggers who happen to have a family in the background. YouTube is a lot less engaging when you don’t feel like you can interact with the creators or other viewers. I know everyone trots our the “YouTube comments are a toxic cesspool and provide no value” trope, but almost every video I watch on YT 1) has a kid in it somewhere, 2) has worthwhile and positive comments.
It’s like the joke about nuking your house from orbit because you saw a spider. Personally I’m far more concerned about the creepy videos aimed at kids than I am about pedos leaving hobo signs in the comments. As another commenter said, they’ll just move to a separate site to link to videos. You can’t stop them from watching videos and sharing them with other people unless you shut the site down completely.
Do we know if that's the final solution? To me it seems more like a short term plug solution until they can train specialized models and adapt their moderation. I see no signs that this is the final long term solution to the problem.
I'm sure they're just as aware as we are that disabling comments kills the community and engagement around many channels; they just needed a way to stave off the controversy for a little while. It's a blunt solution but as a temporary solution it seems fine as long as they can roll out a better solution before content creators are irrevocably hurt.
It’s like the joke about nuking your house from orbit because you saw a spider. Personally I’m far more concerned about the creepy videos aimed at kids than I am about pedos leaving hobo signs in the comments. As another commenter said, they’ll just move to a separate site to link to videos. You can’t stop them from watching videos and sharing them with other people unless you shut the site down completely.