That time a YouTuber told me to 'just ignore the bots' and my channel tanked

I was starting a small channel about local politics in Austin Texas and getting a ton of bot comments spamming links. A bigger creator in the space told me to just ignore them they'd go away. I followed that advice for 2 months straight and it wrecked my engagement numbers. YouTube's algorithm saw all that dead activity and throttled my reach hard. I went from 2k views per video to barely scraping 200. Turns out those bots were triggering shadowban flags because of high unnatural comment volume. I had to manually report and delete hundreds of comments and submit a reinstatement appeal to get back in good standing. Has anyone else been given bad advice about dealing with platform harassment that backfired?

2 comments

2 Comments

stellawood18d ago

2 months! i cant believe you just let that slide for two whole months. reading this gave me anxiety just thinking about my own comment sections. i had a different problem with a smaller sub about diy projects where bots kept posting links to "free home improvement guides" that were just scams. i ignored them for maybe a week and my views dropped by like half. had to go scorched earth with automod filters and manual bans. you are way more patient than me.

allen.cole18d ago

dude this is such a classic case of "well meaning advice from someone who doesnt actually know what theyre talking about" lol. it happens everywhere not just online. like people will tell you to just ignore a problem and itll fix itself but in reality ignoring stuff just makes it pile up until its way worse. your youtube situation is a perfect example of that. same thing happens with junk mail or spam calls if you ignore em they just keep coming and mess with your life more. gotta hit it head on early before it snowballs.