YouTube Shorts is disabling clicks for comment links in effort to fight spam

You may be thinking of YouTube's "increase strictness" feature, which helps flag spammy comments so creators can delete them more easily. This new policy is different: it doesn't allow the video creators to post links in comments or descriptions. That's much more restrictive.

In any case, YouTube should allow links in comments as long as they're not spammy. YouTube used to redirect external links to a page that said, "Are you sure you want to leave YouTube?"[0] This seems like a reasonable compromise to help inexperienced users while still allowing external links.

Instagram also forbids links,[1][2] which is bad for the open web.[3] This policy change by YouTube looks like more of the same: walled gardens and disempowered users. Cross-domain links are what make the Web the World Wide Web.

[0] https://www.thomasvanderberg.nl/blog/diving-into-userscripts...

[1] https://stonecreate.com/the-reason-instagram-doesnt-allow-li...

[2] https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/102761/why-instagram-...

[3] https://www.anildash.com/2019/12/10/link-in-bio-is-how-they-...

Direct link to the policy: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9054257?hl=en

Related post with article from The Verge: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37079331

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/10/23827231/youtube-shorts-c...