Video: How to Beat YouTube Cyberbullying

Hi, I’m Mike Essex, the Online Marketing Manager at Koozai. Today I’m going to walk you through how to deal with harassment and bullying on YouTube.

Now YouTube is actually the second biggest social network in the world. However, it’s not really very social, which is why we don’t tend to class it as one, although it does embody many of the same characteristics. People can come on and leave comments and engage with each other. The problem is that the majority of those comments tend to be negative, and therefore, to a degree, that can get out of hand and turn into bullying.

One of the first things that you should look at, in order to prepare yourself for this kind of bullying, is the number of people who viewed your video. Now, obviously, if the number is high, even if you are getting negative comments, it indicates that actually people are coming along and looking at your content and enjoying it. Likewise, the like and dislike band here, if it’s more green than red, that means more people like your video than dislike it. So regardless of what these comments may say, you know that a lot of people tend to like it.

Now to flip that around, Cher Lloyd’s single “Swagger Jagger” actually has far more dislikes than likes, but she still managed to get a UK number one single. So despite what YouTube may be telling you, it’s not always the same as public opinion or success.

We’ve also got the comments themselves. Now if a comment is just something that’s a little bit negative but not really offensive, I tend to leave it on there. If someone says, “You suck,” then I’m not going to delete that because it’s not a major issue. But if someone says something that has a lot of bad language or is really offensive or makes the person doing the video feel bad, then I will delete it. Now, I did wonder if deleting that would cause the person to come back and leave more messages or we’d incur more negative messages, but that didn’t seem to be the effect.

So what you need to do is click this arrow on the right-hand side and pick “Block User,” and they won’t be allowed to comment on your stuff anymore. If they come back as another user, obviously, you can just repeat the process.

Another thing to remember is that other people are watching out for you in terms of other people who use YouTube and also the YouTube staff. You may find that comments get removed on their own, so they’ll moderate your comment here.

Also, people are going to leave good comments from time to time. It does happen. They can be “thumbed up,” like that. If a good comment tends to have a lot of thumbs up, that’s always useful. A video that we did had some negative comments, but the first person who came along and left a positive comment actually had far more “thumbs up” than a lot of the other comments combined. So that indicated to us that, okay, people were coming on and leaving negative comments, but the general consensus was that the content is good.

Be sure to factor the kind of numbers and stats that you’re getting in to help yourself feel better about the video even if you are getting negative comments. Remember, as well, that YouTube is one of those places where it just tends to attract some people who are always going to be negative. Often, if you click on the user name of these negative comments, you’ll see that they have left negative comments everywhere.

I hope that helps. If you are being bullied on YouTube, you can obviously report that to YouTube themselves. If it’s really serious, like death threats or constant abuse, you can report that to the police as well. You are not alone, and I hope that helps.

For more information on what we do at Koozai, visit Koozai.com or subscribe to us from any of the profiles at the bottom. Thanks for watching.