How to Stop Spam Comments on YouTube: Filters, Settings and AI Moderation

Every growing YouTube channel hits the same wall: scam bots copying your profile picture, "telegram me" replies under every top comment, and crypto spam within minutes of upload. Your real viewers notice, and some of them fall for it.

Here's how to stop most of it with YouTube's own tools, and how to automate the rest.

1. Turn on YouTube Studio's automated filters

Open YouTube Studio → Settings → Community → Automated filters:

Blocked words: comments containing these words are held for review instead of published. Add common scam phrases, competitor links and impersonation tricks ("whatsapp", "telegram", your name with a typo).
Block links: holds comments containing URLs or hashtags for review. Most scams need a link or a handle to work.
Hide users: add known spam accounts so their comments are hidden from your channel.

Then, under Settings → Community → Defaults, choose how strictly YouTube should hold potentially inappropriate comments for review. Increased strictness catches more, but also holds more legitimate comments.

2. Review held comments regularly

Held comments live in YouTube Studio → Comments → Held for review. Approve the real ones, remove the rest. If you skip this, genuine questions sit unanswered for days.

3. Make spam less effective

Pin a comment with your official links, so viewers know where the real ones are.
Heart and reply to real viewers early. Active creator replies push genuine conversation above the spam.
Add moderators if your channel is large: they can remove comments and hide users for you.

Where YouTube's filters fall short

Blocked words only match what you type, and scammers change wording constantly. Studio is also per channel: if you run several channels, or also manage Instagram and Facebook, you're doing the same work in multiple places.

4. Automate moderation with AI

AutoPoster AI's Social Inbox brings comments from your YouTube channels, and from Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon, into one inbox. AI reads each comment and classifies it as question, praise, neutral, spam, troll or abuse.

Spam, trolls and abuse are removed from public view automatically when the AI is confident.
Low-confidence comments go to a Flagged tab for a human, never auto-removed.
Questions are tagged, so you can answer real viewers first, manually, with saved replies, or with AI replies from your own knowledge base.
Restore with one click if the AI got something wrong.

Comments on videos and Shorts you publish with AutoPoster AI sync from the last 30 days. Moderation costs 1 AI credit per 25 comments checked, and the inbox is included in the Brand and Business plans. Learn more about AI comment moderation →

Quick checklist

Turn on Block links and add 20–30 blocked words.
Set the hold-for-review strictness that fits your channel size.
Pin a comment with your official links.
Check Held for review at least daily, or let AI moderation do it across all your channels.