On 20 May 2026, I made the final decision to turn off comments on all my videos on YouTube.
This was a decision I had been ruminating for a while, but the last straw that made me finally make it, was a comment on one of my Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic video, specifically about the companion character Juhani, that was held in my YouTube account's comment moderation dashboard. That comment bragged about not knowing Juhani as a companion because they had killed her ("LOL I killed her, so I don't know she is a companion"). Character hate comments like this are exactly part of why I had set all my comments on my YouTube channels to require my approval before publishing. Another major reason was to prevent comments that contain bigotry, such as racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. from being published on the comments section on my videos.
Moderating online content is already a thankless job, doubly so for immensely large platforms like YouTube. I do not get paid to moderate comments on my videos on YouTube.
My YouTube channel consists of video game footage I recorded myself that few or no other people have shared on YouTube. I do not add voice commentary to my videos because I share these footages for reference and archive purposes. The fact that the videos on my YouTube channels serve reference and archive purposes is also precisely why I have eventually decided to turn off comment sections on my videos — these types of videos do not really need comments. Despite having a YouTube channel, I never considered myself a YouTuber or a YouTube creator, and I have no desire to be one, so I have zero obligation to open my videos for audience engagement.
In addition, I am sick and tired of getting comments on my videos that asked questions that were already answered in my video descriptions, which led me to coin RTFVD, an initialism for "read the fucking video description", and write an entire article about it. Disabling the comment sections on my videos on YouTube means I no longer have to deal with such comments as well.