YouTube Shorts is making a change to address the growing issues around spam on the short-form video platform. The company says that starting on August 31st, links that appear in the Shorts comments section, Shorts descriptions, and the vertical live feed will no longer be clickable. This new policy is meant to be a preventative measure that makes it harder for scammers and spammers to mislead and scam users via links.
The company notes the change was necessary because the spammy links could drive users to dangerous content, like malware, phishing, or other scams.
The measure is fairly extreme, given YouTube already has existing systems and policies designed to detect and remove spammy links. However, instead of relying on this technology, it’s disabling these links altogether. The changes will roll out gradually, which means not all links will be disabled as of August 31st.
In addition, the company is removing the clickable social media icons from all desktop...
