Why Are Bots Leaving Pointless Comments on YouTube?

Recently, I’ve been spending more time making videos for my drone channel than writing for my blog.

Then I started noticing something strange.

Some of my videos were receiving comments that didn’t really have anything to do with what I was showing. The accounts often had names followed by numbers, unusual profile pictures, and no visible subscribers.

At first, I even replied to one of them, thinking it was a genuine viewer.

Nothing came back.

Not that everyone needs to reply, of course. But when similar comments kept appearing, I became suspicious.

Were these bots?

And if so, why would anyone bother leaving seemingly pointless comments on my little drone channel?

I started investigating.

What Are YouTube Comment Bots?

Comment bots are automated programs or accounts used to post messages on YouTube, sometimes across large numbers of unrelated videos.

They can leave generic compliments, unrelated observations, promotional messages, or comments designed to resemble ordinary viewer activity.

Not every suspicious comment is necessarily automated, though. Some spam operations involve real people, and genuine viewers sometimes leave generic comments too.

An unusual username or an empty-looking channel isn’t proof of anything by itself.

Who Creates and Operates Them?

There isn’t one particular group behind YouTube comment bots.

Documented operations include scammers, spammers, and people running coordinated promotional campaigns.

Some use automation to post messages at scale. Others operate networks of accounts that interact with one another to make their activity appear genuine.

Researchers have identified coordinated scam campaigns involving thousands of accounts.

But the people controlling these operations are often difficult to identify. A YouTube profile tells us very little about who is actually behind it.

Why Leave Comments That Say Almost Nothing?

This was the question that interested me most.

If a comment contains no advertisement, no suspicious link, and no obvious attempt to start a conversation, what is the point?

There are several possible explanations.

Attracting attention. Even a generic comment might encourage someone to click on the account’s profile, where promotional material or suspicious links could be waiting.

Creating the appearance of activity. An account with a history of comments may appear more established than one that has never interacted with anything. Accounts could potentially be prepared for later promotional use, although I couldn’t establish how commonly this happens on YouTube.

Testing automated posting. Operators might use harmless-looking comments to see whether accounts can post successfully without being filtered. This is plausible, but I haven’t found convincing evidence that it explains the comments on my videos.

Preparing for scams. Researchers have documented networks of YouTube accounts that create artificial conversations to promote cryptocurrency scams. However, those operations don’t necessarily explain isolated, irrelevant comments that never lead anywhere.

The frustrating answer is that an apparently pointless comment doesn’t reveal its purpose.

Are These Accounts Sold to Other People?

During my research, I encountered the suggestion that some accounts are made to appear active before being sold or repurposed for scams and promotional campaigns.

It’s an interesting possibility.

But I couldn’t verify that leaving generic comments on small YouTube channels is a widely established method of preparing accounts for resale.

The existence of automated spam and coordinated scam networks is well documented.

The specific business model behind a particular account often isn’t.

Those are two different things.

Why Target Small Channels?

I initially wondered why anyone would bother with my drone videos.

But automated posting doesn’t necessarily involve someone deliberately choosing my channel.

Software can potentially identify videos through searches, keywords, or other criteria and distribute comments across many channels.

A small channel might simply be one of many destinations.

That seems more plausible to me than imagining someone specifically interested in disrupting my drone videos.

Still, without knowing how those accounts operate, I can’t say why mine received the comments.

Should I Reply or Remove Them?

YouTube provides tools to report spam, remove comments, or hide accounts from a channel.

I also learned about the term shadow banning.

YouTube’s Hide user from channel feature makes an account’s comments invisible to other viewers on your channel without notifying that account.

For obvious spam, removing or reporting the comment seems more useful than starting a discussion.

But I wouldn’t want to remove every vague compliment simply because the account looks unfamiliar.

After all, not every viewer has something detailed to say.

And not everyone who leaves a comment returns to read the reply.

What Do We Actually Know?

We know that automated YouTube commenting exists.

We know that organized networks have been used to promote scams, manipulate discussions, and create artificial engagement.

We also know that YouTube actively removes enormous numbers of spam comments.

What we don’t know is whether every irrelevant comment comes from a bot, who operates a particular suspicious account, or what that account is ultimately intended to accomplish.

In my case, I don’t even know for certain whether the comments were automated.

I only know that something about them seemed unusual enough to make me investigate.

And I discovered that even a seemingly harmless YouTube comment can have a purpose that has nothing to do with the video underneath it.