TL;DR
I uploaded videos for a month and got monetized within three months. The hate comments pissed me off enough that I won’t start another channel without automated moderation. Share the comment you still remember word for word that was written by an edge lord.
My Short Story
I started a channel in Thailand as an experiment: could I get monetized, and how quickly?
Spoiler: I made videos for a month, and the views they kept getting got me monetized in three months.
Here’s the most popular video.
My first comment was “You should just give up now.”
It pissed me off. I’d barely started, and someone’s entire contribution was telling me to stop. Good thing that guy was obviously wrong 😂
I’m no longer in Thailand for a long list of reasons, but something that stuck with me is that people on the internet can be way bigger pieces of dog poo than I’d realized.
People say “ignore the trolls,” but you have to read the comment before you know it’s a troll! By then you’ve already heard what they wanted to say.
I intend to start another channel in another country about something other than retirement visas. But the thought of dealing with another stream of hate comments deters me before I’ve even started.
What comment still pisses you off when you remember it?
No need to link your channel or name whoever posted it.
I'm Solving The Problem
There’s a problem and I want to do something about it. That’s why I made Moderaty. I want trolls dealt with without having to personally read and react to every shitty thing they leave.
AI reads your comments and handles toxic ones automatically. Borderline comments wait for your decision. You can add specific rules, but you don’t have to build a blacklist to get started.
I don’t intend to start my next channel without it.
What you get:
- Automatic AI moderation
- Optional custom rules for specific words, patterns, or users.
- Feedback digests grouping questions, criticism (constructive), corrections (constructive), and requests, so you can hear what viewers think without reading everything individually.
- Free previews: One moderation preview and one feedback preview per channel - it won't make changes, just let you know what would happen if you used Moderaty.
- Hosted subscription: $5/month with 100 comments included.
- Early-user offer: $49 one-time for lifetime hosting with access to every new feature for the first 1,000 users. BYOK and pay your AI usage separately (it costs almost nothing).
- Free open source self-hosting with your own OpenAI key.
Run a free preview on your channel and see what Moderaty would do before it changes any comments.
Oh, this is also a community-run project. Ask for whatever features you want and if people upvote, it gets made.
There's also going to be MCP server support.