Photo by Alexander Shatov / Unsplash
YouTube continues to look for ways to make Shorts more engaging and fun. And one of its latest experiments is letting viewers use comments from other videos as inspiration for their own Shorts. This experiment, called “viewer-created Shorts featuring comments,” is only available to a small group of users on Android and iOS devices. It works like this: when a viewer watches a video, they can select any comment from that video and use it as a starting point for their own Short. They can then edit and add effects to their Short as usual. The original creator of the video and the author of the comment will not be notified when this happens, but the viewer who made the Short can find it on their channel page and in the Shorts feed.
However, not everyone may want their comments to be used for Shorts. And that’s why YouTube gives creators the option to disable comments on their videos. This way, they can prevent viewers from making Shorts out of their comments. YouTube says this is just an experiment, and it may not roll out to everyone. The company often tests new features without announcing them, so this one could be a sign of something bigger to come.