I wonder if this will hurt "engagement" metrics with UKposts, since commenting is one of the ways creators usually drive engagement and get their videos in more of the suggested feeds

UKposts needs to give us a way to disable shorts. I don’t want to see them, but they always end up taking away hours of my time.

I love being part of exclusive content.

For years I’ve been a student and thus banned from becoming a Bonnie Bee. I’m finally in a financially stable place outside of school and so I’m so happy to be a Bonnie Bee.

Blue ticks are out, being allowed to comment on CGP Grey videos is in as the internets new status symbol

God, I hate those bots. So glad you’re doing something about it!

I love that you are doing this. Thank you! I will try to comment and engage on every video you make from now on, to help with that "engagement" score UKposts likes so much.

I fear putting the comments section behind barriers of entry that require you to already love and support CGP Grey (or at least care about enough to click onto a subreddit) is going to come at the huge cost of creating artificial environments where you will no longer recieve feedback from more "casual viewers" or "people who dislike your content but have something productive to say about it." To me this is ripe grounds for creating an echo chamber of false positivity- fundamentally altering the function of the comments section as a whole and isn't worth it just to get rid of scambots or sexbots. Also the way you frame this pivot in your Patreon post focuses more on gaining more monetary support as the primary goal with the sexbot/chatbot deterrent almost as secondary. But it is the opposite for the UKposts video itself. I understand and would be happy to support your videos as you are one of my favorite UKpostsrs, but not empasizing the obvious monetary gains and even framing it as, "a better way to get rid of sexbots and chatbots" (especially given my critisms with the experiment) feels irresponsible at best and fraudulant at worst.

Sounds like a lot of work. Hope to see it work out.

Feels awkward since my username was already “bee” before this, but this finally encouraged me to join. What Grey said about UKposts favoring shorts at the cost of long-term videos really hit home with me. I guess UKposts was trying to rival tiktok with their mindset behind as they offered up to a 10,000 dollar bonus depending on how well it did. As such, minimal effort, low quality content that can be pushed easily for views gets shown to viewers. Meanwhile, high quality, high effort content often suffers at the cost of it and hardly sees anywhere near as much SEO. It’s frustrating, but it’s the nature of things I suppose. Still, it’s amusing to me how I’ve seen certain content creators upload a short, wait a couple months, then upload it again and gets hundreds of thousands of views.

Happy to support your efforts! Only recently found you but your Tiffany pain struck me.

been a fan of yours for a long time and am happy to see every one of your uploads

I don't like this grey.....

But how will I find out if there’s hot singles in my area now 😭

I am now a proud Bonnie bee! 🎉🎉🎉

Understandable idea, keep us posted on how it works over time!

Specifically got a Patreon since I love your content. Keep it up!

I have a question, If we join for 1 month and then choose to not renew, we will no longer be able to comment or will we still be "verified humans"

Just commenting here to try to boost your algorithm and because I've been pre-approved, and to try to fight any of the hurt of the engagement that some others are speculating about, which I also wondered about.

I've been here a while and I am happy to support you and do what I can to make your process easier

I can't wait for the Cortex episode about this 😂

This is going to be an interesting experiment indeed. 🐝 I wish UKposts weren't such a seemingly effective target for scammers.

Kinda sucks that UKposts forces creator to limit people from commenting, thus hurting both the creator and they community

Well Grey I’m happy to support you. One of only two channels I do. Keep up the heart content

Interesting to see how this experiment plays out. Hopefully we'll get a followup video in a year or so

Just checking if I can still comment after my patreon expired

I thought that as someone who is both a Patreon member and someone who doesn't use Reddit, I should provide a voice of dissent. Grey is more qualified than I to speak to the business ramifications. I speak to the unfair effects for freezing out on the actual medium anyone who can't pay for the membership. I'd much rather we had an experiment where bonnie bees were urged to aggressively report the spam comments, rather than ignore them. I would *also* rather deal with any leftover spam than freeze out such a huge fraction of our membership. To me, such a significant difference between the have-bees and have-not-bees, is counter to the ethics of Grey's community.

Grey, thank you for the years of educational content.

It's an honor to get to support you making these animated explainers. Thank you very much!

Idk man I've seen the comments on much more viral video channels and the bots aren't that bad. Maybe it's noticeable on the creator end, but I hardly see anything. Limiting comments to just "Bonnie Bees" sounds like a bad idea and would come across as grifting money from people for a problem that doesn't really exist.

I'm not really sure how this experiment works, but I signed up and am commenting to support one of my favorite channels. Good luck!

So you won't be able to comment anymore unless you pay?

Interesting experiment, hopeful that it helps without hurting engagement “too” much but oh boy you’re not joking about the admin nightmare. Looking forward to it and crossed fingers 🤞 but oh boy good luck!

Signed up! Thanks for the long form content!

I've heard enough of Grey's opinion of email discussed on Cortex to be amazed by a signup process which involves "now send me a message", but I guess that's what needs to happen when you fight the UKposts juggernaut.

Grey, I'm glad you are experimenting with ways to make the channel work rather than hanging it all up. I'm all for long form content. Heck, I became a Bonnie Bee when you live streamed playing Minecraft. Can't get much more long form than that!

Finally not a student. Now a bee

Love the content Grey!!!

I wasn't in a financially stable place until like 8 months ago, but ! I signed up then because I remember I was a student when the first patreon video came out and I was like "damn that's some good moral values from one of my favorite youtubers, I will remember." and so I subbed at my first opportunity remembering that. Thanks for being a good one Grey!

I can't believe UKposts doesn't have an option for that.

I really hope this works as a method for you as I know comments help get videos seen and also I do love reading comments from your followers / patreons.

Grey, I've been here from the early days. Through the land of Hello Internet into the void of Cortext, and now am a happy Bonnie Bee. You're content is so worth it. Keep up the good work.

It's an interesting experiment for sure. Fingers crossed it works out for you.

Oh man I totally get the point of this. But it does feel a bit bad, like "banning the poor from conversation", "inhibiting free spech" yada yada If the real conversation is happening on reddit anyways, why not lock the comments here completely? I dunno I hope it works out, or rather, I hope youtube fucking fixes their own problem

Very proud to be able to contribute to one of my favorite all-time creators. Thank you for being you.

Good luck with this experiment

Ok, I joined. I use these videos in my classroom so I don't mind helping you out but I definitely cannot afford to do this on every channel! You Tube needs to do something like this to end the bot infestation.

Been supporting you for a long time and See no reason to stop now. For those that can't afford to. DON'T you take care of you first.

Where I stand in the sea of a thousand comments, I do not believe that I would reasonably bee able to add to the conversation in a way that a dozen others hadn't already. However, I also believe in the widespread dissemination of educational content regardless and so a bee I am.

My sympathies go out to you and your team for having to go through this

See, here's the thing with UKposts Shorts. UKposts is scared of TikTok, so they're pushing the shorts. What they should be is REJOICING in TikTok, because ... when someone leaves UKposts for TikTok, the quality of both platforms increases.

Happy to support your content.

Where big fish swim parasites are sure to be found

I look to forward to seeing how this plays out

so it wasn't april fools

I wonder how this might hurt engagement/spread of videos. Only time (and statistics) will tell!

Keep up the good work!

Hope you are doing well, and il watch your videoes all day waiting for the "stories for another time"... WHEN WHEN? I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THE EU STORY FOR 10 YEARS!

I gladly and happily support the amazing work you and your team are doing. Plowing though all that data and information. Please keep up the fine work.

I just signed up. I realized I could also rack up some play points with the purchase and I hope they'll keep coming every month. As for the shorts I do my best to avoid them. I basically never open YT Home page and hang out in my subscriptions.

I'm glad we're sponsored you enough so that you never have to take another skillshare sponsorship. (I hate skillshare for being little more than a glorified UKposts clone but with a premium.)

4$ a month seems a bit steep if all you want is to moderate chat. 1$/month might get you more signups of your "real" subscribers. EDIT: it's apparently 3$/month on UKposts and 4$ on Patreon

Good luck with the admin work!

I haven't really seen any bots in the youtube comment section.

Thanks for your effort!

As someone in a country with an actually healthy educational system I am both a college student and can afford this with my part-time money so you can't stop me Grey take my money!

As soon as I finally got a stable income, supporting on Patreon was one of the first things I did. I don't place a very high value on my ability to comment on things, I'm just glad I can support your work directly! Best of luck sorting through all of us though. It sounds like a monumental task!

University student here. It is a bit annoying/inconvenient having to navigate away from the site just to leave a comment but I understand. It'll be interesting to see where this goes

Where is the subreddit for this video?

Short comment. Thanks for all your content over the years. I joined to say this.

"Hello Internet" 😞

Great idea!

Hopefully this will help! I should have started the support a long time ago anyway :D

Good thing you posted this, I forgot my sub had been canceled. fixed :)

Is this only one time for this video and all others will be automatically approved? Otherwise, the amount of work needed to approve all legitimate comments for every video would probably eclipse the amount required to ban / silence the bot accounts.

only patreon? but I'm a youtube bonnie bee member for a year already.... don't want to lose the bee icon and emotes

wohoo, I will put the extra effort to raise the engagement

Can't you automate it with some UI testing framework like RobotFramework?

I'm not happy about the split of bees versus non-bees but I wanted to support the Channel for years now and take this as the opportunity to do so. It's the best content I could dream of AND presented with such a great sense of humor, I'm blasted after every single video.... thank you so much for all your hard work!!!

I look forward to seeing how this works!

Question. I can't see how anyone other than myself would be able to verify the connection between me and the completely different usernames I have on Patreon, UKposts and Discord. What happens then? Is there a step I'd have to take to connect my UKposts account to my Patreon as verification? Also, would I have to upgrade my Patreon subscription to the Bonnie Bee tier? I wouldn't want to do that because Ad-block absolution so perfectly encapsulates what I'm subscribed for.

Instead of bots, let there be bees! 🐝

Hooray bees!

Only now for just 2.99$ a month you too can have a fresh new bestagon honeycomb next to your name. Should've done this sooner but oh well. I'm curious to see the spike in memberships on the analytics dashboard, but that's probably confidential info youtube wouldn't want you to post. I'm sure there's a nice bump though.

Whatever works 🤷🏻‍♀️

Leaving a comment so I can get access :P Makes sense why you're doing this! Fully support you.

i dont comment a lot so hope it keeps it easier

Question, is This only for patron, or will you be allowing members to post as well?

I have been watching you since my Uni days Grey! Now that I have some disposable income, might as well support my favorite content creator. Thank you for existing

Joined just for this haha

This may become the only UKposts channel where I actually read the comments.

I’ve enjoyed your content for sooooo looooong. Of course I’ll be your Bonnie Bee 🐝

Whoever designed the sex bot needs a raise

Thanks!

Love your videos!

How did I miss this?

Ahhhhh, the Bee Privilege! I already feel very sophisticated and important. 😅

Is it still like this?

good luck grey !

It's up to us, the Bonnie bees, to drive up the engagement metrics now.