The Litter Tray

Feature

YouTube Studio: Held

The tray collects YouTube-held comments that the API makes available, including likely-spam items, in its Studio tab.

It keeps that collection separate from proposals waiting for your approval and confirmed tray holds.

An illustration of the held tabs. This tray's own holds and YouTube's held queue stay on separate lists.

Outcomes

What you can do with it

YouTube-held comments

The tray collects YouTube-held comments that the API makes available, including likely-spam items, in its Studio tab. It keeps that collection separate from proposals waiting for your approval and confirmed tray holds.

Know who held it

Distinguish tray-owned holds from YouTube or other moderation before acting.

Use the available action

Publish directly, or confirm Delete comment or Delete and ban user for a top-level item.

The path

How it works

  1. YouTube-held comments

    It reads the held-for-review and likely-spam items YouTube returns.

  2. Open YouTube Studio: Held

    Read the source, queue tag, and whether the tray held it; replies are context only.

  3. Choose the action

    Publish directly, or confirm Delete comment or Delete and ban user.

  4. The result is recorded

    The applicable safety checks run before the change, then the result is recorded.

Mike, the founder, in his own uncropped photo

Built by a creator, for his own channel first

I built the moderator my own channel needed.

Hey friends, I'm Mike. My channel grew to 50,000 subscribers, and the comments grew well past 50,000 with it. No one creator can read every comment at that size. I really valued the community that built up around my channel, but the volume and intensity of comments was overwhelming.

When the trolls started taking over the time I wanted to spend with the lovely community around my channel, I dusted off the toolkit and built The Litter Tray around the rules and restraint I wanted near my own audience. I want creators to be able to get set up in seconds, spend a few minutes setting the rules that matter to them, and make persistent trolls much harder to miss, so they can get back to making videos.

Mike