How to Block, Ban, or Hide a User From Commenting on YouTube

YouTube quietly retired the old "block this user from commenting" button years ago, which is why so many creators go looking for it and come up empty. The tool that replaced it is called Hide user from channel, and it works differently than most people expect: it does not ban anyone, it does not notify anyone, and it quietly makes a person's comments vanish for everyone but themselves. This guide covers exactly how to hide, block, or filter a commenter, what each option really does, and how to stop repeat offenders automatically with auto-moderation instead of chasing them by hand.

Short answer. YouTube no longer lets creators fully ban a commenter, but you can open any of their comments, click the three-dot menu, and choose "Hide user from channel." That hides their past and future comments across your entire channel, and they are never told. To catch repeat trolls automatically, tools like CommentShark run the same action on rules.

Hide, block, or filter: which one do you actually need?

Three different YouTube features get lumped together as "blocking," and picking the wrong one wastes your time. Hiding a user targets a specific person and hides everything they post on your channel. Blocked words target text, holding any comment that contains a phrase you dislike. Hold for review lets YouTube's AI (or a rule you set) park suspicious comments in a queue you approve. If your problem is one persistent troll, hide them. If it is a pattern of language (slurs, scam links, spam), blocked words plus held-for-review is the right lever.

How to hide a user from your YouTube channel (step by step)

• Sign in to YouTube or YouTube Studio with the account that owns your channel.
• Find a comment from the person you want to hide, on any of your videos or on your channel page.
• Click the three-dot More menu next to their comment.
• Choose Hide user from channel. Their comment disappears from public view right away.

There is also a settings route if you already know the person's channel. In YouTube Studio, go to Settings > Community, find the Hidden users box, paste their channel URL, and save. Reversing it is just as quick: return to the same Hidden users list, remove them, and save. One important detail creators miss: hiding is channel-wide. It hides the person's comments, live chat, and Community posts across every video, not only the one you clicked from.

Does a hidden user know they have been hidden?

No. Per YouTube's own help documentation, if you hide someone they are not notified. From their side everything looks completely normal: they can still type and post comments, and their own comment still appears when they are logged in, but nobody else on your channel ever sees it. Creators often call this a shadow-hide or ghost. It also applies retroactively, so past comments the person already left drop off your Comments page in Studio. The one gap worth knowing: YouTube says past activity from a hidden person's associated accounts is not automatically hidden, so a determined troll with a backup channel can slip through until you hide that account too.

Blocked words vs. held-for-review vs. hiding a user

• Hide user from channel: targets a person. Every comment they ever leave is hidden channel-wide, silently. Best for a specific troll or repeat spammer.
• Blocked words: targets text. Add words or phrases (comma-separated) in Studio and any comment containing one is held instead of published. Best for slurs, scam phrases, and link patterns.
• Hold for review (Basic or Strict): YouTube's AI holds likely spam, self-promotion, gibberish, or potentially inappropriate comments in a queue you approve. Strict holds a broader range than Basic.
• Hold all comments: nothing publishes until you personally approve it. The safest setting, and the most work.

Not sure what to put in your blocked words list? Our free YouTube blocked words list gives you a copy-paste starter set of slurs, scam phrases, and common spam patterns you can drop straight into Studio in under a minute. Blocked words is the highest-leverage setting most creators never fully configure.

Blocking on your personal Google account is not the same thing

There is a separate "block" option you reach from a viewer's channel page while browsing YouTube normally. That one is a viewer-side control: it stops that person from replying to your comments and hides their channel from your own view, but it does not reliably scrub their comments off your videos for everyone else. If your goal is to clean up what your audience sees on your channel, use Hide user from channel from Studio, not the personal-account block. They solve different problems, and confusing the two is why some creators think they blocked a troll while the troll is still visible to everyone else.

Doing this at scale: auto-moderation and rules

Hiding one troll a week by hand is fine. A growing channel gets waves: bot spam under a viral video, crypto pitches, fake-giveaway impersonators copying your name. That is where manual hiding falls apart, because the same person just switches accounts and the phrasing shifts faster than a fixed word list can keep up. This is the gap CommentShark was built to close: it watches your comment section 24/7 and runs the hide, delete, and hold actions on rules you define, so the junk is gone before you ever open Studio.

• Hide or delete spam and scam comments the moment they land, using AI plus your own blocked-words lists.
• Write rules by keyword, regex, or AI intent, then run each rule in an approval queue or fully autonomously.
• Catch the phrasing variations a fixed word list misses (crypto pitches, fake giveaways, impersonation) with AI intent detection.
• Keep an audit trail so you can always see exactly what was hidden and why, then reverse anything by hand.

The free plan is permanent (3 rules, 20 automated actions/mo), with AI moderation included, so you can point rules at your worst offenders without paying anything. Paid plans start from $19/month when you outgrow it, and every plan can pair with the free blocked-words list above for a belt-and-suspenders setup.

Frequently Asked Questions