Looking to take control of your digital history? CommentCleanser for YouTube lets you efficiently delete old YouTube comments from Google's MyActivity. Prioritize the removal of older comments, ensuring a leaner digital footprint and a conscious cleanup of your online history.
The script has been designed for users who have a significant number of YouTube comments and wish to delete them in bulk from Google's MyActivity page. By leveraging JavaScript, it provides a means to automate the process of deleting individual comments, offering the user control over how many comments to delete at once.
In today's rapidly changing social landscape, the words and sentiments we once casually expressed can come back to haunt us. What might have been a mere fleeting thought or a commonly held belief a few years ago, can now be viewed as socially unacceptable, casting shadows over one's character. The danger isn't just virtual; these old comments can pose genuine threats to employment opportunities, social standing, and overall well-being. The digital footprint we've left over the years is more than just a record; it's an open book, judged by today's standards, with real consequences in our day-to-day lives.
The script has been tested on 2023-09-02 and found compatible with the following browsers:
- Edge version 116.0.1938.62 (Official build) (64-bit)
- Chrome version 116.0.5845.141 (Official Build) (64-bit)
- Firefox version 117.0 (64-bit)
- Selective Deletion: You can choose to delete a specific number of comments or all of them.
- Bottom-Up Approach: Deletes comments starting from the oldest.
- Highlight Before Deletion: For clarity, the script highlights a comment right before deletion.
- User Control: You have the choice to specify the exact number of comments you wish to delete or can decide to delete all comments. The script will prompt you at each step.
- Navigate to MyActivity YouTube Comments page. Use exactly this link, as it will ensure that the script is able to find the comments.
- Open your browser's developer console.
- Copy-paste the provided script.
- Follow the on-screen prompts to execute deletions.
If you wish to halt the script:
- Click 'cancel' when prompted.
- Or simply close the browser tab.
However, always be cautious: once a comment is deleted, it is irreversible.
If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improvement, please report them as a comment to the gist.
This project is licensed under the MIT License.
Christian Prior-Mamulyan
The script can be found at this gist.
Note: Please use this script responsibly and understand that any deletion is permanent.
In the shadowy basement of digital history, balloons symbolizing long-forgotten YouTube comments drift aimlessly. As rays of sunlight try to pierce through the solitary window, hinting at the possibility of a cleaner digital slate, a watchful teddy bear stands guard. Yet, lurking in the dark corners, unseen entities await, ready to pounce upon any overlooked comment, emphasizing the peril of neglecting our online past.
Learned today:
These "interactions" (too technical of a term for 'branding') are accessible in "My Activity" for management / deletion:
I will work through all of them (and on all major browsers), and decide which one to put in scope.
For those in scope of this script I will then make a decision how "comfortable" they may be deleted.
There are more, here some of the most common interactions on YouTube and what they are (listing them here for my future reference):
Likes and Dislikes: These are straightforward metrics that allow viewers to express whether they liked or disliked a video.
Comments: When users leave comments on a video, they are interacting with the content and potentially with other members of the community.
Shares: If a viewer shares a video on social media or other platforms, it's considered an interaction.
Subscriptions: Gaining a subscriber from a video means the viewer liked the content enough to want more from the channel.
Clicking on Cards and End Screens: Creators can add cards and end screens to their videos to promote other content, merchandise, websites, etc. When viewers click on these, it's another form of interaction.
Video Playback: Starting a video, pausing, rewinding, or adjusting the playback speed can also be considered as interactions.
Saves to Playlists: When a viewer adds a video to one of their playlists, including the "Watch Later" playlist.
Bell Notifications: Clicking the bell icon to get notified about new content from a channel.
Super Chat and Super Stickers: These are paid interactions available during live streams where viewers can pay money to highlight their messages.
Community Posts: Interacting with polls, images, or text updates that a creator posts on the "Community" tab of their channel.
There are also redirects happening when a new login is performed, &pli=1 appears at the end of the URL. Needs investigation; there might be more URL redirects going on.
Already have a bunch of "promotional material" where I need to be sure I reflect name changes, and it shall "fit the story".
Deleting subscriptions might remain a (documented) out-of-scope feature. Have the gut feeling that the requirement to "skip" certain entries will be a must-have feature: As of now if a "CommentCleanser" nuked all my beloved channels I curated over more than a decade that would be major "breach of contract". ;)
And in parallel I wrote me a "comment writer", because I want controlled comments for a screencast-video. Used RPA, specifically UiPath Studio for that task. Seems that YouTube does think 100 comments per day are enough and discards the rest ;)