 Well, good morning all. This is Patricia and I am traveling for history. Happy New Year, by the way. I hope that January 2024 has been your best January yet and may the rest of 2024 be bountiful. Also, if you watched my YouTube video today, then you saw that I'm going on vacation my first in four years. So the only way that really affects you is on my YouTube channel. I will not have any videos uploaded at all while away. So that's from Saturday January 27th until February 9th, 2024. And I already have a video scheduled for Saturday, February 10th. So, beautiful thing. So let's get talking about today's TV topic and that is comments and mitigation techniques. These mitigation techniques are primarily for creators. So there may be some things that you can do if you're not a creator, but mostly I'm talking about things that we can do to mitigate things that people put in the comments. Alrighty, so let's start with, oh, I'm actually, and just wanted to let you know that I'm on social media just like you are. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, and TikTok, all as Traveling for History, and I'm also on X, formerly known as Twitter, as Traveling for High One. Now you could go to the first three sites and type in at Traveling for History and boom, you found me, and you could go to X and type in at Traveling for High One and you found me again. Please make sure to drop a comment should you decide to visit. So let's start with YouTube because everything has come about because of YouTube. I can't block people on YouTube. I mean, I just, I can't, I can't do that. Doesn't work that way, but I do have other options. So I'm gonna start with the most egregious series of comments and then work up from there because I wanna end on a positive note. So on YouTube, I had uploaded a video on a school and this guy came into the comments and said, wow, I went to school there. That's fabulous. And then we talked about that for a while. I love when people comment on my videos. It's a great way to have conversations and I really love that. I want that. I want that for my channel absolutely and I enjoy chatting. As it went on though, it really devolved and how did that happen? Well, in one of the comments, this guy actually put a red rose. Now, red rose symbolizes love and absolutely not. So that may not be your interpretation, but it sure is mine. So for future people, do not use red roses. He went on to say that he really enjoyed talking to me, that he doesn't have conversations at home. He's married. It's about talking to your spouse. He found my website, which is travelingforhistory.com and so he decided to follow me there. And what else? I had deleted a variety of comments that were really over the top. And then a few months later, when I went back to look for some other reason, he had scrubbed almost all of his comments, almost all of them. So if someone else is scrubbing their comments, they're over the top. I remember the last one he wrote was you can film and we can be traveling for history together. Ah! Now, I didn't use the mitigation technique on him because it was kind of early in my YouTube stage and everything counts, everything counts on YouTube to get more promotions of your videos. So I didn't want to delete, I didn't want to use the technique. I'm about to tell you about because I felt I needed the comments, but really you don't have to deal with garbage like that from anyone. And I would recommend that you not do what I did to allow that to stand, allow that to continue because it was just one big creep fest. So what can you do? Well, you can hide a user from your channel. And what does that mean? It means that, in fact, you can see this list here. The first one pin means that if someone has written this fabulous comment or question even, you can stick a push pin in it and it will be at the top of the comments. People can see it and that's fabulous. Remove just means delete. I looked that up on Google, Google owns YouTube. So I Googled it to see there's a difference between remove and delete because they use delete elsewhere and apparently there's no difference. So remove is that. A hide user from channel is the one though I'm gonna tell you about. It's a bit of a parlor trick which I absolutely adore. I can't block anyone on YouTube and why would I want to? I want them to watch my videos. So watch away. What it means though is when they type a comment, they will see it and no one else will. If they're commenting, I don't get notifications because of course no one else is seeing them so it doesn't matter. But will they figure that out after a while? I don't know. If they watch this video, they'll know. So I didn't do that to him but I have used it twice. Both on women and both with the same dog on video. So the video was the interior tour of the Lois McClure and yes I do love the rhymes. The one woman, well actually let me go back a little bit. So at the start of that video, I do say that the information I'm about to share comes from the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum's website because they will know more about the Lois McClure than I ever will. And the Lois McClure is a canal boat. So one woman commented, if you don't know what you're talking about, don't say anything. Clearly she did not watch more of that video to have heard the rest. So I initially commented and figured, oh the heck with this, I deleted my comment and hit her for my channel. Yeah, that was just obnoxious. And this other woman, so bizarre, she wrote a fairly lengthy, it was a good sized paragraph and she said, the person who gave the tour was named Jack. One of the best tours I've ever had, I would put in the top 10 list of my favorite tours. And there was one point during this fabulous tour of the entire vessel that I had a question for him and I said, I don't really expect you to have an answer but I figured I would ask. So I asked and boom, he just knew, he gave this fabulous info, I was blown away. What does this other woman say? Well Jack did a better job than I expected him to. Poor Jack, poor Jack, oh my gosh, that poor guy. Now when you like a video, what you have is a thumbs up. When I like someone's comment, it's my logo and a red heart. I didn't like her comment, so I didn't put a like on it. I got another notification, so I went back to see what the comment was and she had changed it from the paragraph, the lengthy paragraph to an absolute tome. I'm guessing she copied and pasted from the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum's website because it was the same information I had talked about. You know, she'd wanted me to contact her to talk about the things that Jack got wrong. No, thank you. So I hid her from my channel too. She may still be commenting and who cares? Only she will see it, but keep her in mind because I'm gonna start talking about another social media platform and what I did with her there. So moving on to Facebook, it's kind of surprising that as a creator, I don't have more options and there you can see that that's what that looks like. My logo is that small circle there and there's a picture of the Hoover Dam, in case you don't know. So on Facebook, on my personal page, I can restrict friends, but I can't restrict people on my business page which is traveling for history. So what can I do there? I can block them. And I think you know what block is. When you block someone, they can't see a diddly squat. They can't comment, they can't see your stories, they can't see your posts, they just can't do anything. They can type in a search box as much as they want and what a shame, they can't find you. So that woman who wrote the tome wrote the, pasted that same tome on Facebook and I blocked her, oh, just go away. Now, to her credit, she has not come on my other social media platforms to comment because I think she knows the same fate she would suffer. So it's unfortunate. Oh, also on Facebook though, I do have, I do have something else. It's called moderation assist and this is on my business page. So on there, I can put up a page on there, these actions. So I can assign actions to perform automatically. And so I've done that for nine things. So for anyone of these nine things, if someone does any of these things and those are the nine things right there, their comment will be automatically hidden. So the author has had at least three comments reported, deleted or hidden by admins in the past 30 days. Yeah, if someone's been behaving like that, they don't even have a chance to comment on my stuff. If they don't have any friends or followers, now, yes, that could certainly be a new account. And once they have at least one friend or one follower, they'll be able to comment, easy peasy. But if they don't, then it's a kind of a function. I do have friends, for instance, who don't have pictures on their profiles. I get it. The picture I have on my personal profile is so tiny that you can't see me. You really can't see me unless you're looking for me. So comment contains profanity. Yeah, no, I don't want, in my real life, sure, I swear. But in my YouTube videos, it's rare for me to swear and the comments, I don't swear my comments either. So, but if you're gonna swear, it's not gonna show up. If it has an image, now gifts do show up, but if you have some other picture, that does not. And the ones I really like is if it has a link or specific links. I don't want that because I don't want someone to click out of my business Facebook to someplace else. It's not appropriate and I don't like it. So you put a link in, it's not even gonna show up. Now for certain keywords, I don't actually have anything typed in on that one, but if I did decide to type in specific keywords, then that would work. And of course, if they put a video in, absolutely not. I want you to focus on what I've posted on my business page and not someone else's tripe. And that's really what I can do on Facebook. But let's talk about Instagram. They have some nifty parlor tricks on there that I really like. I have not done this yet, but don't wanna say I'm looking forward to it either. I really just want, I just wanna have conversations with people in the comments. Legitimate, preferably positive comments. So this is my Instagram page and I'm pretty busy. So I upload every day to it. So I don't have to just block. That's a nice thing. I don't have to just block someone, but I can. So one thing I can do is called restrict. Now like I said, on Facebook, I can only restrict friends. But on Instagram, I have a professional page. I don't have a personal page on Instagram. So blocking works the same way. I block you and you're done toast. You can't see my profile. You can't comment. You can't even find me if you do a search. Shucks. But restricting is interesting. So if you are restricted, then you can comment, but again, the comments are only visible to them. If I wanna see their comment, I can click on see comment. And then if I tap on approve, then their comment would be visible to everyone. And I won't receive any notifications either. So you don't have to deal with the person either. So that is really probably the best thing of all. So restricted users can still find my profile in a search. They can still see my username. They can, you know, everything is visible, including my comments on other people's posts. That whole direct messaging thing. So I should mention, by the way, that I do not accept direct messages or private messages. No DMs and no PMs. Don't do it. I have people who do. I ignore them. I don't respond to them. So don't do it. Save yourself the hassle. So for direct messages, when they're restricted, first of all, I would not receive a notification of that. And secondly, it's not put in my inbox. It goes to something called message requests. It's a message request folder. And the app doesn't notify restricted users that whether or not I've read their message. It's a beautiful thing, people. It just is. If you're in a group chat, Instagram will let me know that there's a restricted user in the conversation, too. Now the Instagram story views. They can still see the stories, but if they react, their message will again be stuffed into the message requests folder. So I wouldn't be notified and it's a beautiful view. I should also note that you can further restrict them from seeing your stories. They can still view posts. They can still see all the other stuff, but then they don't see the story views, which I find really interesting. They get denied access to something then maybe they really like to see. But if they're behaving poorly or badly or naughty or pick something, pick an adjective, then they don't get to enjoy all of it. Now, if they were to tag me, I would receive notifications whenever one of these restricted accounts mentioned me in their Instagram stories or they tagged me in posts. But blocked users can't even do that. I mean, they just can't do diddly squat, which is fabulous by me. But if you have to resort to blocking, which is a beautiful thing, then they don't see anything. So that's what happens when you do nasty things. So as for TikTok, I don't have a business account on there though they have been pushing that. So all I can do on there is block. So why would I block there? Well, I have found that comments are kind of interesting. You know, on TikTok, the folks I tend to have there are deniers. I should mention since my channel is a history channel that I'm a huge fan of facts, thank you. Give me the facts and give me the facts. So I have no patience for deniers. So for instance, I had been out filming one day. I had stopped to film this state historic marker and lo and behold, there was a memorial monument to 9-11. Wasn't expecting to see that. I did know it existed. So I talked a little bit about the history of it first and then read the memorial, which was really moving. I actually had to take several takes of that because I was choked up. I posted it to TikTok. One guy commented about some conspiracy theory. Now that was the second comment I read and I blocked him. Kind of wish I had left that up but it's because of the first comment that I blocked his as well. And that first comment, I hope you're sitting down because I'm glad I am. I was glad I was sitting down when I read the first comment, which was, it never happened. Did you let that sink in? It never happened. How do folks like that get along in life? How do they understand then what happened to the Twin Towers? The 3000 plus people who were murdered that day. The people on the airplanes who died. You know, the Pentagon, it never ceases to amaze me. The utter disregard for reality. How can they not pick up a book and read about it? How can they not Google this and read and educate themselves? But no, it never happened. I blocked him. I don't need that garbage. And frankly, it's not just me. I don't need anyone else to read that kind of a drivel, that kind of stupidity. Wanton, disregard for reality. Yeah, if you're thinking it makes me angry, it still makes me angry even right now. On another TikTok post, I had offered a book recommendation, excuse me, a book recommendation on one that I actually own. The title is Auschwitz Birkenau. It is a book filled with photographs. The photographs are black and white. Most of the book, including the two inside covers, are photographs. The photographs were snapped in 67 and 69, 66 and 68, something like that, 19, of course. And it was released in 1970 on the 45th anniversary of the liberation of the camp. The woman commented, I hope they took pictures of the Olympic-sized swimming pools and I think of soccer fields. There are no words. And again, a wanton disregard for reality. I don't understand that at all. My foundation is in reality, is in the facts, is in the truth, and I just cannot comprehend a lack of knowledge that's stunning. So again, even though, I mean, I was absolutely stunned by that. It's beyond anger, it's total disbelief. So I blocked her as well, because people don't need to read that garbage and believe that that's the truth, because it's not. And it's just utter gibberish. But moving into some positive comments, holy cow, yay for positive comments. On Facebook, I belong to several groups. Two reasons for that. One, I love to see the photographs. I love that stuff. I like to read all that stuff, that all the information that people provide. It's absolutely fabulous. And of course, I like to post my video links and my own stuff that I write, if it's too much information for any given place. I do put a link, a direct link to my website with more information that they can read at their leisure. There was one person in one of the groups to which I belong who loves covered bridges, loves them. And she had, I had posted some stuff. There are three covered bridges still standing in Sherlock, Vermont for instance. I filmed all three and posted them and talked about what to watch out for, like traffic for instance. And she commented that she wrote these down and she actually visited. When she came back to Vermont for a trip, she went to all three of those covered bridges in Sherlock and she always marks them down and how wonderful is that? They were all beautiful and thank you so much. Wow, wow. Absolutely fabulous. A comment from YouTube which I don't have to show you, but I was in a cemetery. I'd been filming in the cemetery looking for these Civil War veterans and I realized that the sun was setting. So I decided to film a sunset over the cemetery so I panned and you could see all these headstones. This woman commented that, oh, that was my grandfather's grave that you caught on camera. I remember that one too because it's actually a photograph of the, well, I guess her grandfather and grandmother. So that was fun that she let me know that I captured someone she knew. And someone else, another woman had commented her, one of the graves I had filmed during my walkthrough of this cemetery was her brother and it said that he had been a veteran and he was a, I think it's a speck to firefighter, something along that line, a specialist too. And I thought it meant that he was a fireman, a firefighter with a hose and putting out fires. No, no, that means in the Navy. It means that he was trained to shoot the big guns. That's what it means in the Navy. Doesn't mean that he was using a hose to put out fires at all. Wow, see, I got to learn stuff and the fact that I captured her brother's headstone. And that's meaningful to me. So at the end of the day though, if you're having a problem with someone who's a follower or a subscriber to your channel, there are ways to deal with these folks and hopefully I've given you some ideas in case you didn't know. I mean you can Google the stuff and frankly it is faster to Google it than to look at the sites themselves. The sites themselves have this list of blah, blah, blah, more like contract information. Oh, burn your eyeballs out. But if you Google it, much faster to find it. So this is Patricia. I'm traveling for history. I really appreciate your being here today. I certainly hope you enjoyed my content. And until I see you again, I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day. Thanks for watching now, bye.