YouTube Live is one of the best methods to reach a target audience in real-time and viewers can even interact with each other on the live chat.
Live chat is a feature that is turned on by default and shows up below or to the right of a live stream’s video player, depending on the viewer’s device.
Recently though, YouTube made a small change to the live chat feature that was not received well by streamers, moderators and viewers alike.
As we can see in the above image, YouTube has done away with the option to view a commentator’s channel/user profile leading to complaints:
In livestreams, Why can’t I “go to channel” on other chatters anymore? I used to be able to open other peoples channels by clicking the 3 little dots beside names in chat and select “go to channel”.
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Is there any reason why YouTube had to remove the go to channel button on live chats because I find it the quickest way to subscribe to a channel without having to search it up and find that particular user?
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This change may be tiny but has negatively impacted many streamers and viewers leading to a slew of complaints on official YouTube forums and other platforms.
It is not clear as of now why exactly YouTube decided to do away with this feature. A possible explanation could be that YouTube is trying to encourage moderation on the basis of a user’s comments alone, with nothing to do with the channel.
However, as apparent from the comments below, moderators feel that the ‘Go to channel’ option was essential to spot impersonators and other useful details. This cannot be done anymore after its removal.
Please bring back the Go To Channel feature. There are a lot of hateful people who impersonate others and we can’t tell if it is the real person or not.
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Fortunately, mods do not need to despair as we have found a couple of workarounds for this issue going through the forums, so that you don’t have to:
GoToChannel by Swap Meet Shops is a Chrome extension that provides a quick way to visit the channel of commentator directly from the live chat.
Though don’t get deceived from the fact that the above plugin is a ‘Chrome’ extension, because it can probably work on other supported Chromium based browsers like the new Microsoft Edge too.
Another easy workaround is a site where you can paste the link of any live chat and view the comments in real-time along with the links to their respective profiles:
Given the huge number of complaints regarding this removal, hopefully YouTube provides a justification or even better, adds the feature again.
Let us know in the comments below if the above workarounds worked for you.
PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.
Himanshu Arora
372 Posts
My interest in technology and writing started back in 2010. Since then, I have written for many leading publications, including Computerworld, GSMArena, TechSpot, HowtoForge, LinuxJournal, and MakeTechEasier to name a few. Here at PiunikaWeb, my work involves covering on daily basis the biggest tech stories as well as scoops that you won't find anywhere else.
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