The YouTube comment section is a weird place. As much as we’d like to avoid it in some cases, sometimes we just have to contribute to a discussion. However, YouTube threads aren’t very well organized – so how do you tag someone to make sure they know you are talking to them?

Not long ago, you’d be able to type “+” and the name of the person you wanted to tag. This would have created a tag with a link to the person’s Google+ profile. However, if you try this today, you will see that this doesn’t work anymore. Some other users were just as confused as I was and have asked about this in the Google product forum

This is the answer they received:

“YouTube is in the process of disconnecting Google+ from YouTube, and one of the features that will not work anymore is tagging with the + symbol.”

So, unfortunately, this means that tagging on YouTube is, in fact, not possible anymore. The only way to still tag someone in a legit way is to hit “reply”. This, however, isn’t always our intention: Maybe we want to create a post that tags several people, or we want to tag someone in a post that’s not a reply to them. In this case, there’s nothing we can do.

Is it going to stay this way?

Let’s hope not. The YouTube commenting system really needs a ton of work – and not just in when it comes to tagging . So in the best case, the reason why Google removed G+ is because they want to implement a new solution. In the worst case, we’re gonna be stuck with this underwhelming comment system for a long time.

In any case, this article will be updated if anything about the tagging feature changes.