Bringing back YouTube's Video Responses to build communities

15 Apr, 2026

I recently noticed that I miss what YouTube communities used to look like. I miss the authenticity of barely edited videos and people sharing their views on things they truly care about. I know it still exists, but I guess it's not as natural to the platform as it used to be. I miss people caring about sharing things just to share them and not to grow an audience, build a brand or earn money. I honestly miss it the most about me.

I used to upload videos to YouTube all the time to share my thoughts, opinions and music even if I didn't have a lot of followers and/or knowledge about video editing. Quality didn't matter that much. Passion did. Sharing did. But now… making content on YouTube became in my eyes a thing professionals do, not average people like me.

If I want to share something, I DON'T NEED TO think about my brand, the audience, what would bring me views and money… I also DON'T NEED TO worry about the quality of my camera and my editing skills (or lack of thereof).

But I do.

I do think that and worry about that.

And I hate it.

I feel like YouTube is no longer about sharing and building communities mainly because I'm not participating myself.

I made friends on YouTube. I even made friends with people that had tens of thousands of followers. There were no boundaries back then. We were all just normal people building a community.

I learned a lot from watching videos, but I also taught others myself. Me talking about challenging experiences let people know that they weren't alone. Me talking about how I tackled a problem inspired others to do the same and to share their knowledge. Me sharing my process of making music allowed others to learn from it and make their own music¹.

I miss this more than I can say.

And so… to encourage and simplify this type of community building and communication on YouTube, I just launched an old Video Response feature² in the form of a new browser extension – ReTube³. With it you can:

• Reply to somebody's video with your own and potentially start a conversation
• Reply to your own video with a correction or additional content
• Link to the previous or the first video in a series
• Whatever else you can think of…

You just put a re:ORIGINAL_VIDEO_ID in your video's title and a reference link appears above it for your viewers to see what you're responding to. Then just comment the original video with re:YOUR_RESPONSE_VIDEO_ID and a video card with its thumbnail, title and channel info appears for others to see and click.

It's intentionally very simple so even if people don't have the extension installed, they can still understand what you're doing.

I know I am a 30 years old boomer and this extension may build no communities at all and bring back nothing. I might have wasted the $5 I paid Google to upload this extension to their Web Store. Maybe this changes nothing for others. Maybe no one uses it. But I don't have to worry about it. I shared it just to share it because I authentically care about it. And that was the point.

Happy community building!

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