HTML in browsers ignores the whitespace, I think, not markdown specifically.

If that’s true, that would indicate that the vast majority of comments are just bot spam, making it even more of a cesspool than I originally thought. None of the comments are advertising anything. I guess there’s money to be made in stuffing the comment section in either direction.

I edited the post to use that URL instead, thanks!

Has anybody else noticed that youtube is porting comments from related videos? I’m seeing the exact verbatim comment jumping from vid to vid in the same category per the algorithm, with fresh vote counts. It’s very obvious youtube is stuffing the comments with old material just to generate more views. Kind of pathetic really. Terrible user experience.