How it works
How the random comment picker works
Three steps on the surface, and four things happening underneath. Here is all of it, in enough detail to answer a sceptical viewer.
- 1
Paste your YouTube video, Shorts or post link
Copy the URL of the video, Short or community post running your giveaway and paste it into the box at the top of the page. Nothing is installed and no account is created.
- 2
Set your entry filters
Choose the rules your giveaway advertised: one entry per channel, top-level comments only, a required keyword or hashtag such as #giveaway, and any channels you want blocked. The entry count updates live so you can see exactly how many people qualify.
- 3
Pick your random winner
Hit Pick Winner. The draw runs on our server with a cryptographic random number generator, and the result comes back signed — so the proof you publish alongside the winner was issued by something neither you nor anyone watching can edit.
Loading the comments
When you paste a link, the tool resolves the video ID and pages through the comment section the same way the YouTube website does when you scroll. Comments stream back to your browser as they arrive, which is why the counter climbs instead of sitting on a spinner.
There is no API key involved and no quota to run out of. Results are cached on the server for a few minutes, so drawing again — or reloading the page and drawing again — does not re-download anything.
Applying your filters
Filters run in a fixed order: replies are dropped first if you excluded them, then the channel owner, then blocked channels, then the keyword requirement, and de-duplication runs last.
That order matters. Because de-duplication runs after the keyword check, a channel keeps its first comment that actually qualifies rather than its first comment overall — someone whose earlier unrelated comment would otherwise have used up their single entry still gets counted.
Drawing the winner
The draw runs on our server using Node’s cryptographic random number generator. Values are rejection-sampled onto the entry list rather than reduced with a remainder, which is the common shortcut and leaves the first few entries very slightly more likely to win.
For multiple winners, a partial Fisher-Yates shuffle selects distinct entries in one pass, so nobody can be drawn twice and the runners-up are genuinely ordered rather than re-rolled.
Running it server-side is what makes the entry limit real rather than advisory, and it is why the receipt can be signed: the key that signs it is not on the machine of the person running the giveaway, so “here is my proof” is something an audience can check instead of something they have to take on trust.
Proving it was fair
Every draw produces a receipt: the timestamp, the entry count, and a SHA-256 hash of the exact ordered list of entry IDs. Publishing that hash with your winner announcement gives anyone the ability to reload the same video with the same filters and confirm the pool matches.
It does not prove which entry the random number generator chose — nothing can, short of publishing a seed in advance — but it does prove the pool was not quietly edited after the fact, which is what accusations are actually about.
Running your first giveaway? Start with the step-by-step giveaway guide.