@Jeffro @Robbie – In my opinion, you’re playing with fire by allowing that kind of stuff ["image uploads and video embeds to youtube"]. It definitely means keeping an eye on every comment for moderation. Wouldn’t want people to embed stupid videos or insulting images.

I mentioned before that abuse of voting & ranking has been quite advanced & sophisticated, at various sites around the Net. What I didn't go so far as to say/point out, is that this abuse often appeared to serve the interests or goals of the website itself, or the owner. So it tended to become a systematically allowed & tacitly encouraged practice.

Voting & ranking abuses work marvels, eg, for keeping the climate-deniers and gun-enthusiasts off nice, proper, Liberal-Progressive sites. Voting-manipulations are perfect, for keeping tree-huggers and CO2-hysterics off the Conservative blogs.

Same general situation goes with images. Sure enough - abuses of pictures & video in comments have not been hard to find. But equally noticeable has been that this is often a subtly-managed 'house-game'.

Like the ease of controlling vote-abuse (that it's so easy to prevent, is a big clue that it's purposeful), it is easy to put the brakes on image-foolishness. For those who actually want to.

The tool-of-choice for addressing picture & video nonsense is an adaptation of the Report Comment plugin-widget.

It so happens that the code behind this control-tool is very similar to the vote/rank widget-tool, and it is likewise very easy for Admin to fine-tune, adapt and monitor (which, yeah, is another part of what has favored the abuse of these tools...). The Report-tool can be readily adapted to target images or videos.

The real problem that arises with images or flicks, is that they tend to devolve into 'fun & games' - they go off-topic. People 'play-games' with snarky & humorous pictures. They derail the topic or thread of the Post, and run hog-wild with a 'silliness-game'.

This foolishness is easy to nip in the bud, because it's irritating & obnoxious to those who actually have something to say & contribute, and they will Report it. That is, folks will report it if the website 'thought' to include the control-tool ... which of course in the case of those seeking to promote a free-for-all, the means by which visitors could bring problems to the attention of Admin were often conspicuous by their absence. Just like with voting.
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It is understood that those who really want & prefer a entirely New & Improved approach to commenting, ultimately are unlikely to be swayed by suggestions for the improvement & enhancement of what they may simply regard as the Old & Funky standard comment-system, which in their view 'needs' to be replaced.

There is of course business-opportunity, in the "distributed", off-site comment-system that some are suggesting (which indeed Matt Mullenweg once took a look at (quite some years ago), and made an effort to develop, for awhile). Disqus has had some success with this model, while others flounder. But Matt ultimately passed on the gambit, and it is not clear that current business-examples really have The Future by the short-hairs, either. In fact, Matt is looking a bit sagacious in this saga, by gathering up his chips & moving on, earlier rather than later.

Remember Gravitars? We make the avatar an off-site asset, and then everyone's personal-pic goes through/comes from the central, off-site distributing-agency. Very slick, for keeping track of where people are, and what they're doing. There's a business-opportunity in it. And very much the same deal, and same business-gambit, with off-site comment systems.

Except, Gravitars never really caught on to the degree some thought they might.