A few weeks ago Google forced everyone’s youtube account into also being a Google+ account. I have yet to hear a single person applaud the change. In fact, it’s arguably backfiring:
Google’s war on anonymity during its involvement in NSA controversy has imploded as its move to force YouTube commenters to use Google Plus – and its unwanted “real name” policy – has backfired.
On November 6, Google changed its YouTube property to only allow comments from Google Plus accounts, thus de-anonymizing commenters, as the principal element of its site-wide comments overhaul.
Google’s move to force Plus onto YouTube has outraged the YouTube community – and beyond.
YouTube user fury is fueling this anti-Plus petition with over 112,000 signatures, increasing by the minute. (Update November 17, 10:12am PST: over 167,000 signatures.)
These GIF’s someone made serve as the perfect metaphor:
So far my experience has been the same as this Forbes writer:
It has its place on the internet, but it’s disquieting the way Google is herding every single one of their users to join, whether they want to or not.
And as of now, these changes aren’t making YouTube any better. Clicking on any random popular video right now doesn’t reveal a string of insightful comments from my Google Plus friends. It’s either people exploiting the new comment system by posting walls of nonsense text, spam bots who have make their own G+ accounts and are bragging about making $500 a day working from home, or people using their real names to contribute the ever-insightful “lol.”
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