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Comment by vdaniuk | Hacker News Reader

I guess it is a complete coincidence that popular "we are now hacker news" thread appeared on 4chan and four posts against real name policy on Youtube are now on the front page of HN. All submitted within 24 hours. /s

And now lets look at this article again. One of the worst pieces of journalism about the Google+ policy, written by a "outspoken and controversial author and journalist". Is the bit about 80 n-words in a comment relevant? Obviously not. Was it included in the article to argue that Google+ integration is bad and stir controversy? Certainly it was! The quality of the article is abysmal, offers no additional data or insights and is a linkbait bordering on spam.

But fine, lets look at some numbers: 120000 users signed a petition? Is it a significant number? Yep. Out of a billion youtube users? So that's about 0.00012. Put in perspective, this is absolutely nothing.

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> One of the worst pieces of journalism about Google+...

That's a nice opinion, and you're entitled to it. But please don't try to present it as a fact.

> written by "a outspoken and controversial author and journalist"...

I don't see anything wrong with that. Since when did HN veer towards safe and conservative journalists or authors?

As for the straw man argument about the N-word, I don't think that was the gist of her article. For me, this is where she nailed it:

Before anyone tells me I can't complain about "free" things, and starts to remind me that Google hasn't done anything directly to feed the U.S. Government's flagrant - and growing - surveillance law abuses enacted on civilians, consider this.

No one likes being tricked by a company that leverages a monopoly to force unrelated services and nonconsensual exposure onto people's lives.

Hundreds of thousands (actually, more) are being coerced, through threat of withholding essential utilities (email, work docs, etc.), to consolidate their online identities, tie it to real life and real names, reveal friends and family connections, have communications scanned, be put in advertisements, provide phone numbers and credit cards numbers, and more, while discovering that service settings and privacy defaults are being changed behind the curtain.

And when they complain and demand privacy, the ability to give informed consent, and control over their personal information, they're told they're doing settings wrong, the policies are really for their own good, to send in their IDs for verification, that they agreed to all this in the beginning anyway, it's too late, that this is how everyone does it, and that wanting privacy really means something else because only good people don't have anything to hide.

Literally no one is being coerced. No one. And this redefinition of words is what makes the article really bad.

If she is referring to holding the personal data hostage as coercion, user is always free to leave Google properties while retaining most of their data. Google has one of the best data export tools that include documents, email archives etc. So that's straight out misinformation.

see: Google Takeout.

Blue's "free things" remarks are where her article absolutely nails it. I called that out specifically commenting on her G+ post of this.

> I guess it is a complete coincidence that popular "we are now hacker news" thread appeared on 4chan and four posts against real name policy on Youtube are now on the front page of HN. All submitted within 24 hours. /s

Possible. But on the other hand, that topic was a relevant topic here the last days anyway.

> Is the bit about 80 n-words in a comment relevant?

Yes, it is. Not alone, but given the argumentation that Youtube-comments did get even worse because of this change. Note, I can't judge that, Youtube isn't working for me atm. But she shows the argumenation and combines it with Youtubers leaving the plattform, at least for commenting. Failing even basic spamblock-checks is relevant and surprising (especially for Google, as Gmails spamfilter is great).

> Put in perspective, this is absolutely nothing

Wouldn't say that. Even if it's a small but vocal technically minded minority complaining: Ignoring those is not a good idea for a tech-company in for the long run. Look at Microsoft…

>Yes, it is. Not alone, but given the argumentation that Youtube-comments did get even worse because of this change.

No, it is not. You cant cherry pick examples to prove your point. To argue that Youtube comments did get worse by supplying a single(10,100,10000) data point(s) is preposterous. One should do a comprehensive scraping of comments for many videos and many countries and many categories, analyze for quality and compare with previous data(without Google+ integration). Then you have a solid foundation for making conclusions. Anything else is just verturing into fantasy land.

This is not a scientific journal… Sure, we could use those principles for everything, but I doubt it is necessary here. To look at the opinion of the people hosting those channels, who are directly in contact with those comments, and to observe their reaction and base a first conclusion on that, is perfectly fine for me.

Well, obviously we have very different criteria for judging arguments and data.

Seems that way :)

I think I should try to make that clear: I think that the article is fine. And I think it is alright to base a first conclusion on the reactions of the top-channels, and to report about those reactions given the context. The example given is just an example, and doesn't claim to be more, but it is a convincing one, especially combined with the other reports claiming the same thing: That the promotion of discussed=controversial=trolly comments on this G+ inclusion, as it seems to work now, is a bad thing for Youtube comments.

And isn't it true that Google did say they will try to improve that? Could be taken as an additional point going for that observation.

Note that I agree that this is not final - to be totally convinced about the topic, we have indeed to look at more data (and give it more time). Maybe Google will provide an argumentation following that. Though this is a hard problem to analyze objectively anyway, the subjective impression is what matters.

PS: I don't think your argumentation warrants downvotes!

We won't be able to find any common ground on this matter. I belive that subjective impression of random journalists or channel owners doesn't matter at all. So we'll agree to disagree.

> So we'll agree to disagree

Agreed. And for that part, we can leave it at that.

But… This comment thread starts to get a bit too deep, but I have one more thing to discuss I think is interesting: How would you measure the issue? Well, because you said you would like to get a data foundation and then measure the quality - compared to my position, that it is a subjective impression anyway and therefore perfectly fine to base reports on the subjective impression of visible people using the system. I even agree that it would be nice to have that data foundation. But how to do it that way?

In my opinion, one can't simply measure length. Even swearwords are only a possible, but not a sufficient factor for spam. My first idea was to measure the use of the spam-button, but given that the G+-Inclusion might change the basis for that heavily (Comments lived on G+ before, where the circles change the dynamic), that might not be a fair comparison. So where do you see the possiblity to get that objective foundation for your line of reasoning?

Well, while discussing this issue on HN I was thinking about the task obtaining data to reason objectively about the pros and cons so I'll be happy to share my thoughts. What could be done?

1. Query lots(100 000s) of Youtube videos and store the comments associated with the video.

2. Repeat the operation after 6 months when the Google+ integration goes in full effect and there is enough G+ comments.

3. Label an initial set of comments (100 000s) as spam, non-spam, hateful, sexist, neutral, etc using Mechanical Turk.

3. Use a supervised learning ML algorithm on a training and testing dataset to understand perfomance and error rate.

4. Iterate as needed.

5. Run an algorithm on the whole corpus.

6. Compare the results.

7. Publish the results on HN and discuss the issue based on data.

Obviously, this requires lots of resources so one could try to reduce the input dataset and see if it is possible to draw any conclusions. What do you think?

Ok, interesting. I was about to dismiss that approach, but instead took some time to think about it, and it might just work.

The problems I see:

> 1. Query lots(100 000s) of Youtube videos and store the comments associated with the video.

One would have to do it as early as possible, before they change too much, as the thesis is they already changed. Though I would be surprised if there weren't some studies which used comparable data, maybe something like that is available?

> 2. Repeat the operation after 6 months when the Google+ integration goes in full effect and there is enough G+ comments.

Is there a next step of the integration? If not, one wouldn't have to wait that long.

> 3. Label an initial set of comments (100 000s) as spam, non-spam, hateful, sexist, neutral, etc using Mechanical Turk.

That is the main culprit. I'm not convinced that the new set of comments is easily detectable as offending, given that the context seems to be more readily used by the trolls. First and Rickrolling is a thing of the past. Besides, even given the low prices there, to rate 100k would cost a lot…

But still. Even something like "they changed a lot and are hard to compare" would be an interesting result.

The algorithm is of course the next question, is something like that easily doable given the nature of the comments?

Hm. Is that something you seriously consider to do? It could be an interesting experiment, it surely would be an interesting HN-worthy article - and if you are in academics, it might be even worthy of a publication (maybe something like "study of the effect of de-anonymization on commenters on an internet-plattform") or at least a few credit point. Is there a working API to get those comments?

This is why the liberal arts need to survive. Because since at least the Greeks, man has known that persuasion involves more than simply a structuring of facts into aesthetically pleasing syllogisms. But there are some folks who forget that logic begins and ends with axioms, and if your axioms don't map to anything about the world, all your arguments are navel-gazing. One goal of argumentation is to convince other people to accept your axioms, which will not be achieved when you scoff at them for being so illogical by not accepting -- a priori -- your arbitrary and private set of rules.

tl;dr -- Logical operations are universal, but not the axioms.

You are absolutely correct. I am lost, however, at why your comment is directed to me, not my opponents who are trying to persuade the community at large that G+ YT integration is evil.

>Put in perspective, this absolutely nothing.

Put in perspective, it absolutely is something. It's the biggest public outcry Google's faced thus far.

"It's the biggest public outcry Google's faced thus far." Care to share what metrics are you using to define that?

I just dont see this. Including that Google got under fire for closing Google reader, NSA leaks, Wi-Fi data gathering, circumventing safari protections to track users, privacy policy consolidation, etc.

If you look only at the latest youtube thing, it might not be the worst google's been through. But if you look back at all the examples you compiled, two of them happened in the last 6 months. I don't know how it's all perceived outside of the "tech community", and maybe people don't care after all. My impression of all this is that it's a lot of bad press, in a fairly short amount of time. It's definitely changed my view on google, and I guess the question that all articles / speculations / blogspams are trying to get at is: how many people's views of google changed as a result to the recent events. And is that number big enough to start worrying google?

A common view, from what I gather, is that being a "data-driven" company, google has probably run the numbers and concluded that whatever "outcry" is going on, it is the result of a small group, and that it is not going to threaten their business. I am usually wary of such non-arguments. I really don't know what the short-term/long-term effects of all this are going to be (if any), but I don't think that any company can really predict the full extent of "bad press" either. So even if it's a relatively small percentage of the user base, writing off this movement as being "insignificant" seems a little unwise.

The article mentions people who are (iirc) some of the largest Let's Play creators as among the people who are taking action. If enough of them permanently move to a different uploader or disable YouTube comments then that will be something nontrivial.

But there's the rub: comments aren't that valuable to anyone in the game but the commenters. No major YouTuber are moving off YouTube for a different uploader. Or even considering it. The biggest moves popular YouTubers have done are disabling comments. Google own the monetization of web video, so content providers won't leave. YouTube comments were already shit, so converting that shit into Google+ shit will at least help Google+. And if people disable comments, Google still get the views and gets to move the headache of dealing with YouTube comments to someone else (obviously if done in mass to a single discussion site this may be a problem for Google, but it is currently far too disjointed to matter much). From Google's perspective, the new comment system is a win-win situation.

I do not understand what drives this sort of activism that we're seeing regarding YouTube and G+ comments. Why it's suddenly such an issue on HN, worthy of such passion and fanaticism.

For all that is happening in the world, and even just the tech world, whether you use one identity system or another to comment on someone's ripped from Vine video on YouTube sits pretty low on the importance scale.

This is YouTube comments we're talking about. The rotting garbage dump of the internet. The notorious, worst-case example of what happens when everyone airs their thoughts.

Now, apparently, we all are to remember as a system that worked? One that is so worthy of defense?

Maybe I'll take a break from HN for a week while people wave their flags and battle in the open plains over something so utterly irrelevant.

People are claiming that is straight, undeniably evil of Google to merge identity systems. I say that those commenters don't really know what evil is and their priorities are way off.

Easy to say if you're not in a vulnerable position where losing anonymity matters, a lot.

If you are in that position, why not just have your entire Google account under a fake name?

Or make a G+ page that allows pseudonymous comments for YT videos. Simple as that.

I'm a Hacker News user with 2236 karma, and I can't figure out the Google+ Pages system. Where does that leave the average user?

It seems very easy to make a permanent change you don't intend when you're using Google+.

How much time did you spend figuring Google+ pages? It is straightforward and is nearly the same experience as creating a page on facebook.

You literally need less than 10 minutes to create a Google+ page http://www.google.com/+/business/brands/get-started.html

It used to take an order of magnitude less time than that to create a pseudonymous YouTube account.

That is a good thing when creation of an anonymous account takes some time and/or proof-of-work. That limits spam while providing an opportunity for legit uses of anonymous accounts.

I did successfully create a page. The problem was that it's still not clear to me how to keep identities separate.

I previously worked for a startup, and had a google apps account. It was impossible to convince Google that the account shouldn't have a Google+ profile, or that it should be the same profile as my personal profile.

And to date I'm still not sure if my page is a youtube account page, a page on my personal account page, or both.

I'm sure there are answers to these questions. I'd say most of my research time was spent making sure that the page wouldn't do something I didn't want it to do, because Google+ burned me repeatedly by unintended behavior.

Google also tends to make things permanent, such as the capitalization of my Youtube account channel. So it's not as simple as "follow the instructions on the page".

If you care about identity, you have to follow the instructions on the page AND make sure the instructions won't lead to something permanently wrong.

I could be wrong, but I think Greame is talking about the concept of Pages to create an pseudonym for individuals, not for (small) companies. Apparently you can create a pseudonym on Google+ with Pages, but Pages are mainly marketed towards brands and companies [1], not individuals. It's confusing even for Google employees [2], let alone users.

A support page on YouTube tries to explain the difference between Google+ Profiles, Google+ Pages and Google Accounts [3]. But the fact that a Page can be managed by up to 50 different people suggests, at least to me, that the use of Pages to create and manage your pseudonym is more incidental than intentional.

[1] https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1710600 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747875 [3] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2848323?hl=en

I already had two separate identities. I repeatedly told Google I wanted them kept separate. Google merged them.

There's no clear way for me to undo the damage. Screenshots I've posted for my YouTube configuration preferences don't show what other's equivalent shots do. I'm, frankly, not interested in jumping through hoops to get what Google might offer by way of account segregation now, and change its mind on in another 3, or 6, or 24, or 72 months. Clearly I cannot trust it to respect my specifically indicated wishes, and clearly, the company doesn't respect its users (in many ways, I've detailed these elsewhere including on HN).

Oh, and both identities are pseudonymous. And I studiously avoided circling anyone I knew IRL to avoid outing myself. Never posted photos I'd actually taken, carefully edited screenshots to avoid showing revealing information (though I likely left in a few clues that would help narrow down my identity). Don't mention where I live, where I work, or how I spend my time.

Simply because my preference is to be able to speak freely and discuss things, though really, the "why" shouldn't matter. I simply prefer it this way.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/VZSL...

Fake names get your account suspended. (Real names get accounts suspended too, if they look fake enough)

Just create an account with "John or Jane Smith" or any other believable combination of common names.

That doesn't work long term. Sooner or later, your social and activity graphs overlap enough to warrant flagging.

Care to elaborate? Preferably with proofs that if activity and social graphs of two accounts ovelap at some threshold level user accounts are flagged.

I don't work at Google, so you won't see any proofs out of me (nor of course you'd see any if I did work at Google).

But sooner or later, the browsing habits out of the two active accounts are bound to converge pretty well. Remember you've been tracked not just when you post comments, but on every page out there that has a "+1" button. Then, there will be some close friends who'd be connected on both accounts.

In addition both your real and fake account are very likely to be accessed from the same set of IPs or subnets, locations and time slices.

This may sound complicated, but this sort of mining is just an extension of spam filtering techniques (to which at this point Google invested many millions), and requires zero human intervention. And since it can be done and there is an incentive for Google to do it, it will be done.

So no proofs, got it.

btw, I agree that Google will try to correlate account data. That has obvious business value. But it is not obvious at all that Google will flag accounts based on this correlation. That was your statement I was arguing against, not practical possibility of matching various accounts to the same owner.

Why even have a real name account if you don't trust Google? Just always use it under your pseudonym.

This is fine, assuming you don't use Gmail or other Google services as primary - and many people do.

You think such people are sitting around posting their vital, dissenting, dangerous opinions on Youtube?

Do I think gay people post or comment on videos about the experience of being gay in a society that is often homophobic? Yes.

Do I think feminists post or comment on videos about feminism or rape? Yes.

Do I think transgender people post or comment on videos about being transgender? Yes.

Is there a subset of the above people that wouldn't want their YouTube activity known to their family or employer? Yes.

Reddit still exists.

No, but I might have previously liked or commented on a vlog by another gay or transgender person which is suddenly publicly tied to my regular Google account. Or I might have expressed a political opinion which isn't going to get me persecuted but might alienate a manager at work or a relative.

And yeah, there's ways of preventing this but they're pretty difficult to figure out (the Google+ page route) and it's fairly easy to make a mistake. Especially if they keep changing things.

If anonymity matters you should not have been using Google as a way to remain anonymous prior to this.

There's a lot of stuff I don't mind Google knowing about me, but I do mind being publicly connected to my real name.

This amounts to saying "You should not participate in society".

Yes, everyone is free to avoid using Google/Facebook/Popular Service X/. Now, which group are you advising to avoid using Google accounts? Members of marginalized groups are often those who must keep their identities private.

Your recommendation further marginalizes them.

I don't understand that argument. If I use Facebook, it's easy to see when I log on/off to profile my usage (and possibly employment / holiday trends). If many of the people I speak to are young or gay or work in finance, doesn't that imply something about me? I am not a fan of this Google policy (it leaves me very uncomfortable) and I support the protests. But, as far as I can see, I can opt out without being marginalized. That's the bit of your argument I cAnt understand. Your argument, to me, appears to be that Google shouldn't be allowed to link you and your opinions to your real name. I'd argue "why not?" I don't use Facebook, etc for this very reason - I don't want to be profiled with the depth that Facebook allows. Am I marginalized? Not that I'm aware.

I didn't say everyone who opts out is marginalized. I said that people who are marginalized are more likely to want to be anonymous.

Google and Facebook are infrastructure. We seem to be moving towards some version of "You can't be gay on google without telling THE WHOLE WORLD you're gay". Then your options are:

  1. Tell the whole world you're gay  
  2. Don't be gay on google, pretend you're straight  
  3. Don't use Google services

The way to not marginalize minority groups is to leave in the fourth option:

  4. Be gay on google, but without being forced to reveal it to the whole world.

Some people, for example, want to post on youtube in ways that reveal their sexual preferences without linking it to their real name. For instance, maybe they are commenting on videos related to gay rights, but their parents are homophobes and they haven't revealed their sexuality to them.

A person in that situation has to choose one of options 1-3 above. Whereas I, as a white, straight, male, can post publicly about most things without fear of anyone knowing. That's how this policy effectively marginalizes already certain already marginal groups.

Edit: To make things perfectly clear, I'm suggesting that access to Google services is about as important in our society as, say, banks.

Has your life ever been repeatedly threatened by a very serious internet stalker behind his own well crafted anonymity?

There are reasons for wanting a mask that are legal, ethical and mandatory. My life is of more than middlin' importance to me.

I totally fail to understand the crass blindness of those who limit their reasoning to their own bland case.

Anonymity can be used to stalk but it can also be a necessity to be able to use the internet WITHOUT being stalked for a lot of people. That's not a bland case.

I seem to have accidentally inverted my real point. Anonymity will always be possible for a dedicated stalker no matter what these jokers do to eliminate it. My concern is removing it as a straight forward option for the stalkee (which I was.) We're on the same side.

You may have missed the bigger issue of powerful multinational corporations waging an all out war on the concepts of anonymity and privacy in the internet.

If that is "irrelevant", I suggest you read up on the course of human history over the past century.

Are there other more acute priorities, sure. But it's also important to maintain a society where we are actually free to address those other priorities without completely surrendering our identity to public commercial exploitation.

> You may have missed the bigger issue of powerful multinational corporations waging an all out war on the concepts of anonymity and privacy in the internet.

No, not on the internet. On the platforms they provide, for free, and for which they are responsible.

And, given the abysmal quality of YouTube comments, it's seems very reasonable to think the platform will be better off without anonymous comments.

As it stands, it's just proof of the Greater Internet F-wad Theory [1].

[1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

> No, not on the internet. On the platforms they provide, for free, and for which they are responsible.

This is rapidly becoming a distinction without difference.

Consider the bait-and-switch that has occurred with all of these services (Google, Facebook, etc.) - the initial model was free with minimal (or at least less) data gathering but as each service got more popular it has tried to get more and more data out of users. How is this in any way different than Microsoft's embrace/extinguish model in the 90s? Initially any competitors that had a different strategy were doomed to fail because hey, it's free right. Now there's no little to no choice left.

The cumulative effect is an embrace/extinguish of the "old" internet - the one that was about people communicating.

We are now rapidly approaching a point where every byte of data sent over the internet is monetized. Every email is scanned for keywords, every text message becomes a "like" in some database, every human interaction results in shareholder value. It's the triumph of capitalism over humanity.

Most people don't care about anonymity as much as you do.

White man here, with a skill based job in a hot industry: I'm guessing you might be too (or relatively similar)? Possibly even living in an accepting area of the country

YouTube is now requiring you basically own all content publicly. For people like you and I, this isn't a problem: We have a job we're not going to be fired over for being a little odd, have a different political opinion, showing off a skill we obviously spend a lot of time on, or having certain hobbies.

For the vast majority of people: This isn't the case. They can be fired for being odd (G+ Post: "Mr Corresation's star fox cosplay outfit") as it's just weird, and customers googling them find it. Their boss may find out they're a liberal when the boss is a conservative, and find out they're saying some things that are out there. The boss may find out they play D&D and are an accountant and he may decide this goes against his christian values.

It's a matter of "non-sanctioned identities". I'm a white, 30 somethings vegetarian with moderate views on a ton of things, who plays table top RPGs regularly but on a firmly adult schedule and attends a huge local convention about these things. This is all you can discern from my G+ and I'm worried about it. I'd far prefer to have an anonymous handle "BLAH BLAH 1979" and google not feel like my identity needs to be slathered all over my hobbies.

Now take that anxiety, and apply it to all the transsexuals, closet wiccians, in the closet gays and lesbians, hidden area tattoo fans, subscribers to odd philosophies, only slightly out there conservative philosophies (doomsday prep, huge gun collections), video game players, buffy the vampire game fans, historical reenactors, and all the other freaks and geeks out there. Or even a "stereotyping beating minority" (aka, the black man in a mostly white firm who dresses exceptionally well so white people think "he's one of the good ones" and hides his hip hop appreciation, or the executive woman who hides the fact she's a mother while actually caring about some mother/parent issues on the weekend) who'd prefer to not bring that up at the office.

G+ screws up all this when it's brought into that area. I can use it, you can use it, the mostly "white guys in 20's and 30's who work at google" can use it, but it really screws up a lot of the promise of the internet for other people who don't have it so easy.

Sorry about the long comment, trying to reach out to someone possibly like me who just sees the bad stuff going away (the outright bigotry, etc), but doesn't really notice the bad stuff coming in (the outing of everyone's private life).

There's no reason to assume the "white guys in their 20s and 30s who work at Google" don't fly their freak flags every once in a while. Whether or not sharing flags present a risk of trust and why it presents a risk of trust is the real issue to address here.

I'm not sure you grasped his point. He wasn't saying "white guys never have anything to fear".

He was addressing his remarks TO skeptical white guys who feel they have nothing to fear, by asking them to consider what life would be like if they weren't white people with harmless opinions and positions of privilege. The way an argument is framed often determines whether it will be listened to.

I'm not saying we don't fly our freak flags, I'm guessing the guy I was directly responding to does not really do so if he doesn't see the big deal if G+ (and identity in general) is forced on the internet

One thing facebook has taught me is that some people will retaliate over trivial disagreements or trivial personal differences. I've been un-friended or yelled at for everything from providing context for a Bible quote ("read the next paragraph or two; here's the larger point it's making") to being a Broncos fan. I've had long-time friends decide not to talk to me any more over the one and only political disagreement we ever had.

I'm not ashamed of any of my opinions or ideas, but I certainly don't want to make it easy for people to go quote-mining or to discover that I disagree with them on some issue where they're unwilling to tolerate disagreement.

> such passion and fanaticism

Huh? Okay, let's say "3 stories on the frontpage" indicates passion, but where is the fanaticism? You need to take a break from HN for a week because of 3 stories about the same subject being on the frontpage? Come on.

> Now, apparently, we all are to remember as a system that worked? One that is so worthy of defense?

I agree that YouTube comments always sucked compared to even the most basic forum. But not because of trolls and stupid people. Depending on the video, you could have perfectly fine discourse or humour. If you're not aware of this, blame the videos you're watching, but don't generalize from them. People talk about personal things on YouTube, too, and sometimes they want to support each other without making their identity known.

Stuff like this, the actual value to be had in communicating, is what necessitates protecting it from spam, trolling etc. It's not to protect the people who "just want to watch videos" and can't help but glance downwards and throw fits over how stupid some people are. So if you're not involved or interested in YouTube comments, why would you care? And if you are, why wouldn't you?

This dismissal a la "it's just, you know, youtube comments" just doesn't work for me. Yeah, and? I know there is a line, and that you can't just allow anything everywhere all the time, but generally: if one doesn't stand up for the freedom of expression for silly, stupid or simply young people on a site that's potentially about everything and nothing, how committed are they? And if people being stupid is a problem, how is censoring that stupidity a solution? It's YouTube, not SomeTube.

And I say this as someone who has been using his real name on YouTube since 2006, and rarely comments. If only the people having real stakes in it would speak out against such crap, the people having real stakes in it would be fucked; so the rest of us have to use our imagination, and show a little solidarity. People high on the "importance scale" generally can look out for themselves, after all.

I,too, see fanatics in this thread and many others. They produce no cost-benefit analysis of G+ YT integration, use loaded language, provide anecdotal evidence and appeal to emotions.

>They produce no cost-benefit analysis of G+ YT integration

What? Few of us work at Google. We don't have the numbers. And even if we did, we can't predict what the outcome of the backlash and bad PR will be. Maybe it will be like the times people got upset at Facebook, which didn't really change much[1]. Maybe it will be like when people got upset at Digg and it basically killed the site.

I don't see people getting particularly emotional here. I'm not sure you know what emotional looks like. This is emotional: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs (Note: she managed to get her issues fixed in the end)

[1] I would note that the Facebook privacy issues were things that didn't really affect 99% of users, for most people the information that leaked didn't matter and the people probably didn't notice. The YouTube situation is a bit different because as well as the privacy concerns (which I think alone wouldn't be enough to have any lasting impact) there is also the fact that the switch over was completely bungled and has resulted in people turning off comments on their videos because the new system has so many problems: hugely long comments, allowing outside links, ranking comments based on how much response they get (i.e. moving trolls to the top).

Yep, you for one, didn't provide any cost-benefit analysis of YT G+ integration in this discussion, concentrating only on the negative outcomes.

>I'm not sure you know what emotional looks like.

That's rich.

>Yep, you for one, didn't provide any cost-benefit analysis of YT G+ integration in this discussion, concentrating only on the negative outcomes.

I feel like I'm repeating myself here (and perhaps this is a point that Googlers will never grasp, 42 shades of blue and all that) but many things can't meaningfully be expressed as a cost-benefit analysis. In this case, if you had asked me before the switch to come up with a cost benefit analysis (assuming I worked at Google and had the data) I could probably have come up with some figures, but the size of the errors would have been so huge as to make the exercise pointless.

Are you arguing that people sat in Google and seriously believed they were able to accurately quantify the cost of a huge raft of negative articles across the mainstream media and a bunch of the most popular users of the site shutting off their comments or leaving the site? (Assuming they even predicted the possibility of that happening). I just don't believe anybody can put a cost on that in advance. If that is really how decisions are made in Google then it is hardly surprising that their brand is so damaged.

Throwing around numbers is easy. It doesn't make the numbers right or relevant.

I am arguing that you and many others who have raged and pointed fingers didn't consider positive externalities of integrating G+ identity in Youtube.

Loaded language? You mean like "fanatics"?

Making vague statements about this topic and some of the people who care about it, isn't an analysis of any kind, either, or an excuse to dismiss the valid points being raised by others. And saying it's such a cesspool that the issue is irrelevant either way is not exactly contributing to the discussion, is it.

I honestly cannot come up with a single benefit of this; I mentioned some costs I see and so have others, lots more eloquently. And anecdotes do matter because this is about people and large scale effects on billions of individual lives. You can't measure or calculate any of this exactly; you have to listen to individual stories and apply your own experience, there is no shortcut.

Not caring is one thing, but it's quite another to openly proclaim that one cares so little, that they just might have to take a break from HN for a week until this terrible infection (surely 4chan must be behind it, it can't have anything to do with when Google made the change) simmers down, but not without asking others why they care, as if they hadn't already stated why.

Huh? Okay, let's say "3 stories on the frontpage" indicates passion

There are currently six (EDIT: actually seven) separate stories regarding this on the front-page (and they'll almost certainly keep coming for weeks as everyone tries to capitalize on some of that tasty outrage), and it's actually pretty good right now, as it tends to be midday: overnight is usually the real garbage time, when various pseudo-political issues tend to more easily get pushed up.

This dismissal a la "it's just, you know, youtube comments" just doesn't work for me.

A site owned by an all-encompassing information juggernaut (who absolutely have strong profiles of every user who touches that site. I've seen various people claim this is all to target advertising, as if Google doesn't already combine it all into a very accurate profile) saw that their comments were broken -- this is without question, and the overwhelming sentiment on YouTube comments has always been extremely negative -- and they tried to fix having multiple identity system, as companies always do when they have multiple systems.

In doing so they tried to cater to both sides of the coin, and maintained the ability to hold pseudo-anonymous profiles (that pseudo being just as imaginary as it always has been).

Mass outrage. People intentionally trying to scorch Earth to demonstrate a point (the irony of being assholes to demonstrate that the world has assholes apparently lost on them). What a boring waste of bits.

Look, this isn't a new issue. Lots and lots of us have been getting increasingly dissatisfied with Google for years. But each problem is isolated and hasn't made much of a ripple in the wider world...

Is it a big deal to me that Google messed up their automated AdWords "publisher" interaction script, and cut off my income for a few weeks? Why yes, yes it is... but that doesn't mean that anyone else cares about that. Even if Google's generally poor supplier relations affects a lot of people (and it does), there's never enough of them for it to affect Google, the brand.

Same goes for any number of other Google problems. Did the "nym wars" cause lots of disaffection amongst Google users? Yes, but again not enough. Did adding lots of pointless JavaScript to search results pages piss off a lot of people? How about the fact that search results are much less specific/useful than they used to be? Unilateral changes to the privacy policy? Or Google Reader? Code Search? Etcetera, etcetera...

Google have created a huge amount of simmering resentment over the last few years. So, once an issue like this starts to get some traction, there are a lot of people ready to wait in line to put the boot in.

It's not because of YouTube comments, but about another social network trying to squeeze into our lives. The harmless fun they once had been is gone. Now something comparable to an immune system reaction is kicking in whenever a social network tries to grab another piece of us.

No coincidence. 3 of the posts against Google were all #1, #2 and #3 before the HN thread was started on 4chan.

>One of the worst pieces of journalism about the Google+ policy, written by a "outspoken and controversial author and journalist".

That's a straw man right there. The article is clearly marked as an opinion piece in its summary. The op ed sections of news contains activism, not journalism.

Do you think there are only 120000 angry users?

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