I'm not at all a G+ fan, and yet I wholeheartedly support Google's decision to require it for YouTube comments. There is no single policy they could've enacted to improve the quality of their comment cespool, and I feel that the people complaining about it the loudest were likely part of the problem.
Co-Founder of Youtube makes his first comment in 8 years
241–250 of 269 posts
Re: Co-Founder of Youtube makes his first comment in 8 years
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's an even simpler way to improve youtube comments: ignore comments on videos that are likely to have low quality comments. But there are plenty of videos where that's not the case. There are many excellent scientific and educational videos on youtube, and the comments sections for many of them are excellent. Or were anyway. Periodic videos. Minute physics. Veritasium. EEVblog. Vihart. And so many others. In such…
I watch Vihart's videos, and the comments are full of low signal. All of the high quality comments are from G+ from anecdotal evidence. Let's look at the top ones on her Dragon Doodle video: "Ever wonder why fractals are called "fractals"? It's because they have "fractional dimension". This idea comes from noticing that when you scale a 2-dimensional object up by a factor of 2, its area increases by a factor of 4, bu…
As an employee of Google, you should realize you're in a groupthink environment. I absolutely despise the new Google+ change. The top comment on the most recent video I watched was a Google+ comment consisting of the title of the video plus ten hashtags. That was it. The other Google+ comments were similarly horrible and content-free.
At least with the previous implementation, you'd get a top comment that made you laugh once in awhile.
Re: Co-Founder of Youtube makes his first comment in 8 years
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the thing that bothers/scares me the most about this balkanization of the internet that's happening. You end up getting forced into bubbles that someone else has decided you belong in. And if you don't know it's happening, you can't even try to stop it. For me, I have not found utility in the things that have been selected for me, so most of these services are becoming useless. All those "smartest guys in the…
The crazy/frustrating part to me is that this takes place "even when you're not signed into an account".
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Re: Co-Founder of Youtube makes his first comment in 8 years
#244Here's a simple way to improve YouTube. Turn off comments. I have never once, as far as I can remember, read a YouTube comment that was in any way, insightful or provided meaningful information that wasn't better obtained elsewhere. It is a cesspool, and the people who are complaining about needing to login to G+ to leave a comment frankly largely intersect with the set of people who are the problem. Honestly, if log…
i've gotten useful info via !yt comments, as well as had meaningful interactions.
the entire push to "use my real name" vis a vis my gmail account instead of my historical youtube account name, of which this new comments action is a part, bothers me.
also, it smells of an attempt out of desperation to beef up content on g+.
Re: Co-Founder of Youtube makes his first comment in 8 years
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this not the case with all three big players in the smartphone market? I don't have an iphone but my ipod sure seems useless without an account with Apple. It's the same account I use for itunes, apps on my macbook pro, and their developer network. I presume MSFT has a similar situation with a live account. People are just upset because their Google account happens to have some social features to it. I've personal…
> People are just upset because their Google account happens to have some social features to it. And that isn't worrying to you? People can add you to their G+ circles and there's no way to stay hidden. So Google gets to collect all the information about people you associate with in order to sell your personal info better (to the NSA, among others)
No, people could always have said things about me and I'd have no way of stopping them.
Re: Co-Founder of Youtube makes his first comment in 8 years
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
>No you're not. It's free. Nothing is free bro. Business 101. >Who said anything about creators. They /OWN/ Youtube. They have made it /VERY/ clear what is happening. If you want to ignore that that's up to you, but you can't turn around and act as if it's some inexplicable weird move that makes no sense when they have detailed every step of it. No one is saying its a weird move. I'm just arguing that the WAY they ar…
> Nothing is free bro. Business 101. That's not a fact, that's just a saying. Youtube is free to you, it's not free to advertisers. There can be products that come free to some and not free to others. > You shouldn't have to have a public profile or be forced to share your comment on youtube You aren't, choose the option to create a page and your account name is kept, your identity is kept and the public page contain…
Yes you could do that, but again I don't see how its user-friendly to have to resort to creating multiple accounts to bypass the G+ requirements.
No one is saying that Google doesn't have the _right_ to do this, just that its obnoxious and goes against the very user-friendly/oriented image that Google itself tries to perpetuate. You've yet to address this very point.
>That's not a fact, that's just a saying. Youtube is free to you, it's not free to advertisers. There can be products that come free to some and not free to others.
You're just splitting hairs about what constitutes an expense. Youtube is not 100% free to use. There are costs... like the time it takes to watch an ad before your video plays... that's a bit myopic on my part as well, but if you want to get technical...
Re: Co-Founder of Youtube makes his first comment in 8 years
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the thing that bothers/scares me the most about this balkanization of the internet that's happening. You end up getting forced into bubbles that someone else has decided you belong in. And if you don't know it's happening, you can't even try to stop it. For me, I have not found utility in the things that have been selected for me, so most of these services are becoming useless. All those "smartest guys in the…
> You end up getting forced into bubbles that someone else has decided you belong in. You are not forced into anything, if you don't want to be put into "bubbles" use other services.
Well, then you're put in the bubble of people who don't use the offending service.
And ... this may be news to you, but every once in a while a large bubbling company may actually buy some upstart service where their own attempts at NIH entry into a niche fail.
You know, like Google buying YouTube in the first place.
Re: Co-Founder of Youtube makes his first comment in 8 years
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
The overlap between people who enjoy the same videos as me and people I trust enough to them tell my real name is almost non-existent. And I'm not sure I'm the only one thinking that way. If I want to talk about a video, I can, you know, share it (I can even share it on Google+ , that way Google loses nothing). If it turns out to be a really cool video, I'll even maybe get to impress my friends that way.
You're not alone. I don't quite understand the war against anonymity on the internet. Seeing someone's real name and photo next to a comment doesn't make what they say or do on the net any more civil.
"This is a great Python module." -Guido van Rossum
"This is a cool display technology." -John Carmack
"Here's a great link to send to skeptics about global climate change." -Al Gore
"This article is pseudo-science at best, and lies at worst." -Bill Nye
"I'm sorry, Pluto." -Neil deGrasse Tyson
Without attribution, none of those comments are remotely interesting. (They're all made up, but you get the idea.)
When I Search for things now, I see top results from previous co-workers, who have Shared things. Those results LEAP out at me.
Re: Co-Founder of Youtube makes his first comment in 8 years
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
I watch Vihart's videos, and the comments are full of low signal. All of the high quality comments are from G+ from anecdotal evidence. Let's look at the top ones on her Dragon Doodle video: "Ever wonder why fractals are called "fractals"? It's because they have "fractional dimension". This idea comes from noticing that when you scale a 2-dimensional object up by a factor of 2, its area increases by a factor of 4, bu…
As an employee of Google, you should realize you're in a groupthink environment. I absolutely despise the new Google+ change. The top comment on the most recent video I watched was a Google+ comment consisting of the title of the video plus ten hashtags. That was it. The other Google+ comments were similarly horrible and content-free. At least with the previous implementation, you'd get a top comment that made you la…
It's not really Google groupthink that YouTube comments suck, that's an external observation. Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/202/
It may be groupthink that G+ comments are better, but for my social stream, the people I follow, G+ is not a ghost town, it is a highly interesting place full of lots of thoughtful commentators. If I can filter comments by those whom I respect, and transitively, maybe one degree extended, it would be a vast improvement.
I say let people turn off the filters and leave the old comments as an option. Personally, first think I'd do is turn them off.
Re: Co-Founder of Youtube makes his first comment in 8 years
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this how you treat your customers?
For the most part yes. There are always naysayers, always conservatives. If you listen to them, no progress can ever be made. You have to decide on a course and take it. Ultimately, if integration with Google ruins Youtube, then a competitor will eviscerate them. If it ultimately improves it, the criticisms will fade away.
"There are always naysayers, always conservatives. If you listen to them, no progress can ever be made."
Did it occur to you that perhaps some of these "conservatives" learned a painful lesson the type of which you have not yet encountered?