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Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me

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Re: Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me

#71

Post by rb2e »

Having a Google plus account linked to YouTube with real name policy has not stopped the trolls and poisonous commenters. They have just carried on as usual. Now it has just made it easier with spammers, blackhats now able to leave links on their comments. Sure they can be deleted with an hour or so but that one hour is all you need to spread your payload.

The only people who the real name policy punishes is the real users. The ones who do everything right. The ones who do not wish to have their lives outed this way.

Now I'm gay, and have no problem being out online but at home in public is another problem. I've never moved from my Childhood home and I live in a small town, its pretty easy to know who I am, so I made it a policy to never link the two so I don't have to do deal with Homophobia on my Doorstep. Its a small town and news soon spreads. I don't have a Google Plus account and am moving away from Gmail for this reason. I never ever use a real photo online. Facebook is only used for minor things on an anonymous email address with a blank photo. Even then I hate it and do not use it for personal stuff.

If you are really concerned about privacy, just delete your Gmail, Google Plus account. Get your wallet out and move to a paid alternative where you will not have to worry about having your email connected to a social network. Buy a domain name, use a private whois service like at NearlyFreeSpeech.Net so you can move between providers over the years but keep the same address.

If you really must comment on YouTube, create a Google Plus profile on a brand new Gmail account for those exact purposes. Understand that anything you write online can be traced back to you. We are not anonymous despite if you never use a real name. Google knows more about you and your interests than any other entity and it has years of your surfing and searching habits in its database.

Edited to add, if you hate the comments on your own YouTube videos, just turn them off.

Re: Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me

#73

Post by alexeisadeski3 »

rb2e wrote: post #71

Having a Google plus account linked to YouTube with real name policy has not stopped the trolls and poisonous commenters. They have just carried on as usual. Now it has just made it easier with spammers, blackhats now able to leave links on their comments. Sure they can be deleted with an hour or so but that one hour is all you need to spread your payload. The only people who the real name policy punishes is the real…

Agreed on all points, but I'd just like to add:

Never saw the issue with YouTube comments. Always was much ado about nothing. So people were immature - it's funny. So people were insulting - grow up, they're having fun.

This whole movement to control YouTube comments reeks more of management's personal embarrassment that their customers weren't as serious and high class as they. Again, grow up. Not everyone is like you - not even your customers.

Re: Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me

#74

Post by throwaway282 »

Alternatively, why not think of it this way: If you disagree with what's being done on YouTube, delete your account and move on. Nobody's forcing anyone to comment or maintain a Google account. If you're going to be there, you play by their rules. What's the point in bitching about Google's changes in policy when Google isn't forcing you to use their product and when you can leave when you want to.

Re: Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me

#75

Post by dreamfactory »

EGreg wrote: post #52
fat0wl wrote: post #23

I think anonymity on the internet is a great thing. It's a place where you can socialize and share ideas with strangers without having to give them your name/address/home phone #. You can even start honest, more controversial discussions and do some high-level reasoning that you couldn't necessarily achieve with close friends. If Google won't allow that on their services anymore, I pray everyone leaves them & moves t…

I don't think everyone has to leave Google for you to have productive anonymous discussions. For what it's worth, I think reputations (under anonymous usenames) are A very important component in having accountability and quality in discussions.

http://www.ponychan.net/chan/dis/res/75296.html#75350

Re: Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me

#76

Post by anigbrowl »

Zirro wrote: post #35
patrickaljord wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women tend not to have penises.

I am sure you were joking, but to clarify and expand: Why do men seek contact with the opposite sex more frequently than women? Why do they tend to do so in a way that seems to bother the woman in question? Why are women not doing the same to men?

Because they don't need to, in general; and because reproductive biology predisposes women to be choosy (as the physical burden of pregnancy and childbirth on women is enormously high).

Re: Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me

#77

Post by [deleted] »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #45
BEEdwards wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that anonymity leading to great conversation is disproved by reality. This move, though short sighted and ill advised, is precisely to combat the cluster fuck that is YouTube comments powered by anonymity. I'm not sure what the solution is, but one look at the quality of anonymous unmodderated comments calls for one.

If anything, at best this has left the comment quality unchanged. Now you have people bombarding sections with ASCII art tanks, memes and protests against the G+ revamp. Personally I don't think YT comments, for all their vulgarity and chaos, required any "solution". They were cesspools, but ultimately cesspools of humanity. There is absolutely no reason one couldn't ignore them if they found them so distressing.

[deleted]

Re: Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me

#78

Post by dreamfactory »

rhizome wrote: post #47
lignuist wrote: post #30

So what is the next coup? Linking all the comments from the past that you wrote when you were thinking it was pseudonymous to your real name? My only recommendation: Get out of such services as fast as possible.

Keep in mind that Google owns the old Deja News Usenet archive...

And they might buy any other service in future

Re: Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me

#79

Post by username223 »

marvin wrote: post #44
BEEdwards wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that anonymity leading to great conversation is disproved by reality. This move, though short sighted and ill advised, is precisely to combat the cluster fuck that is YouTube comments powered by anonymity. I'm not sure what the solution is, but one look at the quality of anonymous unmodderated comments calls for one.

You're missing 50% of the picture here. Anonymous, unmoderated discussion in an uneducated crowd is the worst of both worlds. Obviously . But anonymous, moderated discussion in a forum of disciplined and/or informed, educated users is better than the same discussion in a forum where all the identities of the participants are known, precisely for the reasons fat0wl outlined. You can look to any of the heavily moderate…

"Google should know better than anyone the realities of public discourse on the Internet."

Google wants to extract the most money possible from each HTTP request. Knowing how to bill you (credit card, cell number, etc.) is a really good way of doing that.

Re: Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me

#80

Post by andrewfong »

Seems like an opportunity for a browser plugin designed to enforce pseudonymity. You can already create different pseudonymous identities via cookie management or different user profiles.[1]

The problem with this approach is that it's inconvenient to keep switching back and forth. And all it takes is one inadvertent click to irreversibly associate your two pseudonyms. This is where a plugin could help. Basically, it just comes with very basic set of rules -- if YouTube, I am X; if Gmail, I am Y; else I am Z. For bonus points, integrate with Tor.

Anyone know of something like this already? Might be a fun weekend project otherwise.

[1] https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en

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