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Using Google without a Google+ profile

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Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#221

Post by mkozlows »

dredmorbius wrote: post #163
mkozlows wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Reader never had many users. Feedly claims to have captured 80% of the Reader userbase when it shut down, and they have 15 million users. That is incredibly small by the standards of social networks, much smaller than even the pessimistic active-user estimates for G+.

The number of active G+ accounts -- publicly posting in any given month -- is less than that. I and Eric Enge, he of Stone Temple Consulting, have independently estimated this based on G+ sitemap sampling. I pulled about 50k profiles off a single sitemap, Enge 500k from multiple. My pull was based on strong evidence that the profiles are randomly distributed through sitemaps. Both of us found ~6-12m publicly active p…

That is a bad definition of "active," particularly considering that the original selling point of G+ relative to Facebook was its privacy controls (circles). I know many people who post to G+, only a few of whom do so publicly.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#222

Post by brownbat »

paps wrote: post #149
nogridbag wrote: post #47

I find it incredibly amusing and also very frustrating that all the top comments to this article are simply G+ re-shares that add absolutely no value to the comments section and simply more garbage the reader has to sift through in order to view legit comments. >>"Google has been doing some rethinking" thanks I already read that >>"#googleplusupdate #youtube " thank you that was valuable >>[another summary of the art…

I highly recommend using Alien Tube [0]. It fetches reddit comments for the video, it's really well done. If it finds nothing, it displays the orignal YouTube comments. [0] https://alientube.co/

Wow, it's like glimpsing the alternate universe where sidewiki worked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki

Disaggregate content from commentary. That's the internet I want.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#223

Post by brownbat »

dredmorbius wrote: post #208
alwaysdoit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it's not like YouTube comments were ever working well.

As I noted at the time, fixing a roiling cesspit by draining it into the freshwater supply is hardly a solution. YT comments should have been hauled out and shot. Not jackboot-forced onto other platforms as well.

Yeah, there was a project comparing YT comments with Metafilter comments at one point: http://comments.thatsaspicymeatball.com/

Looks like the latest comments are from Feb 2015, sad that it's not still live.

Not a terrible quality snapshot though.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#224

Post by InclinedPlane »

alwaysdoit wrote: post #77
exodust wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, it's frustrating. Youtube comments really are hopelessly broken. Re-shares are not good reading. They are written by users for their followers, not for the people on the actual video page. As you said, they have zero value. When I first noticed this way back when Google started publishing re-share comments under the videos, I would reply to those comments with remarks such as "I already knew that; yes I know wha…

To be fair, it's not like YouTube comments were ever working well.

There are two types of YouTube comments. There are comments from random people on very popular videos. Those are often an excuse for people to say something with a big audience, and those comments have usually been of low quality. The other type of comment is when there's a small community around some particular niche subject or particular content creator. And there the quality of the comments can actually be pretty decent, because it's not just drive-by comments from random folks. Unfortunately, YouTube's comments changes have generally targeted marginal improvements on the quality of the first kind of comments to the detriment of the second kind.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#225

Post by InclinedPlane »

dredmorbius wrote: post #216
NamTaf wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB's threaded replies also only go 1 deep.

As do YouTube's IIRC. See Jeff Atwood of StackExchange on his thoughts re: threading. My thought is that HTML needs a comments primitive with date, author, subject, and references , with the resulting view (threaded, flat, collapsed, etc.) a client detail. Or, you know, Usenet, tin.

I still miss usenet. It's a shame that we still haven't improved on comment systems despite decades of technological advancement.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#226

Post by gammarator »

arihant wrote: post #213
greggman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right but Facebook succeeded dispite the exact same real name policy. It's hard to look at Facebook's success with that policy and then claim it was obvious google would fail with it. The better question is why did Facebook get away with it?

Because Facebook had it from the beginning. Nobody wants to put their real legal name on their YouTube comments they've made in last 8-10 years.

And because in the beginning, Facebook was completely closed off from the greater web and had very good privacy controls. Why would I worry about using my real name when only my friends could see my profile, and it took a harvard.edu email to even log in to the site?

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#227

Post by protomyth »

gherkin0 wrote: post #66
hyperpallium wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did they need real names anyway? If they build a profile based on your browsing and social graph to show you ads, what does it matter who you actually are, so long as you have those interests? Like a node in a graph being distinguished only by the arcs connecting it.

I think the use of real names was identified as one of the reasons for Facebook's success[1], so they just copied that. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/myspace-quietly-begins-enco...

Facebook's lesson to Google should have been one of caution for forcing real names since Facebook is pathetic at telling if a name is real or not. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/16/facebook-r...

Once again, if your verification of real names excludes a whole group's conventions, you have failed hard.

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#228

Post by uXH2mKnh »

wyclif wrote: post #72
throwaway16384 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you operate at Google scale, thinking about morality means trying to anticipate and aggregate the total effect of your actions. Requiring a unified publicly visible and "real name" discoverable identity associated with all (Google-owned) online activity can have huge chilling effects on significant demographics - generally not the demographics deciding these policies, building these systems, or even the most pro…

I've been using Google+ since the first day it was available; I figure about half the people I have circled are not using their real names.

[(People harmed by G+ policy) * ~1/2] is still O(People harmed by G+ policy)

(Also, presumably "half the people you happen to know who joined G+ that you circled" has some selection bias to it.)

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#229

Post by protomyth »

lmm wrote: post #107
greggman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right but Facebook succeeded dispite the exact same real name policy. It's hard to look at Facebook's success with that policy and then claim it was obvious google would fail with it. The better question is why did Facebook get away with it?

That wasn't Facebook's policy. Facebook removed fake name accounts when users complained , but "The Friendly Monster" was around my university for a good six months, and a friend with a less obvious fake name has kept her account to this day. Google+ aggressively and preemptively went after fake names, and even caught some real names by mistake.

My experience with Facebook is a bit different. They were pretty aggressive in suspending Native American accounts with traditional names (e.g. Yellow Bird). http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/16/facebook-r...

Re: Using Google without a Google+ profile

#230

Post by dredmorbius »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #225
dredmorbius wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As do YouTube's IIRC. See Jeff Atwood of StackExchange on his thoughts re: threading. My thought is that HTML needs a comments primitive with date, author, subject, and references , with the resulting view (threaded, flat, collapsed, etc.) a client detail. Or, you know, Usenet, tin.

I still miss usenet. It's a shame that we still haven't improved on comment systems despite decades of technological advancement.

I've spent a fair bit of time reflecting on it. I don't think it would work if resurrected:

1. Usenet was small. Somewhere between 50k and 500k users, based on my own and Gene Spafford's guestimates. More solid numbers appreciated (~1988-1992 or so).

2. It was selective. You had to be a student at a research university, or work for a tech company, or have government access, or be able to gain access to systems provided by same. Which meant you were at the tail end of a highly selective filter.

3. It crumbled under the face of multiple attacks: spam, abuse, trolls, etc. There were some defenses, but ultimately insufficient.

4. It was a pain to administrer, and for little or no gain. Which meant that few providers would, those who did charged, and they recouped minimum benefit for the effort. Ultimately it fell prey to the problem of shrinking usage and ready substitutes largely via mailing lists (relatively comparable) and Web-based forums.

5. Limited rich-format support, limited permanent content support, limited collaborative effort support. A Usenet-type functionality with _some_ support for post formatting, for images, video, and audio (but not to the point of being readily abusable), and for permanent content (FAQs, Wikis, etc.) to be usefully co-related to the primary discussion, would be useful.

I don't know that we'll ever have "one" conversation platform again. And no, Facebook doesn't count.

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