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My real name is INSANELY googleable (as in, from what I can tell, a google of my first and last name acts like a "primary key" to my entire internet presence)... so I fucking hate these efforts. I hated it when Blizzard pushed it, I'll tolerate it on Google+ but frankly, I NEED a place where I can speak anonymously and freely.
now I regret linking my gmail+youtube accounts. Oh well, time to delete that youtube account. What was the name of that anonymous email service again, ironic that I'll find it with google. I don't need every future employer forever more knowing that I commented on a controversial video that one time back in '12.
Not like you had much of a choice. "Youtube accounts" have been dead for a few years now, you can't log into a pure youtube account you're required to convert it or link it to a google account. In fact, youtube doesn't even have its own login page anymore, it's accounts.google.com or bust.
My real name is INSANELY googleable (as in, from what I can tell, a google of my first and last name acts like a "primary key" to my entire internet presence)... so I fucking hate these efforts. I hated it when Blizzard pushed it, I'll tolerate it on Google+ but frankly, I NEED a place where I can speak anonymously and freely.
Use a realistic fake name?
now I regret linking my gmail+youtube accounts. Oh well, time to delete that youtube account. What was the name of that anonymous email service again, ironic that I'll find it with google. I don't need every future employer forever more knowing that I commented on a controversial video that one time back in '12.
I find it very frustrating that Google thinks that forcing people to reveal their identities is a "good" thing. "People will be held accountable now!" is the slogan I keep hearing ringing in my head listening to the excuses put out by companies. In the end, it is their service people are using and they can dictate the terms all they want. However, it also sets up a system where people will now expect websites across…
Remember: Google's business is advertising, and you can sell far better/more expensive ads to "real identities". As far as business goes, real identities are most definitely a good thing. For google, that is.
When you opt out of using your real name they ask you what the reason is and I think based on the feedback they get from that little survey they might extend the functionality to include multiple names in some way shape or form. (at least I hope). Google+ already has some of this ability with the brand pages so hopefully they carry that over into into YouTube.
When measured empirically, one study found that anonymous commenting from people without user accounts increases the ratio of good comments to poor quality ones. The reason is that so many more people comment. There's a certain fixed number of trolls and troublemakers who have a lot of free time and will go through whatever hoops are needed to set up an account with a registered name, which may or may not be their real one. Legitimate commenters though are not as motivated to jump through hoops and comply with demands they use a consistent, or real sounding name.
http://blog.topix.com/2008/01/anonymous-comments-by-the-numb...
As far as people with video accounts on youtube who are contributing content and allowing for the business model, youtube has many cases of attractive women vloggers who are routinely stalked by unhinged fan/viewers. Do these vloggers benefit from a degree of anonymity, or the ability to use pen names? Yes. In addition to attractive women, there are also many aliased vloggers posting political opinions about police and military brutality, citizen journalists anonymously uploading video from protests, etc. Maintaining penname aliases on vlogger content accounts clearly allows these contributors to increase their own safety by making it more difficult to stalk and harass them in real life by not just trolls and dysfunctional people, but also from government agents intending to both silence them and do them harm.