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.
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.
>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 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.
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.
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.