16 ms·

Nonplussed

477 points by pearjuice 13y ago

danso 13y ago
The OP makes a good point. But I can't be the only one who wants to watch that bunny video now. Since you're using their work to make your blog post more visually compelling, why not actually link to it? Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_J0AMPPD34 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_J0AMPPD34
chimeracoder 13y ago
I wonder how much engagement Google/Facebook/et. al. lose from people who are about to make a comment/post a status/etc., and then thing 'Hm, no - this is private now, but what about in a year when they automatically change my privacy settings without asking me?' Put another way, imagine I am a teenager or college student who uses Facebook. 1. Start to upload a photo from my phone of me and my friends doing shots 2. Try to figure out how (on my phone!) to set privacy settings so that my younger brother (who is my Facebook friend) and my parents (who aren't, but use the Internet and sometimes Google my name) can't see it. 3. Remember that Facebook has a history of "expanding" privacy settings retroactively 4. Think "Ah, fuck it", and send a Snapchat to my friends instead. In reality it's probably not that common right now, but hopefully that may increase in the future. You can only pull the rug out from under your users so many times before learn to walk along another path.
- Lewisham 13y ago
  I don't really want to dive into this conversation in any real depth, but I do want to point out that Google+, with old features or new, has never violated the ACLs that users set. If you set something to private, it remains private forever. To do otherwise would be corporate suicide. Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on G+.
  - chimeracoder 13y ago
    > I do want to point out that Google+, with old features or new, has never violated the ACLs that users set. If you set something to private, it remains private forever. I know that, which is why I used the example of Facebook. However, Google+ does make it incredibly easy to leak information that I would otherwise consider private accidentally. For example, I can't use Google+ with my primary email address, as it's a Google+ account. However, because it's linked with my Gmail account (which does have a Google+ account), some people who have added me on Google+ have been able to figure out my Gmail address (which I haven't used for email purposes in years[0]). I can imagine all the technical reasons for this, but that doesn't change the fact that it feels a bit wrong for a service to hand out my old email address (which I never give out anymore) to people I've met recently and who have added me on Google+ using my current email address. Imagine your Google+ email address is something that you can't change, but don't really want people to see anymore - this isn't uncommon; it appeared in a New York Times piece just yesterday, in the context of college admissions[1]. Thankfully, my personal email address is much more tame than that student's, but that still doesn't mean I want anybody to know or use it nowadays. Furthermore, it's incredibly easy to sign up "accidentally" to use Youtube with Google+ and your "real name" instead of continuing to use your pseudonym. As for the distinction you point out - I know the difference, and you know the difference. But most users don't. > To do otherwise would be corporate suicide. Apparently not completely - Facebook's gotten away with it for years![2] [0] This may have been fixed, since it was a while ago that I last noticed, but it was still the case for quite a while. I would have to go through my inbox to remember the details of why this happened - I remember debugging and tracking it down. But the fact that it took that much effort to discover why my new acquaintances suddenly knew my old (personal) email address, and that I can't remember anymore, speaks volumes as to how easy it would be for a less savvy user to accidentally leak information that they wanted to keep private. [1]http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-gpa-then-they-saw-your-tweets.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-g... [2] http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ - this graph doesn't distinguish clearly between those which were automatically retroactive and those which weren't, but that's a topic that's been well-reported and is easy to search for.
    - Lewisham 13y ago
      I'm honestly not sure how your email address would be leaked, vanity URLs are name-based and at least one of the reasons Plus uses ID strings was in order to prevent leaking any account details through the URL. I'm sorry that other people are figuring it out, that sucks. If you remember what happened and think that G+ has had a hand in the leakage, please feel free to ping me (my URL is in my profile) and I'll try to follow it up. Personally I do feel that G+ has done a good job at communicating to users the privacy they do and don't have, as the ACLs were baked in at the beginning. I think users have had the possibility to be confused when data is being used outside the http://plus.google.com http://plus.google.com domain, like Shared Endorsements and the YouTube comments, as this opens up the worry ACLs are being violated. I think there's more work that can be done to communicate that this hasn't happened, such as putting the "Shared (publicly|privately)" on YouTube comments so you can see why those are there.
      - chimeracoder 13y ago
        > If you remember what happened and think that G+ has had a hand in the leakage, please feel free to ping me (my URL is in my profile) and I'll try to follow it up Thanks for the offer - I really appreciate it. I think it had something to do with group contacts in Gmail, but I can't remember. If I have some time today I might take a look. To clarify: I'm not exactly mad at Google in this case, because I'm a developer and I know how tricky it can be to get these things right even in small, standalone products[0]. And unlike some people on HackerNews, I don't think this is a result of bad intentions. It's just that, every time I see something like this happen (beagle3 points out the example of Buzz below), I can't help but notice that users' trust is both fragile (easily broken) and unforgiving (no benefit of the doubt). These things are tough to get right, but they're very critical for the long-term success of a product. [0] Also, the consequences for me happened to be pretty mild, thankfully.
        rhizome 13y ago
        It sounds like it was a failure of design.
  - beagle3 13y ago
    No, but Buzz was a horrible metadata leak. It's not like there's a guarantee no data will ever leak.
- turing 13y ago
  The scenario you describe is precisely why I like G+'s circles; every post and every photo shared is shared with a specific subset of my contacts. The vast majority of my posts on G+ are targeted at only a fraction of my friends.
  - spullara 13y ago
    Facebook had this functionality for years before G+ launched and is built into the status update box.
    - scholia 13y ago
      Plus you can have closed user groups on Facebook. They work well....
    - turing 13y ago
      I'm well aware of that, but the UI is nowhere near as convenient and targeted sharing doesn't play as central a role. "Circles" was the major differentiating feature when G+ launched.
- metalgearbob 13y ago
  I am a 22 year old kid and I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me. It even happens with snap chats actually, because of the apps that allow you to save a snap. I am noticing however that there seems to be a strong correlation between household income and internet behavior. My wealthier friends all have pristine online images, while the poorer ones tend to share more.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    I'm pretty sure Snapchat notifies you if the other party takes a screenshot of your photo, though.
    - k-mcgrady 13y ago
      They notify you but that other person still has the photo. It's better than nothing but it's not that helpful.
      - metalgearbob 13y ago
        See my post above, its an actual app.
      - oceanplexian 13y ago
        Unless you have a jailbroken phone...
    - metalgearbob 13y ago
      There are actual apps you can download that allow you to save a photo or video, not just the screenshot. I'm actually pretty baffled that people still don't know about them. Renders snapchat useless.
      - MichaelGG 13y ago
        The concept of Snapchat is useless - it's literally DRM. It will work well enough for some folks, but fundamentally it simply isn't technically possible. At least not without a "trusted computing" model with remote attestation and so on.
- coldpie 13y ago
  > 1. Start to upload a photo from my phone of me and my friends doing shots Just don't do this. Seriously. Don't do it. I don't know why people keep putting self-damaging things on the Internet. If it's on the Internet, you should consider it as public. Full stop. There's so many avenues for things to get out into the public (leaked passwords, website glitches, human error in general), that unless you're extremely careful about the dissemination of that information (hint: don't be /in/ the picture in the first place, or you've already lost), the data is as good as public. Really, what did you gain by putting that picture on the Internet, anyway?
  - computerbob 13y ago
    [Really, what did you gain by putting that picture on the Internet, anyway?] It is a memory. Doing shots isn't wrong or bad. Maybe doing 20 of them and then driving home from the bar is bad. Posting pictures is a way to relive a precious moment in time with others.
  - RodericDay 13y ago
    what's wrong with doing shots? you're acting as if it's universally unethical or something what about this: someone is being odiously racist, so I write a brutal reply to shut em down. Should I also hesitate on doing this, thinking that some employer may infer my radical left politics from it and stop me from getting a job in the future? All you need to know about common sense about what to upload online is that it changes, not only in time but from social scene to social scene.
petercooper 13y ago
It’s not that I find Google or even Google+ itself bad. But the connections between the account, the Google+ profile, the Google profile, the various websites and contact lists This is totally it for me. I have a few Google accounts (an 'original' one and two Apps For Your Domain ones for e-mail and work) and it seems Google has made Plus accounts for each and I have things spread around them all. I've seen stories where people tried to "merge" accounts and ended up losing access to their mail, etc.. so rocking the boat doesn't seem worth it to me. I don't mind Google's (usually great) services but it's the binding together that makes me wary.
- seiji 13y ago
  How do we reconcile Google Only Hires Geniuses with their executional incompetence across multiple (dozens of?) products? Is it a pride of ego fallacy? They think they are the best and they can do no wrong, so they just keep doing things without thinking results through? Too many logical programmers trying to have input on end users/UI/UX decisions where visuals and emotions are more important? Too many 24 year old bro managers running around trying to make a name for themselves by manipulating people in flashy ways instead of quietly making the world a better place?
  - scholia 13y ago
    I agree with the sentiments, but most Google products worked better when they were done by logical programmers. They've all got much less usable since the fancy UI designers came in and screwed them up.
    - seiji 13y ago
      Good point. There's the genius of the original Google Search experience versus the new horrendous "three to five floating javascript toolbars taking up 50% of the screen" Google+ pages with unreadable URLs. "Which post? Oh, post 43278947329849783223? Yeah, I liked that one too."
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      > They've all got much less usable since the fancy UI designers came in and screwed them up. See also, the decline of GNOME. This isn't a problem unique to Google.
kunai 13y ago
I was going to use Google Code for hosting my projects, but, after this fiasco, I think I'll just use Github instead. Hey, at least I'll get to use a DVCS. :P In all honesty, though, while this won't hurt Google right now, it's going to come back and bite them in the rear end soon enough. If they keep making these kinds of changes, what's next? Having to sign in to Google+ to use Android? A Google+ feed on the Chrome OS deskop? Requirements for Google+ account with "Developer Privileges" to download Go? Again, this doesn't matter much now, but it's going to hurt them later. It happens to the best of everyone: Microsoft. Apple. Google.
- Bahamut 13y ago
  GitHub is better anyway :P
- ameen 13y ago
  Or use Bitbucket! Free private repos :D
- rogerbinns 13y ago
  I do both Google Code and Github. GC feels unmaintained these days, and there is no option for paid/private repositories. GC is also removing their download service - Github did the same but then later provided "releases" functionality. Github's issue tracker is terrible (try to prioritise things) while GC is a lot better. The one thing GC does really well is they let you have multiple repositories per project. This means you can have an Android repository, a server repository, a web site repository etc and they can all be on the same page using the same issue tracker, wiki etc. I've asked Github to implement this but they aren't interested. When each repo has its own wiki, issue tracker, releases etc it is far too painful (eg you can't move tickets between projects). That also helps for documentation. My projects have extensive generated documentation. With github you have to dump that into a branch, and put generated content into a source code control system is not a good idea. With GC you can just created another repository and put the generated doc there. I personally prefer Mercurial over git, but that isn't a realistic choice with github. On the whole, while GC has some nice things, I doubt it has much of a future. I wish github would pick up the multiple repositories thing.
Bahamut 13y ago
I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm all for this change, largely because of the crappy anonymous comments you see out there on YouTube, which was the point of this transition in the first place. However, forcing Google+ onto people does have me wary as well. I don't mind using Google+, but it seems like Google's way to slowly worm their way into people using its social component. I admittedly am not sure why it affects me, but something about that does rub me the wrong way (although not enough to ditch using Google services). It's not quite insidious, but it does feel like it gives off the vibe that we are the product, even more than usual.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  If you've seen what FB comments does on news sites - then you know that using real names doesn't really guarantee improved quality.
  - scholia 13y ago
    For many years, I was a paying subscriber to the online version of the Wall Street Journal. A highly select audience, you'd think. And yes, the comments on that were mostly rubbish as well ;-)
    - Bahamut 13y ago
      To be fair, it is the Wall Street Journal :P . Using real names does not fix the problem completely, I agree - you easily see the effect on articles on politics on news sites, with the mass shill accounts. However, I argue that it is a lot greater of a deterrent.
- chongli 13y ago
  How has this solved the problem? My youtube account is still attached to a throwaway Gmail account. So what if it's now also attached to a throwaway G+ account that I never use?
- gibwell 13y ago
  The goal is reasonable, but Google+ doesn't solve the problem.
jenius 13y ago
I may be mistaken, but I think the entire point of this recent change was to force people to use their real names and faces rather than commenting anonymously (due to the fact that youtube comment sections are typically the worst things ever), and if so it seems like google has actually achieved it's goal. Now, whether it's a good decision to make it difficult/impossible to anonymously comment on youtube videos is an entirely separate discussion that I'm not taking a side on (yet), but I'd be interested in seeing a discussion about that here.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  Where is the proof that "real names = better quality." That argument gets paraded everywhere but I've yet to see an actual study or proof of this.
  - shawnz 13y ago
    So does that mean Google should not even experiment with the idea, just because nobody else has published data about it yet? Why does there need to be "proof"? It is Google's choice, just like it is your choice to use Google products.
    - joelrunyon 13y ago
      I'm not saying they shouldn't "experiment" - experiment all they want. It's when they parade out the idea that "real names = better quality" as the reason for a change - without citing it. Especially since it's such a cross-product change that effects literally every single one of their products.
    - Zecc 13y ago
      I don't remember ever choosing to use G+.
      - shawnz 13y ago
        I never said anything about choosing to use G+. You choose to use comments on youtube, and one of the consequences of that choice is that you must have a G+ page.
kmfrk 13y ago
I'm leery enough about commenting on different sites that use Disqus as it is.
spodek 13y ago
Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook, then LinkedIn, a while ago. I haven't deleted my Google+ account only because laziness and fear of an experience like the article's author prevent me from going to the site. People describe leaving as trendy, as if leaving had something to do with other people as opposed to the sites' own repellent behavior. For me leaving was easy and fun -- http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun. Experience has unequivocally shown me my life is better without them. I have a feeling the market forces forcing Google, Facebook, et al into an arms race after your privacy and personal life will motivate people to leave more and more in favor of small players that do one thing well. I expect people here will see the writing on the wall first that the sooner you get out the better. Yes, social networks have benefits, but they have costs too. Deleting Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc accounts improves your life. Deleting them earlier improves your life earlier.
- pcurve 13y ago
  Facebook was already doing a good job driving its own users away. All Google had to do was go under the Facebook tree, and pick up dropped users off the ground. It really didn't need to go climbing up the tree to pick them off the branches. As they're climbing the ladder, their own users are falling out of the baskets. Corny analogy aside, they're not even doing a good job integrating mail, youtube, google, google+. I can't count the number of times I meant to click "Settings" for youtube, and ended up going to either Google+ or Google setting.
  - davidgerard 13y ago
    All we wanted from G+ was "Facebook, but not Facebook". That's it. That's all. They managed even to fuck that up.
    - a3n 13y ago
      Yeah, I remember two or three years ago there was a long bout of Facebook rage here, and I posted what I would like from Google as a replacement (under an earlier account). And G+ became almost exactly what I was wishing for, except they went out of their way to make it suck.
andyl 13y ago
Google is starting to collapse under its own weight, as all behemoths eventually do.
- rhizome 13y ago
  Their first mistake was going public.
  - syncsynchalt 13y ago
    We should all be so lucky to make a mistake like that.
  - a3n 13y ago
    My god, how could you not? "Billionaire or footnote, billionaire or footnote? Think. Think."
- pcurve 13y ago
  I agree, and I don't think it has to. Part of the problem is the strong growth expectation that comes with being a $0 dividend stock. They should start paying dividend. It's the third largest company in the world by market cap, behind Apple and Exxon, and the only company of its size that pays no dividend.
- squidi 13y ago
  Yet their earnings [1] (and share price [2]) keep going up and up. Maybe the point is that our perception of GOOG has changed and we all have a little confirmation bias. [1] http://investor.google.com/pdf/2013Q3_google_earnings_slides.pdf http://investor.google.com/pdf/2013Q3_google_earnings_slides... [2] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG
  - diydsp 13y ago
    ... or it's simply that profit dives lag behind reputation. Facebook's stock price is climbing as their users leave for Twitter...
itafroma 13y ago
I am mostly for the ostensible cleaning up of YouTube comments, but what got me was that any time you share a YouTube video on Google+ proper or comment in a thread where someone shared a YouTube video, it automatically cross-posts what you said back to the comments underneath the video on YouTube. And that's not just for shares/comments going forward: it's everything you've ever shared publicly, ever. I'm now getting inane YouTube-level comments on stuff I shared months ago because I happened to share a popular YouTube video on Google+. As part of the rare breed of people actually using Google+ proper, it's really turned me off from the whole thing. Even though I shared YouTube videos publicly and commented on publicly-viewable Google+ posts with YouTube videos, I intended to only post my comments and shares on Google+, not syndicated everywhere at a later date without additional consent[1] and especially not the cesspool that is the YouTube comment section. I don't really understand why anyone thought that'd be okay. And anecdote isn't data, but talking to other Google+ users I know, nobody seemed to be aware that this was going to happen: they all just thought the identities would be merged, but if you post on Google+, it'd stay on Google+. [1]: I'm aware that there's probably some clause in their privacy policy that gave them the legal ability to do this, but Google is usually pretty decent when it comes to informing of changes to privacy/visibility options.
- stephp 13y ago
  Ugh. This was my problem with Google+ too. Everything you do ripples out into the rest of the internet in a creepy way. When I was freelancing, I emailed back and forth with potential clients through the Gmail interface. One day I saw this party pic of a 20-something girl with beer in hand, identified by the full name of a receptionist I had emailed with professionally but never actually met. It was a suggestion from Google to connect with her on Google+, which I'm sure she'd have been mortified by. I deleted my account that day.
  - saidajigumi 13y ago
    This and TFA hit to the heart of the problem with Google+: Google has willfully refused to acknowledge or understand that singular humans have multiple personas, and that we do not and cannot allow those to mix. Your professional face is not the same as your close-family personal face is not the same as your secret webcomic artist handle is not ... you get the idea. There are so many mundane variations on that theme, and then there are very serious ones: those seeking support for addiction, as survivors of abuse, or other situations that have social stigma or personal risk attached to them. Some needs are simply private in that way a vulnerable person needs secure anonymity lest the public light itself become a chilling effect, of which health concerns are a common example. The architecture of Google+ is such that it is inherently inhuman in its disregard for privacy and for applying different "pen names" to the various situations of life.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
saiko-chriskun 13y ago
Again, am I really the only one here that doesn't care about all this? :P
- keithpeter 13y ago
  No, I have problems with this as well. Mind you, I don't have social media accounts (except a deleted Twitter account and a tumblelog for recording graffiti[1] from my mobile phone). [1] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8403291/meaningless-missd.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8403291/meaningless-miss...
- andybak 13y ago
  No. Me too. I sometimes feel like I should - defending privacy is like maintaining herd immunity - it only works if we all do it. But I don't especially care. I don't love Google+ but I find it easy to ignore. Easier to ignore than Facebook mainly due to the fact that no-one tries to interact with me socially on it. But the only places I really post are here and Reddit. I email stuff to close friends and occasionally use Facebook when I'm invited to an event but that's about the limit of my use of social media. In general - I'm quite happy to be logged into Google across all services. It makes Google Now slightly more useful and I can happily ignore all the parts of it that don't interest me. And advertisers are welcome to profile me to their heart's content - they just don't seem to be very good at it. I've never clicked on a targeted ad so it's seems a lot of effort to no real effect.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  No, I find it to be of little concern as well. I rarely comment on Youtube videos in the first place, and even if I did, I doubt I'd care about the G+ aspect. In fact, I'm one of the people who want all of Google's services to be tightly integrated, IF they can find ways to leverage that integration to create a better experience. To my mind, integrating Blogger comments and G+ was one of the success stories of that. Unfortunately, G+ still has a ton of issues that I find infuriating, and while I actively want to like G+, I find it hard to do so. That part frustrates me more than anything, when it comes to Google and their services.
- Ironlink 13y ago
hackaflocka 13y ago
It's okay folks, Google is only doing what umpteen companies before it have done -- like a good citizen of the tech ecosphere it is paving the way for the next great company.
venomsnake 13y ago
Google has really lost its way to do UX. Google plus and youtube are not the one ones. I have no permanent way to disable Youtube asking me to merge accounts except goat sacrifice and writing directly to Larry Page - "If I rejected you 25 time why do you think I will agree on the 26th" I had to use Google Maps yesterday - the mobile app. Few things of notice - scale was never given on screen. Also there was not a way by which you could measure the distance between two points. There are numerous inconsistencies between their products - why is google keep hidden when you are at drive google.com and on and on and on. I think that this could be case of either no dogfooding or extreme dogfooding - either no one at google uses their own services or they use only google ones and have forgotten that people in the outside world are not so invested in the google ecosystem.
- joosters 13y ago
  The missing scale on Google maps is infuriating, IMO. How can you use the app to navigate around city streets if you can't easily see the distances involved? (N.b. this is on iOS, I think Android maps has a scale?)
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Just tested on my Nexus 7: the scale appears when the map is zooming, and then it fades away after a couple of seconds.
- msthomaa 13y ago
  About blocking the Youtube notification for account merge: add this custom filter in Adblock ||s.ytimg.com/yts/jsbin/www-linkgplusdialog* and it stops the pop-ups. Someone posted this a while back on Reddit, and it actually works really well.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  It seems unlikely that this is by accident and that people at Google are not aware of how annoying it is. Perhaps, just perhaps, they've decided they will make more money by forcing people to use G+. I see plenty of comments on YouTube, still of YT quality, with "Real Names". It's not like there's really a useful alternative to YT for most people. Google gets nothing from people commenting anonymously on YT. Annoying those people is no big loss - they won't stop visiting YT to consume. And for those that sign up with G+, they'll eventually gain more money from advertising. This whole attitude that this is sheer UX incompetence is moronic. (Now, with respect to the whole accounts management stuff and Google Apps and what not, that seems like technical issues.)
scholia 13y ago
Petitioning Google Google: Change the Youtube comment section back to its original form. http://www.change.org/petitions/google-change-the-youtube-comment-section-back-to-its-original-form http://www.change.org/petitions/google-change-the-youtube-co... Stands at 80,445 supporters now.
- kunai 13y ago
  I signed it, but it won't change anything. Either way, Google has a right to refuse, and even if they don't, it doesn't automatically mean we're saved. Google will continue to integrate Google+ with many of their other products.
mattmcknight 13y ago
It would be better to just drop YouTube comments. They are a usually a cesspool of flamewars that add little value to the content.
BadassFractal 13y ago
I've been trying to figure out how to delete Google+ for a while, without accidentally nuking some of the other services such as Picasa etc. Heard of folks losing a bunch of data (Youtube videos?) when they remove their G+ accounts, so that's a huge bummer. Perhaps it's time to move on from Google Photos, flickr maybe? I don't want another social network.
- judk 13y ago
  Yahoo/Flickr/Tumblr is moving full steam ahead into Yahoo social network, completely ignoring why people still cling to them.
  - BadassFractal 13y ago
    Sigh, there's no way out huh?
    - mkr-hn 13y ago
      Maybe Amazon will come out with a social network and a YouTube competitor. You can barely tell they own IMDB, and they seem content to stick with a policy of non-interference.
    - wmeredith 13y ago
      Imgur.com may suit you. It's dead simple image hosting.
  - lmm 13y ago
    What yahoo social network? I mean, my flickr login is a yahoo account, but I don't think they're stupid enough to try and auto set me up a tumblr account with it.
devindotcom 13y ago
Hey all. I'm the author. I don't really have much to add here except that I was afraid the article, which I dashed off as all that stuff was happening, would come off as whiny. Hope that isn't the case. Thanks for reading and linking.
- maaaats 13y ago
  I think it's to the point and reflects my own thoughts. Thanks for putting it down in such clear words.
- mistermann 13y ago
  I very much enjoyed it and hear myself speaking the exact same sentiments in my head daily.
- logn 13y ago
  Thanks for the tip on blocking youtube.com cookies. Never thought of that.
  - devindotcom 13y ago
    I added it after reading it in another thread here the other day, would give credit if I remembered who mentioned it.
Havoc 13y ago
I've had it with the whole online social thing to be honest - it seems to lead to nothing but evil deceptive tactics like the dialog box in the article with only one option. The internet used to be fun...now I get the distinct impression that everyone is out to get me.
- fumar 13y ago
  What can be done to reverse this trend? Or to create something altogether different from the current "internet"?
  - Havoc 13y ago
    Personally I think it can't be reversed. Its too profitable and there are too many sheeple out there. As for something "altogether different". I don't see it happening. There are just too many powerful vested interest at work. e.g. We can't even get a HTML standard pushed through without DRM. This might sound cynical, but personally I feel its the end of an era. The internet used to be the wild west where anything is possible. Now its become a commercial turkey shoot via dark patterns, micro-transactions, data mining and a dozen other buzzwords.
    - a3n 13y ago
      > Personally I think it can't be reversed. Its too profitable and there are too many sheeple out there. The "internet," i.e. TCP/IP, is still there pretty much as it always was. Google's interface is almost all web on top of the internet, Facebook too. Anyone is free to use anything else implemented on the internet. Fastmail makes a handy living at implementing smtp and imap on top of TCP/IP; their value is excellent implementation along with service. It's always possible to sell good service. You don't have to use the DRM parts. And I agree, it is the end of an era, a really good era. But it's not the end.
      - Havoc 13y ago
        Its a pity that fastmail is US based...I was actually looking for a Gmail replacement that can support own domains.
grandalf 13y ago
The "real name" movement is an attempt to turn internet behavior into something more like a credit score.
- rjd 13y ago
  From what I've read it achieves no detectable improvements, and in some places can bring out worse problems causing people to amplify themselves to reenforce ego (and vice versa become nastier to push others down to achieve the same goal). So it just becomes a pissing contest more than a credit score.
- Joona 13y ago
  Thankfully they don't require proof of your name, or I wouldn't be called Kim Jong-Un.
  - krapp 13y ago
    >Thankfully they don't require proof of your name ... yet.
kmfrk 13y ago
As someone who likes to avoid posting too much incriminating information on social network, I think the main problem of this trend is that the Internet is turning into No Country for Lurkers. I can't even favourite nor like a video on YouTube anymore without being subjected to the whole carrousel of signing up for G+. I get the impression that there's some asshole at companies like Google creating a Markov chain for bumping head-first into a registration wall for the most inane lurker actions. And this is not to mention the absolutely awful situation of being locked out of my own list of favourites, because I am now required to sign up for G+ to export them. Don't you love the Silicon Valley CEOs who say they want to index the world's information and allow everyone to share it - except this is becoming increasingly impossible on their own platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Quora. I get that companies have to make money, but I think the companies' business models are perfectly aligned with their personal philosophies.
- a3n 13y ago
  > I can't even favourite nor like a video on YouTube anymore without being subjected to the whole carrousel of signing up for G+. But you can bookmark. Or does that not make sense on a phone? My galaxy has been in my sock drawer for a couple years now, I forget.
  - kmfrk 13y ago
    After I signed up on Pinboard, I've taken to save my bookmarks there instead. Still, an IFTTT script that saves to Pinboard, whenever I favourite on YouTube would be less annoying and also allow me to have my favourites on YouTube.
    - a3n 13y ago
      I use pinboard too, great service.
cjg 13y ago
Nonplussed is a dreadful word. It means either: 1) so surprised and confused that one is unsure how to react; 2) not disconcerted; unperturbed. Definitions 1 and 2 are opposites. So, is he perturbed or not? "This is totally weird", or "this is weird, but I can so cope with it". Who knows.
- dlgeek 13y ago
  It's a play on Google+ - he canceled the service, so he's not plussed...
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  Nonplussed is also used to mean "uninspired" or "unimpressed" - like when something is perhaps a little out of the ordinary [there is an expectation that it will have an impact one way or another] but still doesn't really have an effect on; almost exclusively in the phrase "I was pretty nonplussed by it all" or a close analogue of that. Certainly this is the usage I've heard and used for the last 20 years or so.
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    Those people are using it incorrectly.
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      Language is ultimately about usage. The dictionary I checked with confirmed this meaning as a US neologism, I'm in the UK. You could class this usage as "perplexed" but with a specific flavour of 'perplexity at the unimpressive nature of the subject'.
      - rafcavallaro 13y ago
        US colloquial usage - where the original, subtle UK usage goes to die; see also "presently," and "beg the question."
  - alayne 13y ago
lobster_johnson 13y ago
I feel the pain. Just this week I deleted my Google+ account, or profile, or whatever it is. I never used G+ after initially signing up, so I had no use for it. Deleting the account seems to have had no ill effects. The deletion page did warn me that "third party sign on" would stop working, and I do use the Google third party login via OAuth because some sites rely on it, but nothing broke. Is there some kind of different "login with G+"? I also moved calendaring and reminders to Fruux [1], and I have previously moved my email and contacts to Fastmail, and my notes to Evernote. I'm still on GTalk via Adium, though -- is there a good replacement for that? Moving away from the big provides feels good. It feels liberating, in fact. Google and Apple provide whole ecosystems of services, and they really, really want you to buy into their whole integrated system, and they design their systems to stretch their tendrils as far into your computing experience as possible. At least with Apple that's core to their long-established philosophy -- integrated devices that just work -- but I'm a big believer in decentralization. I want to pick the best possible system that integrates with everything using open standards. [1] https://fruux.com https://fruux.com [2] https://www.fastmail.fm/ https://www.fastmail.fm/
davidgerard 13y ago
Keep a separate Gmail/Google/G+ account for your phone and your desktop. If you want to get to your desktop email from your phone, Firefox for Android is less leaky than Chrome.
jurassic 13y ago
> You know what? Forget it, I don’t even want to comment any more. It was a dumb video anyway. I went through this exact process and thought ("screw this, ugh!") several times before I just decided to stop hanging out on youtube and commenting on peoples' videos. I used to waste a huge amount of time doing this, but now I only sometimes watch things that others have discovered and shared with me. I don't comment or browse like I used to, and I'm sure their advertising revenue off of me has dropped off a cliff. It also seems like the amount of intrusive/unskippable advertising has rocketed up, too, over the last couple of years while they were forcing G+ on the world. They're kidding themselves if they think I'm going to happily watch a 30 second ad before a 2 minute viral video. I was annoyed/sad at first when they started making these changes, but now I realize I was mostly wasting my time doing that stuff anyway. So thanks, Google, for making your site less fun to use; it really has saved me a lot of time.
- amaks 13y ago
  My though exactly. Perhaps the anger and frustration of this integration is rooted from people being upset about being more accountable (through the real identity) and cautious, and Google is simply improving the quality of comments this way?
  - gibwell 13y ago
    CCTV cameras in people's homes would make them more accountable, and would likely also lead to frustration.
- coldpie 13y ago
  AdBlock plus, buddy :) Sadly I haven't figured out a solution for mobile platforms yet. I just don't watch videos with ads in them on mobile.
amaks 13y ago
"Now there’s one less egg in my Google basket, and I never have to pay attention to anything that has the word “Google+” in it again — just like I did with LinkedIn (stop inviting me, everyone in the world), Pinterest, and a number of other things I had no use for." Enough said. The dude is a typical Facebook user who is addicted to his only social network and upset about integration between YouTube and G+. Better commenting system and difficulty of creating fake user accounts will increase the quality of comments. I guess the people who complain like to troll or post some obnoxious comments, this explains the frustration.
- jondr 13y ago
  Disclaimer: This is my first comment on HackerNews and probably my last. I'm not a hacker or a software engineer and don't really belong on the site, so don't comment. I'm just some random guy who plays a lot of video games, uses a lot of reddit and has a rough interest in the technology industry. By extension, I watch a lot of YouTube videos from various channels that offer playthroughs (or 'Let's Plays') of games. This is why I say the following: Unfortunately at this stage I think you are completely wrong. I suspect that you don't use YouTube very much and so are not seeing what has happened. I'm sorry if this sounds snide, it isn't meant to. YouTube had a reputation with some as providing the worst internet comments outside 4chan. I doubt few could imagine it getting worse. This recent Google+ integration seems to be an experiment on Google's part to prove how naive that belief was. You can now post hyperlinks in comments. This has led to people spamming links to 'screamer' videos, including the potential to disguise these links as the comment expanding feature. Comments can now have seemingly unlimited length, or at least are massively extended compared to the previous system; This has led to people spamming ASCII art images of genitals, pedobear, naked women, memes like the super shibe 'doge', and reams and reams of repeating text like "#FUCKGOOGLE". Actual advertiser spammers are soon going to catch onto this ability, so the messages offering free copies of popular video games like Minecraft no longer have to come with the polite request to copypaste them into your address bar - they can just be clicked. This is just the tip of the iceberg in the first few days. I know I'm not alone in wondering how long it will be before someone finds a way to exploit these new comments as a vector for directly delivering malware. And even if the hyperlinks are removed, it has created a enormous new canvas on which trolls, children and idiots can paint their own brand of humour. There does not currently seem to be any way of blanket blocking URLs, instead needing a filter list set up with every potential combination of keywords and domains. The kind of people who create and post this stuff are the kind of people least likely to care about creating multiple throwaway accounts or having this rubbish leak into other websites. Anecdotally it seems that people who may care enough to try and contribute meaningfully are now more likely to abandon the comments section and Google+ out of frustration (just as this article concludes with). This could be turn out to be nothing but a win for the trolls, especially considering that removing the new features enabling them would be to render the system identical to the old one. I don't like the channel myself but a _very_ popular personality called PewDiePie has now disabled comments on all his videos due to the change. Other channels seem to be following suit or considering it. If you would like to hear a very honest spiel about the frustration these changes provide, search for a channel called NerdCubed and look at his recent videos for a video on the comment section. The comments that could be found under your average YouTube video were already enough to drive a content creator to exasperation as is. Rather than helping, this has seemingly made things significantly worse.
kamme 13y ago
The people at Google are really pushing for broad adoption of G+. If you think about it, it's pretty logical as they know Facebook is only going downhill and they are trying to get everybody onboard. The reaction I'm hearing a lot however, is they are being too pushy. I've even had a few people who accidentally signed up for a G+ account ask me how to delete it because they kept receiving 'Top X posts on G+' mails without knowing what it is. I don't think a lot of good things come with this kind of tactic.
bobbles 13y ago
To remove your Google+ account but keep your Google services running, visit the following link: https://plus.google.com/downgrade/ https://plus.google.com/downgrade/ To remove your Google+ account from YouTube: Go to youtube settings: http://www.youtube.com/account http://www.youtube.com/account Click "Return name to <name>, and disconnect Google+ profile" I was an early adopter to Google+ but screw it, I'm sick of dealing with this crap.
raymondduke 13y ago
What a bunch of whiny kids. The Google+ addition to YouTube is a great change.
xacaxulu 13y ago
Don't build your life on other peoples digital plantations.
DigitalSea 13y ago
I cannot agree with the sentiment of this article enough. The dropdown in my Youtube shows 3 different accounts. One using my personal email address and then another two which were created channels with the same name. One is linked to my Google+ account (my main one) and the other for some reason is linked to another Google+ account Google created for me. That's 3 different Google+ profiles created for the one email. This is a joke.
barrkel 13y ago
Ever since Google Reader was discontinued, I no longer log in under my real account on my primary browser any more (I don't use Gmail's web interface either). Frankly I think that's the way to go. Ideally, we'd have better identity support in our browsers to control which set of cookies to hand out based on which top-level URL we're visiting.
josteink 13y ago
For those who consider deleting their G+ accounts: Don't consider it if you're using Android, as some core apps will stop working then (like the photo-gallery). Yup. It has come to this. Disable or delete your G+ account and your Android phone no longer works. Google is getting pretty damn creepy. I sure hope the CM-team can come up with some decent replacement apps for all the stuff Google is fucking up these days.
- iamshs 13y ago
  Damn it. I have a Nexus 5 pre-ordered. Well. Unrelated: http://i.imgur.com/wbjCmbt.jpg http://i.imgur.com/wbjCmbt.jpg Changing faces of Google is a scary phenomenon.
studio816 13y ago
Hey Google, Facebook and others - please implement reddit-style commenting system. Thank you.
wambotron 13y ago
At one point he says he wants to comment as something else so no one sees him comment, then he says he'll post it to facebook so everyone he knows sees his comment. I'm not going to comment on anything else in the article, this just struck me as odd and obviously contradictory.

477 points by pearjuice 13y ago

danso 13y ago

The OP makes a good point. But I can't be the only one who wants to watch that bunny video now. Since you're using their work to make your blog post more visually compelling, why not actually link to it? Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_J0AMPPD34 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_J0AMPPD34

chimeracoder 13y ago

I wonder how much engagement Google/Facebook/et. al. lose from people who are about to make a comment/post a status/etc., and then thing 'Hm, no - this is private now, but what about in a year when they automatically change my privacy settings without asking me?' Put another way, imagine I am a teenager or college student who uses Facebook. 1. Start to upload a photo from my phone of me and my friends doing shots 2. Try to figure out how (on my phone!) to set privacy settings so that my younger brother (who is my Facebook friend) and my parents (who aren't, but use the Internet and sometimes Google my name) can't see it. 3. Remember that Facebook has a history of "expanding" privacy settings retroactively 4. Think "Ah, fuck it", and send a Snapchat to my friends instead. In reality it's probably not that common right now, but hopefully that may increase in the future. You can only pull the rug out from under your users so many times before learn to walk along another path.

Lewisham 13y ago
I don't really want to dive into this conversation in any real depth, but I do want to point out that Google+, with old features or new, has never violated the ACLs that users set. If you set something to private, it remains private forever. To do otherwise would be corporate suicide. Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on G+.
- chimeracoder 13y ago
  > I do want to point out that Google+, with old features or new, has never violated the ACLs that users set. If you set something to private, it remains private forever. I know that, which is why I used the example of Facebook. However, Google+ does make it incredibly easy to leak information that I would otherwise consider private accidentally. For example, I can't use Google+ with my primary email address, as it's a Google+ account. However, because it's linked with my Gmail account (which does have a Google+ account), some people who have added me on Google+ have been able to figure out my Gmail address (which I haven't used for email purposes in years[0]). I can imagine all the technical reasons for this, but that doesn't change the fact that it feels a bit wrong for a service to hand out my old email address (which I never give out anymore) to people I've met recently and who have added me on Google+ using my current email address. Imagine your Google+ email address is something that you can't change, but don't really want people to see anymore - this isn't uncommon; it appeared in a New York Times piece just yesterday, in the context of college admissions[1]. Thankfully, my personal email address is much more tame than that student's, but that still doesn't mean I want anybody to know or use it nowadays. Furthermore, it's incredibly easy to sign up "accidentally" to use Youtube with Google+ and your "real name" instead of continuing to use your pseudonym. As for the distinction you point out - I know the difference, and you know the difference. But most users don't. > To do otherwise would be corporate suicide. Apparently not completely - Facebook's gotten away with it for years![2] [0] This may have been fixed, since it was a while ago that I last noticed, but it was still the case for quite a while. I would have to go through my inbox to remember the details of why this happened - I remember debugging and tracking it down. But the fact that it took that much effort to discover why my new acquaintances suddenly knew my old (personal) email address, and that I can't remember anymore, speaks volumes as to how easy it would be for a less savvy user to accidentally leak information that they wanted to keep private. [1]http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-gpa-then-they-saw-your-tweets.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-g... [2] http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ - this graph doesn't distinguish clearly between those which were automatically retroactive and those which weren't, but that's a topic that's been well-reported and is easy to search for.
  - Lewisham 13y ago
    I'm honestly not sure how your email address would be leaked, vanity URLs are name-based and at least one of the reasons Plus uses ID strings was in order to prevent leaking any account details through the URL. I'm sorry that other people are figuring it out, that sucks. If you remember what happened and think that G+ has had a hand in the leakage, please feel free to ping me (my URL is in my profile) and I'll try to follow it up. Personally I do feel that G+ has done a good job at communicating to users the privacy they do and don't have, as the ACLs were baked in at the beginning. I think users have had the possibility to be confused when data is being used outside the http://plus.google.com http://plus.google.com domain, like Shared Endorsements and the YouTube comments, as this opens up the worry ACLs are being violated. I think there's more work that can be done to communicate that this hasn't happened, such as putting the "Shared (publicly|privately)" on YouTube comments so you can see why those are there.
    - chimeracoder 13y ago
      > If you remember what happened and think that G+ has had a hand in the leakage, please feel free to ping me (my URL is in my profile) and I'll try to follow it up Thanks for the offer - I really appreciate it. I think it had something to do with group contacts in Gmail, but I can't remember. If I have some time today I might take a look. To clarify: I'm not exactly mad at Google in this case, because I'm a developer and I know how tricky it can be to get these things right even in small, standalone products[0]. And unlike some people on HackerNews, I don't think this is a result of bad intentions. It's just that, every time I see something like this happen (beagle3 points out the example of Buzz below), I can't help but notice that users' trust is both fragile (easily broken) and unforgiving (no benefit of the doubt). These things are tough to get right, but they're very critical for the long-term success of a product. [0] Also, the consequences for me happened to be pretty mild, thankfully.
      - rhizome 13y ago
        It sounds like it was a failure of design.
- beagle3 13y ago
  No, but Buzz was a horrible metadata leak. It's not like there's a guarantee no data will ever leak.
turing 13y ago
The scenario you describe is precisely why I like G+'s circles; every post and every photo shared is shared with a specific subset of my contacts. The vast majority of my posts on G+ are targeted at only a fraction of my friends.
- spullara 13y ago
  Facebook had this functionality for years before G+ launched and is built into the status update box.
  - scholia 13y ago
    Plus you can have closed user groups on Facebook. They work well....
  - turing 13y ago
    I'm well aware of that, but the UI is nowhere near as convenient and targeted sharing doesn't play as central a role. "Circles" was the major differentiating feature when G+ launched.
metalgearbob 13y ago
I am a 22 year old kid and I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me. It even happens with snap chats actually, because of the apps that allow you to save a snap. I am noticing however that there seems to be a strong correlation between household income and internet behavior. My wealthier friends all have pristine online images, while the poorer ones tend to share more.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure Snapchat notifies you if the other party takes a screenshot of your photo, though.
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    They notify you but that other person still has the photo. It's better than nothing but it's not that helpful.
    - metalgearbob 13y ago
      See my post above, its an actual app.
    - oceanplexian 13y ago
      Unless you have a jailbroken phone...
  - metalgearbob 13y ago
    There are actual apps you can download that allow you to save a photo or video, not just the screenshot. I'm actually pretty baffled that people still don't know about them. Renders snapchat useless.
    - MichaelGG 13y ago
      The concept of Snapchat is useless - it's literally DRM. It will work well enough for some folks, but fundamentally it simply isn't technically possible. At least not without a "trusted computing" model with remote attestation and so on.
coldpie 13y ago
> 1. Start to upload a photo from my phone of me and my friends doing shots Just don't do this. Seriously. Don't do it. I don't know why people keep putting self-damaging things on the Internet. If it's on the Internet, you should consider it as public. Full stop. There's so many avenues for things to get out into the public (leaked passwords, website glitches, human error in general), that unless you're extremely careful about the dissemination of that information (hint: don't be /in/ the picture in the first place, or you've already lost), the data is as good as public. Really, what did you gain by putting that picture on the Internet, anyway?
- computerbob 13y ago
  [Really, what did you gain by putting that picture on the Internet, anyway?] It is a memory. Doing shots isn't wrong or bad. Maybe doing 20 of them and then driving home from the bar is bad. Posting pictures is a way to relive a precious moment in time with others.
- RodericDay 13y ago
  what's wrong with doing shots? you're acting as if it's universally unethical or something what about this: someone is being odiously racist, so I write a brutal reply to shut em down. Should I also hesitate on doing this, thinking that some employer may infer my radical left politics from it and stop me from getting a job in the future? All you need to know about common sense about what to upload online is that it changes, not only in time but from social scene to social scene.

petercooper 13y ago

It’s not that I find Google or even Google+ itself bad. But the connections between the account, the Google+ profile, the Google profile, the various websites and contact lists This is totally it for me. I have a few Google accounts (an 'original' one and two Apps For Your Domain ones for e-mail and work) and it seems Google has made Plus accounts for each and I have things spread around them all. I've seen stories where people tried to "merge" accounts and ended up losing access to their mail, etc.. so rocking the boat doesn't seem worth it to me. I don't mind Google's (usually great) services but it's the binding together that makes me wary.

seiji 13y ago
How do we reconcile Google Only Hires Geniuses with their executional incompetence across multiple (dozens of?) products? Is it a pride of ego fallacy? They think they are the best and they can do no wrong, so they just keep doing things without thinking results through? Too many logical programmers trying to have input on end users/UI/UX decisions where visuals and emotions are more important? Too many 24 year old bro managers running around trying to make a name for themselves by manipulating people in flashy ways instead of quietly making the world a better place?
- scholia 13y ago
  I agree with the sentiments, but most Google products worked better when they were done by logical programmers. They've all got much less usable since the fancy UI designers came in and screwed them up.
  - seiji 13y ago
    Good point. There's the genius of the original Google Search experience versus the new horrendous "three to five floating javascript toolbars taking up 50% of the screen" Google+ pages with unreadable URLs. "Which post? Oh, post 43278947329849783223? Yeah, I liked that one too."
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    > They've all got much less usable since the fancy UI designers came in and screwed them up. See also, the decline of GNOME. This isn't a problem unique to Google.

kunai 13y ago

I was going to use Google Code for hosting my projects, but, after this fiasco, I think I'll just use Github instead. Hey, at least I'll get to use a DVCS. :P In all honesty, though, while this won't hurt Google right now, it's going to come back and bite them in the rear end soon enough. If they keep making these kinds of changes, what's next? Having to sign in to Google+ to use Android? A Google+ feed on the Chrome OS deskop? Requirements for Google+ account with "Developer Privileges" to download Go? Again, this doesn't matter much now, but it's going to hurt them later. It happens to the best of everyone: Microsoft. Apple. Google.

Bahamut 13y ago
GitHub is better anyway :P
ameen 13y ago
Or use Bitbucket! Free private repos :D
rogerbinns 13y ago
I do both Google Code and Github. GC feels unmaintained these days, and there is no option for paid/private repositories. GC is also removing their download service - Github did the same but then later provided "releases" functionality. Github's issue tracker is terrible (try to prioritise things) while GC is a lot better. The one thing GC does really well is they let you have multiple repositories per project. This means you can have an Android repository, a server repository, a web site repository etc and they can all be on the same page using the same issue tracker, wiki etc. I've asked Github to implement this but they aren't interested. When each repo has its own wiki, issue tracker, releases etc it is far too painful (eg you can't move tickets between projects). That also helps for documentation. My projects have extensive generated documentation. With github you have to dump that into a branch, and put generated content into a source code control system is not a good idea. With GC you can just created another repository and put the generated doc there. I personally prefer Mercurial over git, but that isn't a realistic choice with github. On the whole, while GC has some nice things, I doubt it has much of a future. I wish github would pick up the multiple repositories thing.

Bahamut 13y ago

I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm all for this change, largely because of the crappy anonymous comments you see out there on YouTube, which was the point of this transition in the first place. However, forcing Google+ onto people does have me wary as well. I don't mind using Google+, but it seems like Google's way to slowly worm their way into people using its social component. I admittedly am not sure why it affects me, but something about that does rub me the wrong way (although not enough to ditch using Google services). It's not quite insidious, but it does feel like it gives off the vibe that we are the product, even more than usual.

joelrunyon 13y ago
If you've seen what FB comments does on news sites - then you know that using real names doesn't really guarantee improved quality.
- scholia 13y ago
  For many years, I was a paying subscriber to the online version of the Wall Street Journal. A highly select audience, you'd think. And yes, the comments on that were mostly rubbish as well ;-)
  - Bahamut 13y ago
    To be fair, it is the Wall Street Journal :P . Using real names does not fix the problem completely, I agree - you easily see the effect on articles on politics on news sites, with the mass shill accounts. However, I argue that it is a lot greater of a deterrent.
chongli 13y ago
How has this solved the problem? My youtube account is still attached to a throwaway Gmail account. So what if it's now also attached to a throwaway G+ account that I never use?
gibwell 13y ago
The goal is reasonable, but Google+ doesn't solve the problem.

jenius 13y ago

I may be mistaken, but I think the entire point of this recent change was to force people to use their real names and faces rather than commenting anonymously (due to the fact that youtube comment sections are typically the worst things ever), and if so it seems like google has actually achieved it's goal. Now, whether it's a good decision to make it difficult/impossible to anonymously comment on youtube videos is an entirely separate discussion that I'm not taking a side on (yet), but I'd be interested in seeing a discussion about that here.

joelrunyon 13y ago
Where is the proof that "real names = better quality." That argument gets paraded everywhere but I've yet to see an actual study or proof of this.
- shawnz 13y ago
  So does that mean Google should not even experiment with the idea, just because nobody else has published data about it yet? Why does there need to be "proof"? It is Google's choice, just like it is your choice to use Google products.
  - joelrunyon 13y ago
    I'm not saying they shouldn't "experiment" - experiment all they want. It's when they parade out the idea that "real names = better quality" as the reason for a change - without citing it. Especially since it's such a cross-product change that effects literally every single one of their products.
  - Zecc 13y ago
    I don't remember ever choosing to use G+.
    - shawnz 13y ago
      I never said anything about choosing to use G+. You choose to use comments on youtube, and one of the consequences of that choice is that you must have a G+ page.

kmfrk 13y ago

I'm leery enough about commenting on different sites that use Disqus as it is.

spodek 13y ago

Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook, then LinkedIn, a while ago. I haven't deleted my Google+ account only because laziness and fear of an experience like the article's author prevent me from going to the site. People describe leaving as trendy, as if leaving had something to do with other people as opposed to the sites' own repellent behavior. For me leaving was easy and fun -- http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun. Experience has unequivocally shown me my life is better without them. I have a feeling the market forces forcing Google, Facebook, et al into an arms race after your privacy and personal life will motivate people to leave more and more in favor of small players that do one thing well. I expect people here will see the writing on the wall first that the sooner you get out the better. Yes, social networks have benefits, but they have costs too. Deleting Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc accounts improves your life. Deleting them earlier improves your life earlier.

pcurve 13y ago
Facebook was already doing a good job driving its own users away. All Google had to do was go under the Facebook tree, and pick up dropped users off the ground. It really didn't need to go climbing up the tree to pick them off the branches. As they're climbing the ladder, their own users are falling out of the baskets. Corny analogy aside, they're not even doing a good job integrating mail, youtube, google, google+. I can't count the number of times I meant to click "Settings" for youtube, and ended up going to either Google+ or Google setting.
- davidgerard 13y ago
  All we wanted from G+ was "Facebook, but not Facebook". That's it. That's all. They managed even to fuck that up.
  - a3n 13y ago
    Yeah, I remember two or three years ago there was a long bout of Facebook rage here, and I posted what I would like from Google as a replacement (under an earlier account). And G+ became almost exactly what I was wishing for, except they went out of their way to make it suck.

andyl 13y ago

Google is starting to collapse under its own weight, as all behemoths eventually do.

rhizome 13y ago
Their first mistake was going public.
- syncsynchalt 13y ago
  We should all be so lucky to make a mistake like that.
- a3n 13y ago
  My god, how could you not? "Billionaire or footnote, billionaire or footnote? Think. Think."
pcurve 13y ago
I agree, and I don't think it has to. Part of the problem is the strong growth expectation that comes with being a $0 dividend stock. They should start paying dividend. It's the third largest company in the world by market cap, behind Apple and Exxon, and the only company of its size that pays no dividend.
squidi 13y ago
Yet their earnings [1] (and share price [2]) keep going up and up. Maybe the point is that our perception of GOOG has changed and we all have a little confirmation bias. [1] http://investor.google.com/pdf/2013Q3_google_earnings_slides.pdf http://investor.google.com/pdf/2013Q3_google_earnings_slides... [2] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG
- diydsp 13y ago
  ... or it's simply that profit dives lag behind reputation. Facebook's stock price is climbing as their users leave for Twitter...

itafroma 13y ago

I am mostly for the ostensible cleaning up of YouTube comments, but what got me was that any time you share a YouTube video on Google+ proper or comment in a thread where someone shared a YouTube video, it automatically cross-posts what you said back to the comments underneath the video on YouTube. And that's not just for shares/comments going forward: it's everything you've ever shared publicly, ever. I'm now getting inane YouTube-level comments on stuff I shared months ago because I happened to share a popular YouTube video on Google+. As part of the rare breed of people actually using Google+ proper, it's really turned me off from the whole thing. Even though I shared YouTube videos publicly and commented on publicly-viewable Google+ posts with YouTube videos, I intended to only post my comments and shares on Google+, not syndicated everywhere at a later date without additional consent[1] and especially not the cesspool that is the YouTube comment section. I don't really understand why anyone thought that'd be okay. And anecdote isn't data, but talking to other Google+ users I know, nobody seemed to be aware that this was going to happen: they all just thought the identities would be merged, but if you post on Google+, it'd stay on Google+. [1]: I'm aware that there's probably some clause in their privacy policy that gave them the legal ability to do this, but Google is usually pretty decent when it comes to informing of changes to privacy/visibility options.

stephp 13y ago
Ugh. This was my problem with Google+ too. Everything you do ripples out into the rest of the internet in a creepy way. When I was freelancing, I emailed back and forth with potential clients through the Gmail interface. One day I saw this party pic of a 20-something girl with beer in hand, identified by the full name of a receptionist I had emailed with professionally but never actually met. It was a suggestion from Google to connect with her on Google+, which I'm sure she'd have been mortified by. I deleted my account that day.
- saidajigumi 13y ago
  This and TFA hit to the heart of the problem with Google+: Google has willfully refused to acknowledge or understand that singular humans have multiple personas, and that we do not and cannot allow those to mix. Your professional face is not the same as your close-family personal face is not the same as your secret webcomic artist handle is not ... you get the idea. There are so many mundane variations on that theme, and then there are very serious ones: those seeking support for addiction, as survivors of abuse, or other situations that have social stigma or personal risk attached to them. Some needs are simply private in that way a vulnerable person needs secure anonymity lest the public light itself become a chilling effect, of which health concerns are a common example. The architecture of Google+ is such that it is inherently inhuman in its disregard for privacy and for applying different "pen names" to the various situations of life.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

saiko-chriskun 13y ago

Again, am I really the only one here that doesn't care about all this? :P

keithpeter 13y ago
No, I have problems with this as well. Mind you, I don't have social media accounts (except a deleted Twitter account and a tumblelog for recording graffiti[1] from my mobile phone). [1] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8403291/meaningless-missd.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8403291/meaningless-miss...
andybak 13y ago
No. Me too. I sometimes feel like I should - defending privacy is like maintaining herd immunity - it only works if we all do it. But I don't especially care. I don't love Google+ but I find it easy to ignore. Easier to ignore than Facebook mainly due to the fact that no-one tries to interact with me socially on it. But the only places I really post are here and Reddit. I email stuff to close friends and occasionally use Facebook when I'm invited to an event but that's about the limit of my use of social media. In general - I'm quite happy to be logged into Google across all services. It makes Google Now slightly more useful and I can happily ignore all the parts of it that don't interest me. And advertisers are welcome to profile me to their heart's content - they just don't seem to be very good at it. I've never clicked on a targeted ad so it's seems a lot of effort to no real effect.
mindcrime 13y ago
No, I find it to be of little concern as well. I rarely comment on Youtube videos in the first place, and even if I did, I doubt I'd care about the G+ aspect. In fact, I'm one of the people who want all of Google's services to be tightly integrated, IF they can find ways to leverage that integration to create a better experience. To my mind, integrating Blogger comments and G+ was one of the success stories of that. Unfortunately, G+ still has a ton of issues that I find infuriating, and while I actively want to like G+, I find it hard to do so. That part frustrates me more than anything, when it comes to Google and their services.
Ironlink 13y ago

hackaflocka 13y ago

It's okay folks, Google is only doing what umpteen companies before it have done -- like a good citizen of the tech ecosphere it is paving the way for the next great company.

venomsnake 13y ago

Google has really lost its way to do UX. Google plus and youtube are not the one ones. I have no permanent way to disable Youtube asking me to merge accounts except goat sacrifice and writing directly to Larry Page - "If I rejected you 25 time why do you think I will agree on the 26th" I had to use Google Maps yesterday - the mobile app. Few things of notice - scale was never given on screen. Also there was not a way by which you could measure the distance between two points. There are numerous inconsistencies between their products - why is google keep hidden when you are at drive google.com and on and on and on. I think that this could be case of either no dogfooding or extreme dogfooding - either no one at google uses their own services or they use only google ones and have forgotten that people in the outside world are not so invested in the google ecosystem.

joosters 13y ago
The missing scale on Google maps is infuriating, IMO. How can you use the app to navigate around city streets if you can't easily see the distances involved? (N.b. this is on iOS, I think Android maps has a scale?)
- icebraining 13y ago
  Just tested on my Nexus 7: the scale appears when the map is zooming, and then it fades away after a couple of seconds.
msthomaa 13y ago
About blocking the Youtube notification for account merge: add this custom filter in Adblock ||s.ytimg.com/yts/jsbin/www-linkgplusdialog* and it stops the pop-ups. Someone posted this a while back on Reddit, and it actually works really well.
MichaelGG 13y ago
It seems unlikely that this is by accident and that people at Google are not aware of how annoying it is. Perhaps, just perhaps, they've decided they will make more money by forcing people to use G+. I see plenty of comments on YouTube, still of YT quality, with "Real Names". It's not like there's really a useful alternative to YT for most people. Google gets nothing from people commenting anonymously on YT. Annoying those people is no big loss - they won't stop visiting YT to consume. And for those that sign up with G+, they'll eventually gain more money from advertising. This whole attitude that this is sheer UX incompetence is moronic. (Now, with respect to the whole accounts management stuff and Google Apps and what not, that seems like technical issues.)

scholia 13y ago

Petitioning Google Google: Change the Youtube comment section back to its original form. http://www.change.org/petitions/google-change-the-youtube-comment-section-back-to-its-original-form http://www.change.org/petitions/google-change-the-youtube-co... Stands at 80,445 supporters now.

kunai 13y ago
I signed it, but it won't change anything. Either way, Google has a right to refuse, and even if they don't, it doesn't automatically mean we're saved. Google will continue to integrate Google+ with many of their other products.

mattmcknight 13y ago

It would be better to just drop YouTube comments. They are a usually a cesspool of flamewars that add little value to the content.

BadassFractal 13y ago

I've been trying to figure out how to delete Google+ for a while, without accidentally nuking some of the other services such as Picasa etc. Heard of folks losing a bunch of data (Youtube videos?) when they remove their G+ accounts, so that's a huge bummer. Perhaps it's time to move on from Google Photos, flickr maybe? I don't want another social network.

judk 13y ago
Yahoo/Flickr/Tumblr is moving full steam ahead into Yahoo social network, completely ignoring why people still cling to them.
- BadassFractal 13y ago
  Sigh, there's no way out huh?
  - mkr-hn 13y ago
    Maybe Amazon will come out with a social network and a YouTube competitor. You can barely tell they own IMDB, and they seem content to stick with a policy of non-interference.
  - wmeredith 13y ago
    Imgur.com may suit you. It's dead simple image hosting.
- lmm 13y ago
  What yahoo social network? I mean, my flickr login is a yahoo account, but I don't think they're stupid enough to try and auto set me up a tumblr account with it.

devindotcom 13y ago

Hey all. I'm the author. I don't really have much to add here except that I was afraid the article, which I dashed off as all that stuff was happening, would come off as whiny. Hope that isn't the case. Thanks for reading and linking.

maaaats 13y ago
I think it's to the point and reflects my own thoughts. Thanks for putting it down in such clear words.
mistermann 13y ago
I very much enjoyed it and hear myself speaking the exact same sentiments in my head daily.
logn 13y ago
Thanks for the tip on blocking youtube.com cookies. Never thought of that.
- devindotcom 13y ago
  I added it after reading it in another thread here the other day, would give credit if I remembered who mentioned it.

Havoc 13y ago

I've had it with the whole online social thing to be honest - it seems to lead to nothing but evil deceptive tactics like the dialog box in the article with only one option. The internet used to be fun...now I get the distinct impression that everyone is out to get me.

fumar 13y ago
What can be done to reverse this trend? Or to create something altogether different from the current "internet"?
- Havoc 13y ago
  Personally I think it can't be reversed. Its too profitable and there are too many sheeple out there. As for something "altogether different". I don't see it happening. There are just too many powerful vested interest at work. e.g. We can't even get a HTML standard pushed through without DRM. This might sound cynical, but personally I feel its the end of an era. The internet used to be the wild west where anything is possible. Now its become a commercial turkey shoot via dark patterns, micro-transactions, data mining and a dozen other buzzwords.
  - a3n 13y ago
    > Personally I think it can't be reversed. Its too profitable and there are too many sheeple out there. The "internet," i.e. TCP/IP, is still there pretty much as it always was. Google's interface is almost all web on top of the internet, Facebook too. Anyone is free to use anything else implemented on the internet. Fastmail makes a handy living at implementing smtp and imap on top of TCP/IP; their value is excellent implementation along with service. It's always possible to sell good service. You don't have to use the DRM parts. And I agree, it is the end of an era, a really good era. But it's not the end.
    - Havoc 13y ago
      Its a pity that fastmail is US based...I was actually looking for a Gmail replacement that can support own domains.

grandalf 13y ago

The "real name" movement is an attempt to turn internet behavior into something more like a credit score.

rjd 13y ago
From what I've read it achieves no detectable improvements, and in some places can bring out worse problems causing people to amplify themselves to reenforce ego (and vice versa become nastier to push others down to achieve the same goal). So it just becomes a pissing contest more than a credit score.
Joona 13y ago
Thankfully they don't require proof of your name, or I wouldn't be called Kim Jong-Un.
- krapp 13y ago
  >Thankfully they don't require proof of your name ... yet.

kmfrk 13y ago

As someone who likes to avoid posting too much incriminating information on social network, I think the main problem of this trend is that the Internet is turning into No Country for Lurkers. I can't even favourite nor like a video on YouTube anymore without being subjected to the whole carrousel of signing up for G+. I get the impression that there's some asshole at companies like Google creating a Markov chain for bumping head-first into a registration wall for the most inane lurker actions. And this is not to mention the absolutely awful situation of being locked out of my own list of favourites, because I am now required to sign up for G+ to export them. Don't you love the Silicon Valley CEOs who say they want to index the world's information and allow everyone to share it - except this is becoming increasingly impossible on their own platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Quora. I get that companies have to make money, but I think the companies' business models are perfectly aligned with their personal philosophies.

a3n 13y ago
> I can't even favourite nor like a video on YouTube anymore without being subjected to the whole carrousel of signing up for G+. But you can bookmark. Or does that not make sense on a phone? My galaxy has been in my sock drawer for a couple years now, I forget.
- kmfrk 13y ago
  After I signed up on Pinboard, I've taken to save my bookmarks there instead. Still, an IFTTT script that saves to Pinboard, whenever I favourite on YouTube would be less annoying and also allow me to have my favourites on YouTube.
  - a3n 13y ago
    I use pinboard too, great service.

cjg 13y ago

Nonplussed is a dreadful word. It means either: 1) so surprised and confused that one is unsure how to react; 2) not disconcerted; unperturbed. Definitions 1 and 2 are opposites. So, is he perturbed or not? "This is totally weird", or "this is weird, but I can so cope with it". Who knows.

dlgeek 13y ago
It's a play on Google+ - he canceled the service, so he's not plussed...
pbhjpbhj 13y ago
Nonplussed is also used to mean "uninspired" or "unimpressed" - like when something is perhaps a little out of the ordinary [there is an expectation that it will have an impact one way or another] but still doesn't really have an effect on; almost exclusively in the phrase "I was pretty nonplussed by it all" or a close analogue of that. Certainly this is the usage I've heard and used for the last 20 years or so.
- foobarqux 13y ago
  Those people are using it incorrectly.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    Language is ultimately about usage. The dictionary I checked with confirmed this meaning as a US neologism, I'm in the UK. You could class this usage as "perplexed" but with a specific flavour of 'perplexity at the unimpressive nature of the subject'.
    - rafcavallaro 13y ago
      US colloquial usage - where the original, subtle UK usage goes to die; see also "presently," and "beg the question."
- alayne 13y ago

lobster_johnson 13y ago

I feel the pain. Just this week I deleted my Google+ account, or profile, or whatever it is. I never used G+ after initially signing up, so I had no use for it. Deleting the account seems to have had no ill effects. The deletion page did warn me that "third party sign on" would stop working, and I do use the Google third party login via OAuth because some sites rely on it, but nothing broke. Is there some kind of different "login with G+"? I also moved calendaring and reminders to Fruux [1], and I have previously moved my email and contacts to Fastmail, and my notes to Evernote. I'm still on GTalk via Adium, though -- is there a good replacement for that? Moving away from the big provides feels good. It feels liberating, in fact. Google and Apple provide whole ecosystems of services, and they really, really want you to buy into their whole integrated system, and they design their systems to stretch their tendrils as far into your computing experience as possible. At least with Apple that's core to their long-established philosophy -- integrated devices that just work -- but I'm a big believer in decentralization. I want to pick the best possible system that integrates with everything using open standards. [1] https://fruux.com https://fruux.com [2] https://www.fastmail.fm/ https://www.fastmail.fm/

davidgerard 13y ago

Keep a separate Gmail/Google/G+ account for your phone and your desktop. If you want to get to your desktop email from your phone, Firefox for Android is less leaky than Chrome.

jurassic 13y ago

> You know what? Forget it, I don’t even want to comment any more. It was a dumb video anyway. I went through this exact process and thought ("screw this, ugh!") several times before I just decided to stop hanging out on youtube and commenting on peoples' videos. I used to waste a huge amount of time doing this, but now I only sometimes watch things that others have discovered and shared with me. I don't comment or browse like I used to, and I'm sure their advertising revenue off of me has dropped off a cliff. It also seems like the amount of intrusive/unskippable advertising has rocketed up, too, over the last couple of years while they were forcing G+ on the world. They're kidding themselves if they think I'm going to happily watch a 30 second ad before a 2 minute viral video. I was annoyed/sad at first when they started making these changes, but now I realize I was mostly wasting my time doing that stuff anyway. So thanks, Google, for making your site less fun to use; it really has saved me a lot of time.

amaks 13y ago
My though exactly. Perhaps the anger and frustration of this integration is rooted from people being upset about being more accountable (through the real identity) and cautious, and Google is simply improving the quality of comments this way?
- gibwell 13y ago
  CCTV cameras in people's homes would make them more accountable, and would likely also lead to frustration.
coldpie 13y ago
AdBlock plus, buddy :) Sadly I haven't figured out a solution for mobile platforms yet. I just don't watch videos with ads in them on mobile.

amaks 13y ago

"Now there’s one less egg in my Google basket, and I never have to pay attention to anything that has the word “Google+” in it again — just like I did with LinkedIn (stop inviting me, everyone in the world), Pinterest, and a number of other things I had no use for." Enough said. The dude is a typical Facebook user who is addicted to his only social network and upset about integration between YouTube and G+. Better commenting system and difficulty of creating fake user accounts will increase the quality of comments. I guess the people who complain like to troll or post some obnoxious comments, this explains the frustration.

jondr 13y ago
Disclaimer: This is my first comment on HackerNews and probably my last. I'm not a hacker or a software engineer and don't really belong on the site, so don't comment. I'm just some random guy who plays a lot of video games, uses a lot of reddit and has a rough interest in the technology industry. By extension, I watch a lot of YouTube videos from various channels that offer playthroughs (or 'Let's Plays') of games. This is why I say the following: Unfortunately at this stage I think you are completely wrong. I suspect that you don't use YouTube very much and so are not seeing what has happened. I'm sorry if this sounds snide, it isn't meant to. YouTube had a reputation with some as providing the worst internet comments outside 4chan. I doubt few could imagine it getting worse. This recent Google+ integration seems to be an experiment on Google's part to prove how naive that belief was. You can now post hyperlinks in comments. This has led to people spamming links to 'screamer' videos, including the potential to disguise these links as the comment expanding feature. Comments can now have seemingly unlimited length, or at least are massively extended compared to the previous system; This has led to people spamming ASCII art images of genitals, pedobear, naked women, memes like the super shibe 'doge', and reams and reams of repeating text like "#FUCKGOOGLE". Actual advertiser spammers are soon going to catch onto this ability, so the messages offering free copies of popular video games like Minecraft no longer have to come with the polite request to copypaste them into your address bar - they can just be clicked. This is just the tip of the iceberg in the first few days. I know I'm not alone in wondering how long it will be before someone finds a way to exploit these new comments as a vector for directly delivering malware. And even if the hyperlinks are removed, it has created a enormous new canvas on which trolls, children and idiots can paint their own brand of humour. There does not currently seem to be any way of blanket blocking URLs, instead needing a filter list set up with every potential combination of keywords and domains. The kind of people who create and post this stuff are the kind of people least likely to care about creating multiple throwaway accounts or having this rubbish leak into other websites. Anecdotally it seems that people who may care enough to try and contribute meaningfully are now more likely to abandon the comments section and Google+ out of frustration (just as this article concludes with). This could be turn out to be nothing but a win for the trolls, especially considering that removing the new features enabling them would be to render the system identical to the old one. I don't like the channel myself but a _very_ popular personality called PewDiePie has now disabled comments on all his videos due to the change. Other channels seem to be following suit or considering it. If you would like to hear a very honest spiel about the frustration these changes provide, search for a channel called NerdCubed and look at his recent videos for a video on the comment section. The comments that could be found under your average YouTube video were already enough to drive a content creator to exasperation as is. Rather than helping, this has seemingly made things significantly worse.

kamme 13y ago

The people at Google are really pushing for broad adoption of G+. If you think about it, it's pretty logical as they know Facebook is only going downhill and they are trying to get everybody onboard. The reaction I'm hearing a lot however, is they are being too pushy. I've even had a few people who accidentally signed up for a G+ account ask me how to delete it because they kept receiving 'Top X posts on G+' mails without knowing what it is. I don't think a lot of good things come with this kind of tactic.

bobbles 13y ago

To remove your Google+ account but keep your Google services running, visit the following link: https://plus.google.com/downgrade/ https://plus.google.com/downgrade/ To remove your Google+ account from YouTube: Go to youtube settings: http://www.youtube.com/account http://www.youtube.com/account Click "Return name to <name>, and disconnect Google+ profile" I was an early adopter to Google+ but screw it, I'm sick of dealing with this crap.

raymondduke 13y ago

What a bunch of whiny kids. The Google+ addition to YouTube is a great change.

xacaxulu 13y ago

Don't build your life on other peoples digital plantations.

DigitalSea 13y ago

I cannot agree with the sentiment of this article enough. The dropdown in my Youtube shows 3 different accounts. One using my personal email address and then another two which were created channels with the same name. One is linked to my Google+ account (my main one) and the other for some reason is linked to another Google+ account Google created for me. That's 3 different Google+ profiles created for the one email. This is a joke.

barrkel 13y ago

Ever since Google Reader was discontinued, I no longer log in under my real account on my primary browser any more (I don't use Gmail's web interface either). Frankly I think that's the way to go. Ideally, we'd have better identity support in our browsers to control which set of cookies to hand out based on which top-level URL we're visiting.

josteink 13y ago

For those who consider deleting their G+ accounts: Don't consider it if you're using Android, as some core apps will stop working then (like the photo-gallery). Yup. It has come to this. Disable or delete your G+ account and your Android phone no longer works. Google is getting pretty damn creepy. I sure hope the CM-team can come up with some decent replacement apps for all the stuff Google is fucking up these days.

iamshs 13y ago
Damn it. I have a Nexus 5 pre-ordered. Well. Unrelated: http://i.imgur.com/wbjCmbt.jpg http://i.imgur.com/wbjCmbt.jpg Changing faces of Google is a scary phenomenon.

studio816 13y ago

Hey Google, Facebook and others - please implement reddit-style commenting system. Thank you.

wambotron 13y ago

At one point he says he wants to comment as something else so no one sees him comment, then he says he'll post it to facebook so everyone he knows sees his comment. I'm not going to comment on anything else in the article, this just struck me as odd and obviously contradictory.