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My thing about anonymity and Internet commentary is that neither the producers of content, nor maintainers of the medium, should be under any obligation to prov

My thing about anonymity and Internet commentary is that neither the producers of content, nor maintainers of the medium, should be under any obligation to provide the consumers with an anonymous forum. This isn't even an issue of "build your own video streaming site with a comments system you like"; YouTube has a nice API. Build your own anonymous community. Or just use Reddit or whatever. At one point, the comments were probably really useful to YouTube. They probably increase the virality of the content, before Facebook and Twitter provided new ways to share. But now, it's a liability. Advertisers don't want their product to be juxtaposed with unaccountable commentary, and advertisers are the ones that finance the whole enterprise, for better or for worse. I'm really glad Google finally decided to do something about their video comments. They host some of the vilest commentary I've seen on any mainstream site.

Houshalter 13y ago
Yes they do have an obligation. No one is going to use your additional commenting system over the actual site's system. You don't really have a choice but to use it. Limited anonymity is very important. People regret what they said years earlier. People don't want their future employers reading what they said online. People don't want to keep certain things private from their family. Youtube isn't a social network and they are trying to merge it in with one. I'm not aware of advertisers ever caring about comments and if so that's absolutely ridiculous. Keep in mind they also allow anyone to post videos of anything at all short of porn and place adverts right over that. Plenty of forum sites have ads as well. I really doubt that was ever an issue and it's incredibly silly if it was. Fixing the comments doesn't require removing anonymity or even censorship. The problem with youtube comments is that it was a huge mainstream site open to everyone. Unlike niche communities that filter out certain kinds of people just because they don't go to the site. Second there was no sorting of comments at all. Anything anyone posted immediately appeared at the top. Like and dislike buttons had no functional use, they were a joke. And the comments still suck and they always will.
JVIDEL 13y ago
Here's the thing, I used to write very polite comments on YouTube that could be divided in either opinions that added to the discussion or questions to the uploader but now this goggle+ bs is so annoying and inconvenient that from now on I'm not making any comments anymore. But the racist idiot posting the most vile and offensive stuff you have ever read is going to sick around because he enjoys doing that.

Houshalter 13y ago

Yes they do have an obligation. No one is going to use your additional commenting system over the actual site's system. You don't really have a choice but to use it. Limited anonymity is very important. People regret what they said years earlier. People don't want their future employers reading what they said online. People don't want to keep certain things private from their family. Youtube isn't a social network and they are trying to merge it in with one. I'm not aware of advertisers ever caring about comments and if so that's absolutely ridiculous. Keep in mind they also allow anyone to post videos of anything at all short of porn and place adverts right over that. Plenty of forum sites have ads as well. I really doubt that was ever an issue and it's incredibly silly if it was. Fixing the comments doesn't require removing anonymity or even censorship. The problem with youtube comments is that it was a huge mainstream site open to everyone. Unlike niche communities that filter out certain kinds of people just because they don't go to the site. Second there was no sorting of comments at all. Anything anyone posted immediately appeared at the top. Like and dislike buttons had no functional use, they were a joke. And the comments still suck and they always will.

JVIDEL 13y ago

Here's the thing, I used to write very polite comments on YouTube that could be divided in either opinions that added to the discussion or questions to the uploader but now this goggle+ bs is so annoying and inconvenient that from now on I'm not making any comments anymore. But the racist idiot posting the most vile and offensive stuff you have ever read is going to sick around because he enjoys doing that.