8 ms·

YouTube Addresses Massive Spam Problem Following Rollout of Google+ Commenting

73 points by hepha1979 13y ago

majani 13y ago
Wow, Bob's army actually got their attention. It was becoming scary how prevalent he was, but I still didn't think Google would care. Shows how low my faith in their user support has fallen.
- faboo 13y ago
  Between Bob's army and insipid comments rising to the top, the comments sections of a lot of interesting, community oriented channels became useless (more so, even, than before). If nobody is actually looking at the comments section, then it doesn't really make technical sense to keep it as it is - it's just busy work for their engineers. So it makes sense then for them to either attempt further fixes, or, in true Google fashion, simply remove the feature altogether.
  - rocky1138 13y ago
    As a viewer I've already eliminated it by joining their Feather beta. As a video producer, I'm forced to keep comments enabled so I can keep in touch with my fans. Thankfully I use two separate Chrome identities.
geuis 13y ago
Ooh ohh I've got an idea. Put things back how they were. YouTube doesn't make sense as a primary Google-branded property. It's users have a different of needs than other Google-branded products do. Hell, YouTube isn't even housed in Mountain View. It's in a different city.
- Timmmmbob 13y ago
  Suuuure... put it back to the way it was earlier. Youtube comments were great then!
- ihuman 13y ago
  I don't see that happening anytime soon. Google has invested too much into the Google+ brand to no apply it to one of the biggest properties. To them, having messy Google+ integration is better than not integrating Google+ at all.
  - fleitz 13y ago
    Which is the current fundamental problem with Google. Wishing your crappy social network wasn't crappy doesn't mean I want to use it with YouTube (or at all). Instead of shoving it down my throat, why not make it usable?
    - 21echoes 13y ago
      can you please explain the ways in which G+ is not usable? while it's got less users than FB, it's afaik generally perceived as far more user friendly, well designed, and feature-ful
      - fleitz 13y ago
        > it's got less users than FB. It's like a cellphone that you cant call anyone with. No one really cares if it's 1000 times easier to use if you can't call your friends. They took something benign but useless and made it non-consensual. Google+ is now the equivalent of all the cable channels you didn't want but your cable co made you buy anyway. I was an early adopter of G+ because I didn't like the heavy handed BS from FB. I still begrudgingly use FB because alot of my friends are on it.
        freehunter 13y ago
        I use G+ because none of my friends are there. I'm able to hear from interesting or influential voices of people who choose to blog or share on G+. Since there's little danger of my mom, my pastor, or my boss wishing to be friends with me, I can feel freer to speak my mind as well. To me, G+ having a niche audience is a feature.
- return0 13y ago
  It's not Google-branded.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  The problem isn't that Google integrated Youtube's comments into a unified social layer. Integrating Youtube comments, Blogger comments, Picasaweb comments, a Facebook-like social network into a single system? That's a great idea. The problem is that they screwed the pooch on it in every way I can imagine. They soft-pedaled the rollout which made it into a million tiny pain-points and broken promises instead of one big one. They completely screwed up their automoderation algorithm. It's a failure. Whatever Youtube used before is obviously better. They made the system far too opinionated, not giving the page owner any moderation tools or filters or anything - the page owners can't allow/deny pseudonymous accounts (and even the existence of pseudonymous accounts is unclear). They didn't offer any anonymous approach, and the pseudonymous system is bizarre and unclear. If you're building a single social tool like Facebook, being opinionated helps. But if you're building a whole social platform that you're bolting onto every form of content your users run? Every video, every blogpost, every picture? You need to let the users have the tools to run their comment-sections.
  - rocky1138 13y ago
    I agree with everything you've just written. On an unrelated note, I read "comment-section" as "commentcision" and thought you'd coined up a new phrase to describe how users want their online persona handled.
  - est 13y ago
    > That's a great idea. It's a failed idea. Aggregation protocols (RSS and ATOM) abandoned, Friendfeed died. Because gulping from every source possible without digestion (!) means diarrhea Are there any good digestion algorithms or content filtering service out there? No. For every new merged info, the only thing increased is noise, not signal. In separated channels, like Picasa, Blogger, Youtube, you can prioritize them, you can reply blogger comments while ignore youtube trolls, but in a merged timeline, you will have serious management troubles
    - Pxtl 13y ago
      > It's a failed idea. Aggregation protocols (RSS and ATOM) abandoned, Friendfeed died. Because gulping from every source possible without digestion (!) means diarrhea RSS failed because it wasn't user-friendly enough for non-geeks. Other tools that let users drink from a firehose of unrelated info like Reddit and Twitter do just fine. Diarrhea or not, they get users.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
logfromblammo 13y ago
Why is this a problem? If anything, unrelated commercial spam could only increase the level of discourse in YouTube comments. At least if I see a pitch for a pyramid scheme, it doesn't make me want to kill myself for being in the same species as the poster.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
Wasn't the point of the new system to reduce spam and improve comment quality?? I was never a fan of YouTube comments even using a Chrome plugin to hide them for a while, but on some videos I found useful stuff. The little value they had before seems to have disappeared now. The main reason from my point of view is that the comments show someone who has shared the video on Google +. They weren't intending to comment, they were sharing the video and now it's forced into the YouTube comment stream.
- krapp 13y ago
  No, the point of the new system was to force people to use G+ on youtube.
incision 13y ago
Strangely enough, while I disapproved of these changes in theory I've found them to be a fairly positive in practice. I haven't found myself hounded by inane comments because I shared a YT video on G+, just a few extra +1 notifications from strangers. I don't notice any extra spam, but I'm watching stuff with thousands not millions of views. The comments I do see bubbling to the top aren't insightful, but they're generally civil.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
nsxwolf 13y ago
I liked the comment system on YouTube provided I wasn't looking at random viral videos with 1M+ hits. On a lot of the channels I subscribed to, the discussions were respectful and interesting. Since the G+ fiasco, I have absolutely no idea what's going on. I get asked who I am by this popup that shows me 6 different choices, mostly duplicates, over and over. The thing is just never done with me - always demanding I jump through some new hoop.
- booyaa00 13y ago
  The hoops are also confusing (at least to me). It gives you a few options, but doesn't tell you which option you should choose if you want to keep things the way they currently are...
- jrockway 13y ago
  I eventually caved and created a G+ page for my "channel". It is annoying how many times YouTube asked, but the result is quite satisfactory. The sharing settings actually seem pretty reasonable to me: whenever I interact with YouTube, Google is very clear about who will see my content (the "Public" icon from G+ is reused when posting a comment, +1s and upvotes are explicitly mentioned as being public, and so on), and having a "page" for my "channel" lets me not use my real name on YouTube, which I irrationally do not want to do. (jrockway is fine. A two-word Real Name is just too damn formal for trolling YouTube.) Overall I do not think this is such a terrible thing; as someone who used G+ pretty actively before the comment system merge, I do see a lot of relevant comments on YouTube videos I never would have seen before, and since I would probably be sharing the videos I like to G+ anyway, it doesn't bother me that my comments show up in both places. It would be interesting to invent a time machine, go back in time, and try doing the merge the other way: fold G+ into YouTube. G+ users probably wouldn't be mad, since they already use YouTube, and YouTube users probably wouldn't be mad, since they wouldn't notice anything changing. But whatever, the current version of the integration is fine with me, once you decipher what "page" and "channel" mean.
  - StandardFuture 13y ago
    Please leave a disclaimer stating that you work for Google, as your GitHub[1] says that you do. Thanks. :) [1] https://github.com/jrockway https://github.com/jrockway
bane 13y ago
And broken commenting. I finally gave in and linked it to G+ and now I can't comment at all. Totally, utterly broken. I click on the comment box, a blank pop-up shows up for a second then goes away and I can't type at all.
- jamesbritt 13y ago
  Same here. Seems to be an "allow 3rd party cookies" thing. Broken as designed, so no more you tube commenting for me.
  - Steuard 13y ago
    So you've been able to figure out the cause of this? Is there a site out there that explains the details? (Not that an inability to comment on YouTube is much of a hardship, but it's occasionally frustrating.)
    - jamesbritt 13y ago
      I Googled around and came across a Google support page where someone (probably not a Googler) explained that they had to change their "allow 3rd-party cookies" settings because YouTube and the commenting system was loading shit form everywhere. Possible the everywhere was all Google property, but the idea that I had to turn off a privacy setting in order to comment on YouTube was just dumb. Others on that page confirmed it. Sorry, I don't have a link. The explanation on the page sounded plausible enough that I said, "OK. Fuck it." I just checked and this seems to only happen to me on Chrome, but not on Firefox. Firefox shows my G+ avatar; Chrome seems not to know who am for YouTube comments, but knows who I am for YouTube channel stuff. Nice. Now I have to go see how insecure my Firefox settings are. :)
      - Steuard 13y ago
        Ah, I see: yeah, I've got 3rd party cookies disabled in Firefox, so that's presumably my problem. If there were a way to make an exception only for YouTube requesting a Google+ cookie, I'd do it. But I'm not willing to give Google+ a blanket pass on all sites, and it doesn't look like Firefox's cookie controls are fine-grained enough for that. (Maybe I could look for an extension...)
rocky1138 13y ago
The core problem with Google+ is that people don't want everyone to know what they Google. What goes in the search box is treated as private (even though we know governments can see it, we expect that our neighbours cannot) and now anyone can just skim to our Google+ profile to see everything we've ever done. I miss the anonymous Internet.
- sukuriant 13y ago
  People can see everything you've ever done by skimming your Google+ profile? I've avidly avoided this stuff in general, how does this work?
  - cheald 13y ago
    No, they can't.
    - rocky1138 13y ago
      You're right: it was hyperbole. What I was trying to point out is the (sometimes) silent publishing of activities to a social feed some people don't know they have.
- drill_sarge 13y ago
  Why would you want to be logged in while searching via Google?
  - gtremper 13y ago
    Stuff will show up in my Google Now? It's cool to search for a place on my computer and then have my phone ask me if I want directions when I'm leaving.
    - drill_sarge 13y ago
      I am not sure if thats "cool"
jmpe 13y ago
Remember the 90s? More specifically Windows & Linux? One was completely network oriented but sucked for graphics/sound on the desktop, the other was the complete opposite. Both moved towards each other, but with massive growing pains - some of which still linger today, a few decades later. Google does ads. FB does social. They're moving towards each other. These G+ problems? Mark my words: Google's Achilles heal for ever.
antihero 13y ago
I really don't think it fits to try and push YouTube under the Google+ "ecosystem". It's it's own separate community, and many people really want their YouTube identity to be kept separate from their Google/real life one. It asks me if I want to use my real name pretty much every time I open the damn app.
ashcairo 13y ago
I'll be honest with you guys. Since G+ integration, I've found the comments left on YouTube videos to be far more intelligent and appealing to read.
- rocky1138 13y ago
  I haven't been able to leave a comment since the switch (my browser just keeps refreshing). Wait, is your point and mine related?
  - afsina 13y ago
    Are you using IE6?
    - rocky1138 13y ago
      No, Chrome. But I do have Ghostery installed. I wonder if it's preventing me from leaving comments. When I click on the comment box and then accept the new tidbits about G+ comments, the page just refreshes.
DonGateley 13y ago
If they'll give me oldest to newest comment browsing I'll forgive them anything. Well, almost anything. I'm a big fan of causality and the flow of time.

73 points by hepha1979 13y ago

Wow, Bob's army actually got their attention. It was becoming scary how prevalent he was, but I still didn't think Google would care. Shows how low my faith in their user support has fallen.

faboo 13y ago
Between Bob's army and insipid comments rising to the top, the comments sections of a lot of interesting, community oriented channels became useless (more so, even, than before). If nobody is actually looking at the comments section, then it doesn't really make technical sense to keep it as it is - it's just busy work for their engineers. So it makes sense then for them to either attempt further fixes, or, in true Google fashion, simply remove the feature altogether.
- rocky1138 13y ago
  As a viewer I've already eliminated it by joining their Feather beta. As a video producer, I'm forced to keep comments enabled so I can keep in touch with my fans. Thankfully I use two separate Chrome identities.

geuis 13y ago

Ooh ohh I've got an idea. Put things back how they were. YouTube doesn't make sense as a primary Google-branded property. It's users have a different of needs than other Google-branded products do. Hell, YouTube isn't even housed in Mountain View. It's in a different city.

Timmmmbob 13y ago
Suuuure... put it back to the way it was earlier. Youtube comments were great then!
ihuman 13y ago
I don't see that happening anytime soon. Google has invested too much into the Google+ brand to no apply it to one of the biggest properties. To them, having messy Google+ integration is better than not integrating Google+ at all.
- fleitz 13y ago
  Which is the current fundamental problem with Google. Wishing your crappy social network wasn't crappy doesn't mean I want to use it with YouTube (or at all). Instead of shoving it down my throat, why not make it usable?
  - 21echoes 13y ago
    can you please explain the ways in which G+ is not usable? while it's got less users than FB, it's afaik generally perceived as far more user friendly, well designed, and feature-ful
    - fleitz 13y ago
      > it's got less users than FB. It's like a cellphone that you cant call anyone with. No one really cares if it's 1000 times easier to use if you can't call your friends. They took something benign but useless and made it non-consensual. Google+ is now the equivalent of all the cable channels you didn't want but your cable co made you buy anyway. I was an early adopter of G+ because I didn't like the heavy handed BS from FB. I still begrudgingly use FB because alot of my friends are on it.
      - freehunter 13y ago
        I use G+ because none of my friends are there. I'm able to hear from interesting or influential voices of people who choose to blog or share on G+. Since there's little danger of my mom, my pastor, or my boss wishing to be friends with me, I can feel freer to speak my mind as well. To me, G+ having a niche audience is a feature.
return0 13y ago
It's not Google-branded.
Pxtl 13y ago
The problem isn't that Google integrated Youtube's comments into a unified social layer. Integrating Youtube comments, Blogger comments, Picasaweb comments, a Facebook-like social network into a single system? That's a great idea. The problem is that they screwed the pooch on it in every way I can imagine. They soft-pedaled the rollout which made it into a million tiny pain-points and broken promises instead of one big one. They completely screwed up their automoderation algorithm. It's a failure. Whatever Youtube used before is obviously better. They made the system far too opinionated, not giving the page owner any moderation tools or filters or anything - the page owners can't allow/deny pseudonymous accounts (and even the existence of pseudonymous accounts is unclear). They didn't offer any anonymous approach, and the pseudonymous system is bizarre and unclear. If you're building a single social tool like Facebook, being opinionated helps. But if you're building a whole social platform that you're bolting onto every form of content your users run? Every video, every blogpost, every picture? You need to let the users have the tools to run their comment-sections.
- rocky1138 13y ago
  I agree with everything you've just written. On an unrelated note, I read "comment-section" as "commentcision" and thought you'd coined up a new phrase to describe how users want their online persona handled.
- est 13y ago
  > That's a great idea. It's a failed idea. Aggregation protocols (RSS and ATOM) abandoned, Friendfeed died. Because gulping from every source possible without digestion (!) means diarrhea Are there any good digestion algorithms or content filtering service out there? No. For every new merged info, the only thing increased is noise, not signal. In separated channels, like Picasa, Blogger, Youtube, you can prioritize them, you can reply blogger comments while ignore youtube trolls, but in a merged timeline, you will have serious management troubles
  - Pxtl 13y ago
    > It's a failed idea. Aggregation protocols (RSS and ATOM) abandoned, Friendfeed died. Because gulping from every source possible without digestion (!) means diarrhea RSS failed because it wasn't user-friendly enough for non-geeks. Other tools that let users drink from a firehose of unrelated info like Reddit and Twitter do just fine. Diarrhea or not, they get users.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

logfromblammo 13y ago

Why is this a problem? If anything, unrelated commercial spam could only increase the level of discourse in YouTube comments. At least if I see a pitch for a pyramid scheme, it doesn't make me want to kill myself for being in the same species as the poster.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

Wasn't the point of the new system to reduce spam and improve comment quality?? I was never a fan of YouTube comments even using a Chrome plugin to hide them for a while, but on some videos I found useful stuff. The little value they had before seems to have disappeared now. The main reason from my point of view is that the comments show someone who has shared the video on Google +. They weren't intending to comment, they were sharing the video and now it's forced into the YouTube comment stream.

krapp 13y ago
No, the point of the new system was to force people to use G+ on youtube.

incision 13y ago

Strangely enough, while I disapproved of these changes in theory I've found them to be a fairly positive in practice. I haven't found myself hounded by inane comments because I shared a YT video on G+, just a few extra +1 notifications from strangers. I don't notice any extra spam, but I'm watching stuff with thousands not millions of views. The comments I do see bubbling to the top aren't insightful, but they're generally civil.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

nsxwolf 13y ago

I liked the comment system on YouTube provided I wasn't looking at random viral videos with 1M+ hits. On a lot of the channels I subscribed to, the discussions were respectful and interesting. Since the G+ fiasco, I have absolutely no idea what's going on. I get asked who I am by this popup that shows me 6 different choices, mostly duplicates, over and over. The thing is just never done with me - always demanding I jump through some new hoop.

booyaa00 13y ago
The hoops are also confusing (at least to me). It gives you a few options, but doesn't tell you which option you should choose if you want to keep things the way they currently are...
jrockway 13y ago
I eventually caved and created a G+ page for my "channel". It is annoying how many times YouTube asked, but the result is quite satisfactory. The sharing settings actually seem pretty reasonable to me: whenever I interact with YouTube, Google is very clear about who will see my content (the "Public" icon from G+ is reused when posting a comment, +1s and upvotes are explicitly mentioned as being public, and so on), and having a "page" for my "channel" lets me not use my real name on YouTube, which I irrationally do not want to do. (jrockway is fine. A two-word Real Name is just too damn formal for trolling YouTube.) Overall I do not think this is such a terrible thing; as someone who used G+ pretty actively before the comment system merge, I do see a lot of relevant comments on YouTube videos I never would have seen before, and since I would probably be sharing the videos I like to G+ anyway, it doesn't bother me that my comments show up in both places. It would be interesting to invent a time machine, go back in time, and try doing the merge the other way: fold G+ into YouTube. G+ users probably wouldn't be mad, since they already use YouTube, and YouTube users probably wouldn't be mad, since they wouldn't notice anything changing. But whatever, the current version of the integration is fine with me, once you decipher what "page" and "channel" mean.
- StandardFuture 13y ago
  Please leave a disclaimer stating that you work for Google, as your GitHub[1] says that you do. Thanks. :) [1] https://github.com/jrockway https://github.com/jrockway

bane 13y ago

And broken commenting. I finally gave in and linked it to G+ and now I can't comment at all. Totally, utterly broken. I click on the comment box, a blank pop-up shows up for a second then goes away and I can't type at all.

jamesbritt 13y ago
Same here. Seems to be an "allow 3rd party cookies" thing. Broken as designed, so no more you tube commenting for me.
- Steuard 13y ago
  So you've been able to figure out the cause of this? Is there a site out there that explains the details? (Not that an inability to comment on YouTube is much of a hardship, but it's occasionally frustrating.)
  - jamesbritt 13y ago
    I Googled around and came across a Google support page where someone (probably not a Googler) explained that they had to change their "allow 3rd-party cookies" settings because YouTube and the commenting system was loading shit form everywhere. Possible the everywhere was all Google property, but the idea that I had to turn off a privacy setting in order to comment on YouTube was just dumb. Others on that page confirmed it. Sorry, I don't have a link. The explanation on the page sounded plausible enough that I said, "OK. Fuck it." I just checked and this seems to only happen to me on Chrome, but not on Firefox. Firefox shows my G+ avatar; Chrome seems not to know who am for YouTube comments, but knows who I am for YouTube channel stuff. Nice. Now I have to go see how insecure my Firefox settings are. :)
    - Steuard 13y ago
      Ah, I see: yeah, I've got 3rd party cookies disabled in Firefox, so that's presumably my problem. If there were a way to make an exception only for YouTube requesting a Google+ cookie, I'd do it. But I'm not willing to give Google+ a blanket pass on all sites, and it doesn't look like Firefox's cookie controls are fine-grained enough for that. (Maybe I could look for an extension...)

rocky1138 13y ago

The core problem with Google+ is that people don't want everyone to know what they Google. What goes in the search box is treated as private (even though we know governments can see it, we expect that our neighbours cannot) and now anyone can just skim to our Google+ profile to see everything we've ever done. I miss the anonymous Internet.

sukuriant 13y ago
People can see everything you've ever done by skimming your Google+ profile? I've avidly avoided this stuff in general, how does this work?
- cheald 13y ago
  No, they can't.
  - rocky1138 13y ago
    You're right: it was hyperbole. What I was trying to point out is the (sometimes) silent publishing of activities to a social feed some people don't know they have.
drill_sarge 13y ago
Why would you want to be logged in while searching via Google?
- gtremper 13y ago
  Stuff will show up in my Google Now? It's cool to search for a place on my computer and then have my phone ask me if I want directions when I'm leaving.
  - drill_sarge 13y ago
    I am not sure if thats "cool"

jmpe 13y ago

Remember the 90s? More specifically Windows & Linux? One was completely network oriented but sucked for graphics/sound on the desktop, the other was the complete opposite. Both moved towards each other, but with massive growing pains - some of which still linger today, a few decades later. Google does ads. FB does social. They're moving towards each other. These G+ problems? Mark my words: Google's Achilles heal for ever.

antihero 13y ago

I really don't think it fits to try and push YouTube under the Google+ "ecosystem". It's it's own separate community, and many people really want their YouTube identity to be kept separate from their Google/real life one. It asks me if I want to use my real name pretty much every time I open the damn app.

ashcairo 13y ago

I'll be honest with you guys. Since G+ integration, I've found the comments left on YouTube videos to be far more intelligent and appealing to read.

rocky1138 13y ago
I haven't been able to leave a comment since the switch (my browser just keeps refreshing). Wait, is your point and mine related?
- afsina 13y ago
  Are you using IE6?
  - rocky1138 13y ago
    No, Chrome. But I do have Ghostery installed. I wonder if it's preventing me from leaving comments. When I click on the comment box and then accept the new tidbits about G+ comments, the page just refreshes.

DonGateley 13y ago

If they'll give me oldest to newest comment browsing I'll forgive them anything. Well, almost anything. I'm a big fan of causality and the flow of time.