Is Google dirtying the YouTube comment stream?

YouTube changed the way comments are made on the website a couple of weeks ago. The Google-owned service now mandates a login to your Google+ profile in order to comment or like any video on the website. Having faced some really bad luck in the social networking department in the past, Google seems to be making every attempt possible to infuse Google+ even more completely into its ecosystem.

To the casual YouTube user, someone who simply heads to the website to watch a video and close the tab, this may not seem like too much of a big deal. Well, it is just a change in the comments system, after all, is it not? However, to the more serious YouTube user, Google+ being integrated into the comments system can be highly irritating, make it unusable and—to a small subset of users—even tyrannical. Why has this simple change at YouTube enraged a whole section of users?

Even as I write this, a very popular petition asking Google to change the comments section to its original form has seen over 177,000 signatures, with only 22,000 more needed to reach its goal on Change.org. “Google is forcing us to make Google+ accounts and invading our social life to comment on a YouTube video and trying to take away our anonymous profile,” reads the passionate description on the petition. “They are also trying to censor us unless we share the same worldview as they do.”

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Dude, where’s my upvote?

Whether or not Google is attempting to censor users till they share its view is open to conjecture, YouTube – and Google by association – has big problems on its hands. There is a massive distinction between the way you could go about commenting before the system was put in and after the Google+ integration was added. YouTube is now divided into the Before Google+ era (BG) and After Google+ era (AG).

Sample this: You cannot vote up or down comments made during the BG era. Why? There is no explanation whatsoever. All the top comments that followed videos previously have had their upvote and downvote counter reset to zero, and there’s no way to start the process all over again. The move comes across as shocking, especially since YouTube didn’t even make as much as a mention to completely disregard top comments of the past.

This is but the tip of the iceberg that is fast making it way towards YouTube. The video uploading website in a very cheerful blog post promised that relevance and context are to be two cornerstones for this comments system overhaul on YouTube. “Starting this week, when you’re watching a video on YouTube, you’ll see comments sorted by people you care about first,” reads the post. Why then, are most top comments on YouTube videos full of personal Google+ based conversations?

It’s not a rare to see a “comment” of someone having shared a video on Google+ followed by someone simply saying “Hi, how are you?” to them on the social networking website show up on YouTube. This is the “relevant” comment Google believes you should be seeing. Here’s what’s happening on that very famous Google Search ad on the 1947 partition:

I’m not much of a conversation person, Google

Here’s what YouTube now thinks is relevant to me when I view a video:

Relevant?

YouTube has said that the comment weightage system will ensure that uploaders’ comments are pushed to the top so we can see what they have to say about their own videos and what they respond to as comments. Sadly enough, YouTube has forgotten that context is king over here. For example, when you head on to this video called “Honest Diwali” put up by Indian comedy group All India Bakchod, you can see replies the channel has made to certain comments. However, when you click on the “in reply to”, instead of showing you the original comment in this context, YouTube simply opens up a whole new tab and starts playing the video all over again, eating into your bandwidth. To the service’s credit, if you do scroll down on the new tab, you will see that comment you’d wanted to see in the first place. However, it takes far too long to load a video on one tab these days, and having the same video open in two tabs just for getting the context to a comment seems mind-numbingly stupid.

Okay YouTube, let’s think about the uploaders. Some partners – including my own channel – are seeing uploader comments sink to the bottom of the page instead of surfacing them to the top. Gaming channel TotalBiscuit has chosen to simply turn off comments for the entire channel in protest. Currently, the channel has over 1,377,000 subscribers and over 2,300 videos on it. He’s teamed up with the most popular channel on Google+, Pewdipie, for this.

TotalBiscuit in a “vlog” on YouTube clarifies why he chose to simply redirect his viewers to his own subreddit off the video-sharing website instead. In a video called “YouTube needs chemo,” he says that he was actually looking forward to the Google+ integration as it allowed users to post a video onto the social network even as they commented on it. This was, of course, good for a channel. Facebook’s feature that allowed users to do the same thing has been broken in months, he says. As far as Google+ goes, channel owners were told they’d be able to shadow-ban users too in order to cull down on trolling.

“All of this sounded really good. They [YouTube] also promised this would be a better way to combat negativity. The good comments will rise to the top. As it turns out, it was a complete and utter lie,” TotalBiscuit says. He fast realised that when YouTube said it would push up comments with most activity, it did not mean ones that have a positive message but ones that generate more controversy and fuels conversation. “This is, by far, the dumbest thing I’ve seen Google do,” he says.

Yeah, why not?

He’s not the only channel owner who feels cheated with the redesigned commenting system. Days after the rollout, YouTube artiste Emma Blackerry came up with a cute, yet cuss filled, song taking a dig at YouTube. ZDNet author Violet Blue draws attention to a blog post by the singer’s friend Hank who saw – ironically, I might add – that top comments shown to him on the video took massive potshots at Blackerry, some almost borderline rude, and one post that repeated the “N word” 48 times.

So who are these comments really helping; the users, the content creators or Google itself? Did YouTube’s comments system have a problem? Oh, hell yes, it did. Was Google+ the answer to the question? Maybe not.

Google+ has a massive impact on Google’s web search service. When you have Google+ followers, it boosts your Google search ranking. A “+1” added to any post ensures that your search ranking gets a massive shot in the arm. Granted, you can lure in the users from Facebook and Twitter but when someone Googles, you better have some massive Google+ presence to be seen in the top results.

Do you want to merge your YouTube and Google+ accounts, Mr Hetfield?

While the idea seemed to be a win-win especially for web publishers, YouTube is a different universe in itself. The first horn of rebellion was sounded when YouTube started prompting users to link their Google+ pages – associated with their Gmail accounts – to their YouTube pages. No, said loads of veteran YouTubers, no way is this integration happening. YouTube kept prompting users to link their account, and the users kept saying no.

Nearly a year later, they now have no option. A new Google+ page has been generated for YouTube channels and you can still switch between accounts and use YouTube either from your old channel or your new one.

It is kind of interesting to see members of the YouTube community, who were always sniping at each other, now ganging up against YouTube’s “privacy invading”, “unethical” and “alienating” comments system. YouTube has a long way to go before it can make Google+ integration acceptable to its user base. If Google needs a jumping point, then it can start with YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, who logged back in to his account after eight years, only to comment, “Why the f**k do I need a Google+ account to comment on a video?”