It's often argued in these cases that identification and real names will increase the quality of comments by eliminating trolls, stalkers and troublemakers somehow.<p>When measured empirically, one study found that anonymous commenting from people without user accounts increases the ratio of good comments to poor quality ones. The reason is that so many more people comment. There's a certain fixed number of trolls and troublemakers who have a lot of free time and will go through whatever hoops are needed to set up an account with a registered name, which may or may not be their real one. Legitimate commenters though are not as motivated to jump through hoops and comply with demands they use a consistent, or real sounding name.<p><a href="http://blog.topix.com/2008/01/anonymous-comments-by-the-numbers.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.topix.com/2008/01/anonymous-comments-by-the-numb...</a><p>As far as people with video accounts on youtube who are contributing content and allowing for the business model, youtube has many cases of attractive women vloggers who are routinely stalked by unhinged fan/viewers. Do these vloggers benefit from a degree of anonymity, or the ability to use pen names? Yes. In addition to attractive women, there are also many aliased vloggers posting political opinions about police and military brutality, citizen journalists anonymously uploading video from protests, etc. Maintaining penname aliases on vlogger content accounts clearly allows these contributors to increase their own safety by making it more difficult to stalk and harass them in real life by not just trolls and dysfunctional people, but also from government agents intending to both silence them and do them harm.
If i had to use my real name, I'd probably never comment on this site (good or bad thing, you can decide). A lot of people aren't interested in attribution and just want to take part in discussions on the internet. Also, anon-posting gives you the opportunity to get better at having online discussions. Everybody sounds like a troll now and then, you need to feel like it's not attached to your identity to really express yourself. The quality of youtube comments is not going to go up, and people are just going to start using fake "real names".<p>Which apparently amazon has a trademark on anyway: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=14279641" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8...</a>
That's not very surprising. They are forcing everything towards integrating everything into Google+, one way or another.<p>And I must say, when I read in one of the screenshots "And if you change your mind, you can switch back to your username", I chuckled inside. Call me cynical, but I'd bet a lot that going back will stop being possible pretty soon.
I assume this is the gradual phasing in of google+ for every google product. They can't switch to real identities straight away without backlash, so if they do it slowly (first names, wait a few months, then photos, wait a few months, then profiles) nobody will be outraged.
At first I was kinda excited for this since I don't really go by my Youtube handle anymore, so I'd rather it be my new handle or my name. However, once I started the process, I realized I had uploaded some videos of my friend and I playing NBA Hangtime. Our team name is "WANKIT SLOWLY". Not sure I want that to be associated with my real name when people Google me.
It's worse than you think.<p>I registered a new account on Youtube a couple days ago and was not even given the option to choose a username. They asked me for my first and last name and that was it.
Perhaps the whole idea of "Real names" is outdated in the days of the internet. Since they have problems.<p>They collide, especially with a common name. Somebody googles your name and it may be difficult to find the "real" you.<p>Also people are pretty bad at spelling, many peoples names are very hard to spell. Not to mention that many of them are going to use different character sets.<p>Besides, if your life revolves around your internet identity. Is that a less legitimate identity than your real name?<p>It may be more practical for parents to assign some sort of "default handle" to their children which is expected to be changed as the child gets older.<p>For government purposes, perhaps a unique ID that cannot be changed would work better?
The list of reasons I was prompted with when I opted out of making the switch really irked me. For the list to not include "I want my name to remain private" when that is obviously the most common reason felt condescending. To make me say that "I'll decide later" seemed like a bully tactic. I've already made up my mind.
now I regret linking my gmail+youtube accounts. Oh well, time to delete that youtube account. What was the name of that anonymous email service again, ironic that I'll find it with google.<p>I don't need every future employer forever more knowing that I commented on a controversial video that one time back in '12.
In the last step of the assistant (by looking at the screenshots - not really using my youtube account, so I can't say), they ask for possible reasons why not to use the real name and the reasons they list are pretty valid and cover about the extent of reasons why I would not want to use my real name.<p>As such this leaves me with hope that they at least understand that real-name-for-everything is not a good idea.<p>Speaking of nicknames though:<p>Being able to use a nickname as the main identification handle on twitter is one of the main reasons why I'm not using Google+. Finishing a talk or a discussion with a quick "hey - follow me on twitter: @pilif" is so much easier than "Please search me on Google+ under the name Philip Hofstetter".<p>The last name is very difficult to type and in addition there are still a ton of Philip Hofstetter's around for people to confuse me with.<p>By enforcing the unique nickname and allowing users to use them as handles (and in URLs), twitter makes it much easier for people to bridge the gap between the real and the virtual world to the point where I know many people by their twitter handle instead of their real names.<p>With Google+ I'd have to make people spell my long name ("how many t's again?") or to give them an absurdly long number as my ID - neither of which is at all appealing (or producing "conversions" - if you want to call acquiring followers that)
Although there probably will be a backlash, I think this is a smart move from the social networking standpoint. Google is finally leveraging one of its most powerful assets that has to this point not played an integral role of building their G+ user base in any way.<p>This is a weapon that facebook lacks. Plus it helps get rid of the "internet fuckwads" but as the author said, it's certainly an uphill battle. I don't think we should view it a negative light though.
My real name is INSANELY googleable (as in, from what I can tell, a google of my first and last name acts like a "primary key" to my entire internet presence)... so I fucking hate these efforts. I hated it when Blizzard pushed it, I'll tolerate it on Google+ but frankly, I NEED a place where I can speak anonymously and freely.
I'm never logged in to YouTube.<p>I deleted my Google+ account when they started playing the Facebook game, turning an interesting service into a ~personal~ thing.<p>From what I can tell from my usage and discussions among friends, YouTube really is declining in use, thanks to the overzealous media industry, blocking videos left and right. If you want to listen to a bit of German music you're advised to use a proxy outside of Germany itself for a while, to avoid getting the dreaded 'This video is not available in your country' message.<p>In short: G+ fell short for me personally and in my 'circles'. YouTube could never interest me much in terms of keeping an account, as a consumer (for what? Comments?).<p>I'm glad that I don't rely on these services (anymore). I'll rather stay with a pseudonym, vimeo and duckduckgo.
I find Google's new policies surprising. Maybe "surprising" isn't the right word, but it's certainly a change in attitude that seems to ignore their own history. They started off by giving the web what it wanted and needed, a no-bullshit search service, adapting themselves to the web and profiting from it. Now they are trying to adapt the web to them, and I just don't see it going that way. Pseudonymity and the web go together, I really have my doubts in their their ability to remove it, influential as they are. Granted, Facebook may have changed people's attitudes towards pseudonymity, but I tend to think it's still something people fundamentally want.
Judging by 99% of the comments I read on youtube I'd be surprised if many of those people would be happy having those associated with their real names.<p>Perhaps some would happily do that now, but what about in 10 years when they've grown up?
I don't really mind this, as long as it isn't retroactive. YouTube comments are a parody of themselves as it is. The newish development of trying to pander in order to reach the top comment position has made them even worse.
<i>Of course that may be YouTube (and Google's) whole point for making this change. "skipro865" calling you an "ugly douchebag" doesn't quite have the same feeling as having "George Jones" call you an "ugly douchebag".</i><p>This is almost certainly not the case. If nasty comments were problematic Google could ban badly behaving users or take other measures. Accountability and identity are not the same thing, Google is pushing for identifying you not making you more accountable. Google has other motives likely related to building more accurate profiles for advertising and building out Google+.
I'm actually interested in using my real name but I would like to be able to employ pseudonyms as well (mostly to be able to interact as a brand).<p>When you opt out of using your real name they ask you what the reason is and I think based on the feedback they get from that little survey they might extend the functionality to include multiple names in some way shape or form. (at least I hope). Google+ already has some of this ability with the brand pages so hopefully they carry that over into into YouTube.
This change has been a positive development for me.<p>It made me realise that in all my many online identities, 51 at last count, I use my real name in exactly one online service provider (excluding banks) - a non-Google email service for "In Real Life" communication.<p>Just now, I changed this service profile to safeguard against the consequences of future copycat Google+ -like forced changes.<p>Thanks for the heads-up, HN'ers!
I opened a new google account recently and when I tried youtube, I didn't even see the option to use my account name, my 'real name' from my email had already been chosen.