Jul 24, 2012

Youtube Is Attempting To Unmask The Trolls That Lurk On Their Site

youtube-logo
youtube-logo (Photo credit: www_ukberri_net)
Back on June 29th Youtube announced on it's blog that they were going to start nudging users to migrate their Youtube account profiles over to their Google + profiles. Not only is this an atttempt to make Google + more relevant (Are any of you using it? I'm not), but it will now provide users with a real name and a profile picture, and not some wacky pseudonym someone uses to stay anonymous while flaming the comments of your videos.

From Youtube's blog:

Starting today we’re giving you the ability to change how you appear on YouTube, with the option to use your Google+ profile on your YouTube channel. One Google-wide identity was something that proved popular with new YouTube users when we began offering it in March, so we are now extending it to existing users.

You may have seen this happening when you comment on a video. A little pop up appears asking you to switch your account over to Google +. As with anything Google, when this starts happening it's only a matter of time before they force you over to the new way of doing things.

Tom Cheredar of Venture Beat writes:

Anyone who doesn’t want to switch over to their real name could elect to decline by giving Google a reasonable explanation. Some of the reasons people may want to decline would be because they have a well-known YouTube channel or  the channel is set up for a show (or entity) rather than an individual. You can’t tell YouTube that you’d like to keep your user name to stay anonymous, as this would probably defeat the purpose of providing accountability to a user’s comments.

This move might make trolls on Youtube less likely to write flaming comments if they don't have a fake identity to hide behind. Then again, it probably won't. Trolls will be trolls, and I'm sure those that want to keep being trolls, when forced to move to Google +, will probably just create fake Google + accounts to get around it.

What do you think? If your real name and face were attached to your comments, would you watch what you say? Let us know in the comments.



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